Tag: Calhoun lecture

Adena T. Friedman, president and chief executive officer of Nasdaq, will be on the Washington University in St. Louis campus at 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 19, in Knight Hall’s Emerson Auditorium as part of the David R. Calhoun Lectureship. Co-sponsored by Olin Business School and Arts & Sciences, the lecture series aims to bring to campus well-known national leaders discussing how their value system and global experience creates an impact in the business environment.

Friedman assumed the role of Nasdaq president and CEO in January 2017 and proceeded to steer the company through the implementation of new architecture — called Nasdaq Financial Framework — that earned her Institutional Investor’s No. 1 spot in its 2017 Tech 40 list of financial technology leaders.

While serving as Nasdaq’s president and COO through 2016, Friedman oversaw the company’s business while focusing on driving efficiency, product-development growth and expansion.

Wrote Friedman in an Oct. 6 LinkedIn blog post:

“To Nasdaq, tomorrow isn’t an expression of time but a story to rewrite about a connected ecosystem that constitutes a market of possibilities. We possess what is needed to unleash those possibilities: the leading-edge technology, the forward thinking, and the power of data and analytics. We have the ingenuity to power economies, the insights to empower people, and the integrity that is the cornerstone of all markets.

“With those resources, we are going to rewrite ways to expand wealth, create jobs and enrich people’s lives. We aim to set the pace for all that — for re-thinking capital markets and economies anywhere and everywhere.”

Friedman earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Williams College and a master of business administration from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.

The Calhoun Lecture is free and open to the public but registration is encouraged as seating is limited in Emerson Auditorium. A reception will follow.

Guest Blogger: Chuck Finder, The Source. Photo credit: Matt Greenslade/photo-nyc.com

When Jonathan Rosenberg arrived at Google in 2002 to oversee the company’s product and marketing organization, he and then-CEO Eric Schmidt realized they needed to learn business rules that make companies successful in the Internet age.

Rosenberg, now adviser to Google’s new CEO Sundar Pichai, recently came to Washington University to share what he learned during his 13-year stint at the tech giant.

In his speech, titled “How Google Works: The Rules for Success in the Internet Century,” Rosenberg described how Google grew from a startup with a few hundred employees to one of the most recognized companies in the world whose products and services are used by hundreds of millions of people every day.

You can watch the entire speech here and learn more about How Google Works here.

Using many entertaining anecdotes, Rosenberg provided insights into how Google attracts smart creatives, how to create an environment where talent can thrive and what being “Googly” really means. Working closely with then-CEO Larry Page, for example, Rosenberg said he quickly learned to adopt moonshot thinking after Page told him, “You have failed by virtue of small thinking.”

Because of the nature of word of mouth online, the success of Angry Birds, Instagram and other startups proves that products and services can get traction without a lot of marketing due to the ubiquitous nature of word of mouth online, Rosenberg said.

“Marketing can accelerate people’s existing belief,” Rosenberg said. “What it can’t do is convince people that a crummy product is worth buying.”

This David R. Calhoun Memorial Lecture was a joint initiative of the School of Engineering & Applied Science and the Olin Business School.

Guest blogger: Ben Bathke