Bill Solominsky

What Does Corporate America Think of 2.0

I missed most of this session after attending the Groupon breakfast. What I did hear at the end reminded me a lot of what I realized after graduating business school. Most businesses are risk adverse, have been burned by technology before, but are afraid of being left behind. Its easy in retrospect to see the first and last traits play out from business school. Most students came into the MBA program with ideas of where they wanted their careers to go, from start ups to non-profits to the obscure industries, but they eventually took common and safe MBA jobs. Many companies will claim to be on the cutting edge of technology with risky bets, but you can be sure that careful ROI calculations were performed and there is a positive expected outcome. And, once a new technology is proven, companies will rush in to use it. This shows that if you can find the disruptive technology, and prove that it works, it can be a gold mine.

Keynote with Evan Williams

Plenty has already been said about this year’s main SXSW keynote with Evan Williams, the founder and CEO of Twitter. I was probably one of the few people that didn’t mind it. It was not an overly stimulating interview, and I did check my Droid (no, I don’t have an Iphone) quite a few times, but overall Evan provided some insight about his goals and philosophy for Twitter. The problem was that in this forum and with this audience, he needed to go much deeper and provide much more insight.

Accelerator

The rest of the day was spent bouncing between the two Accelerator rooms. I am very intrigued by business competitions, especially after witnessing the quality and dedication that is put in to the Moot Corp finals. The SXSW Accelerator is not close to being on par with Moot Corp, although it is interesting to see what ideas people are taking to market. I was disappointed with the overall selection of companies this year as most seemed to not solve any real problem. My impression was that they were cool ideas for the creators, cheap or easy to implement, and thrown on a website or Iphone app to see if any money could be made. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for the success of companies like this. They make great lifestyle businesses, or can be a quick hit for a short time, if they lead to bigger and better things. However, they do not belong in the finals of the SXSW accelerator. There were a few great companies, but the overall batch brought the level down this year.