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| Topic: |
Behavioral Economics and IT Management: Would Plato Be A Good CTO?
Download the presentation! Powerpoint PDF |
| Speaker: |
John Helm, CTO, Imprev |
| Time and Date: |
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
6pm: Registration
6:30pm: Networking & Appetizers
7pm-8:15pm: Program and Q&A
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| Location: |
Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute
1900 9th Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 987-7309
(directions below)
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Registration: |
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| Summary: |
Information technology professionals spend a significant portion of their time on "semi-technical" issues such as educating staff, influencing management and stakeholders, ROI analysis, risk assessment and mitigation, project management, process engineering and re-engineering, infrastructure integration, and change transformation - just to name a few. Moreover, these individuals are accountable and responsible for successfully managing the organizations that report to them - an activity that most would identify as non-technical. Clearly, for activities such as these, competence in Computer Science and Engineering is necessary but not sufficient for success. The resulting gap must be bridged with "soft" non-technical skills such as understanding how people, including but not limited to technologists, make decisions in the face of risk and how to motivate people to embrace change. Experience teaches that often, rational analysis is trumped by circumstance or perceptions. Why?
A recently organized field called Behavioral Economics offers several clues. This discipline arose from the observation that people do not obey the fundamental assumption of Classical and Neo-Classical Economics, which is that humans make rational decisions to maximize "utility" - in other words to be better off. Examples of irrational behavior include phenomena such as a gambler's willingness to bet while expecting to lose, people saying they want to lose weight or stop smoking but don't, and aggrieved individuals who exact revenge when doing so hurts their own self-interest. Behavioral Economists rejected the assumption of rationality in decision-making and looked for behavioral, psychological, and anthropological explanations. Many were found. In this discussion, findings from Behavioral Economics are presented and applied to activities that IT professionals often find themselves involved with. One of our conclusions will be that from this perspective Plato would have been an abysmal CTO! |
| Speaker Bio: |
John Helm, CTO, Imprev
John Helm currently is the Chief Technology Officer of Imprev.com. Prior to joining Imprev he was the CTO of Drugstore.com. Before Drugstore, John was a founding partner of Umaxon, a company specializing in system and software architecture, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance. Before Umaxon, John had several senior management positions at Merrill Lynch, including Head of Architecture; COO of Global Messaging, Collaboration Services and Directory Services; and Chief Information Architect. In 2003 one of John's Open Source projects garnered a CIO Magazine "Resourceful 100 Award." Prior to Merrill Lynch, John held key technology management positions at Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley.
Other experience includes a variety of positions in academia and in the nonprofit and public sectors, including: Associate Professor of Applied Physics at Columbia University, Fellow at the National Academy of Engineering, and Director of Computer Services at the American Health Foundation.
John holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics, a master's in Nuclear Engineering, and a bachelor's degree in Applied Chemistry from Columbia University. |
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Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute
Traveling North I-5:
- Take I-5 North to exit 166 (Olive Way)
- Turn slight right onto Olive Way
- Turn left onto E Denny Way
- Turn left onto Stewart St
- Children’s Research Institute is on the NW corner of 9th and Stewart
Traveling South I-5:
- Take I-5 South to exit 166 (Stewart St towards Denny Way)
- Turn slight right onto Stewart St.
- Children’s Research Institute is on the NW corner of 9th and Stewart
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