Private-sector leadership will be critical to health care delivery transformation. Washington's health policy reforms address insurance issues and expand coverage, but will not drive the needed change in health or care delivery. Working together, employers and providers can accelerate change. To help both take concrete steps by building on the growing momentum of efforts that implement value-based health care, Elizabeth Teisberg and Scott Wallace are hosting a morning of conversation with two noted health care innovators. Dr. Delos "Toby" Cosgrove was a heart surgery pioneer who, in 2004, became the President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, one of the nation's premier health innovators. Tim Brown is President and CEO of IDEO, the world-renowned design firm based in Palo Alto, CA. Dr. Cosgrove and Mr. Brown will address a diverse group of business and health leaders on Friday, February 19, 2010, beginning at 8:30 A.M. View the agenda and more information in the HealthInnovationSymposium.pdf

The Ideas to Action Speakers Forum is an opportunity for discussion and debate about the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in business and society. Created in collaboration with the Batten Institute, these seminars will introduce a range of perspectives and topics in innovation, strategy, and entrepreneurship, motivated by the current research of Darden's leading scholars, including Greg Fairchild, Ed Hess, Jeanne Liedtka, Mike Lenox, and others. Scheduled for various U.S. cities in Fall 2009 and Spring 2010, these lively and interactive sessions will provide rich lifelong learning opportunities for Darden alumni and other thoughtful professionals. Ideas to Action is sponsored by the Batten Institute, an academic research center at Darden dedicated to advancing knowledge about entrepreneurship and innovation. This new series is dedicated to the memory of Frank Batten, Sr., a generous and visionary benefactor of the Darden School who believed in the power of ideas to motivate and inspire entrepreneurial leadership.

Upcoming Events

March 9 - Chicago Professor Greg Fairchild
March 11 - San Francisco Professor Greg Fairchild
March 12 - Los Angeles Professor Greg Fairchild
March 25 - Boston Professor Jeanne Liedtka

This doctoral retreat, led by Professor Saras Sarasvathy of the Darden Graduate School of Business and Professor Poul Rind Christensen of the Aarhus School of Business (Denmark), was devoted to the exploration of a new agenda for entrepreneurship research. Until recently, this relatively young discipline centered around the recognition and discovery of opportunities. However, entrepreneurship can also be researched with a focus on how expert entrepreneurs make new opportunities, firms, markets and institutions. Intellectual inspiration for the retreat came from the ideas found in Herbert A. Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial," Nelson Goodman's "Ways of Worldmaking," and James M. Buchanan and Viktor J. Vanberg's "The Market as a Creative Process."

The Batten Institute's collaboration with best-selling author and Batten Fellow Jim Collins began with the development of an educational DVD companion to Collin's bestselling book Good to Great for use by graduate and undergraduate instructors in the classroom. The partnership with Jim Collins culminated in a colloquium at Darden, during which Collins outlined the eight principles of greatness which his research uncovered, shared leadership insights, and examined the effects of turbulence on a company's decline or enduring success. Darden's partnership with Jim Collins led to a related interview with him on With Good Reason on 6/14/08.

The Batten Institute's collaboration with best-selling author and Batten Gerd Gigerenzer, Batten Fellow, delivered four lectures on his groundbreaking work on bounded rationality: "The Illusion of Certainty: Learning to Live with Uncertainty," "Uniformed Consent: Innumerate Physicians and Scared Patients," "How Intuition Works," and "Less Is More: The Benefits of Cognitive Limits." Gigerenzer is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin and professor of psychology at the Free University of Berlin. A pioneer of a balanced assessment of the methods used by both humans and animals to make inferences about their environment under constraints of time, knowledge, and computational capacities, Gigerenzer has used his insights into the psychology of decision making to improve managerial techniques in operation research, quantitative analysis, and marketing.

As a 2003-2004 Batten Fellow, Reinhard Selten, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics, delivered two lectures on experimental economics, bounded rationality, and game theory. In the first talk, Selten presented his qualitative version of game theory, which he developed in the 1970s while consulting for the Department of Defense. The second talk surveyed recent empirical insights into how humans approach and perceive decision problems. By introducing the concept of subgame perfection, Selten provided the foundation for a systematic analysis of strategic interactions in a dynamic context. His foundational work has opened new avenues in the game-theoretic analysis of predatory pricing and deterrence from market entry, credibility in economic policy, oligopolies, and the economics of information.