As AI becomes increasingly integrated into markets, classrooms and workplaces, Rice Business faculty have many questions. Here are just seven of them.
Does Using AI Change How Colleagues See You?
That’s the question driving Mijeong Kwon’s newest research. When a coworker uses AI for a piece of work, does your opinion of them quietly shift? Do you assume less effort went in, or that they care less about the job than you thought? AI runs through Kwon’s own methods: She uses it to code open-ended participant responses, and she builds it into experiments themselves, designing AI interviewers and confederates that participants interact with directly. In her classroom, students use AI openly and examine what changes when they do. The stakes reach anyone who has finished a draft with ChatGPT and paused before hitting “send.” There’s a real question of whether the tools you use shape what others assume about your effort.
Mijeong Kwon, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Management – Organizational Behavior
Why Do AI-Fluent Outsiders Keep Beating Legacy Brands?
Over the past few years, a new entertainment category emerged in China: dramas told in one-minute vertical episodes. By 2024, 36,400 titles were outgrossing the country’s traditional box office. The pioneers were internet-native startups from online literature and mobile gaming, companies built on AI-driven data fluency and operational speed. Their first viewers were newly online audiences in smaller cities, long overlooked by prestige studios. In Harvard Business Review, Haiyang Li and his co-authors find a pattern business leaders will recognize: When underserved audiences meet new devices and channels, whole categories appear, and the companies that capture them are usually the ones that know what to do with data.
Haiyang Li, Ph.D. H. Joe Nelson III Professor of Management – Strategic Management
Is the Finance Classroom Keeping Up With AI?
In Kerry Back’s MBA course, students run financial analysis by chatting with an AI model. They tell it to pull data, sort stocks or run regressions, and the model writes and executes the code — no programming background required. Now Back has made that workflow available to anyone. His new app, Academic Studio, bundles Anthropic’s Claude Code into a simplified, one-click-install workspace where students can analyze data, build slides and create documents, with no intimidating setup. It mirrors what’s happening inside firms, where routine analyses are being automated. “In some ways, the classroom is actually ahead of the curve.”
Kerry Back, Ph.D. J. Howard Creekmore Professor of Finance and Professor of Economics
Is AI the New “Fad That Forgets People”?
In the 1980s and 1990s, companies poured billions into business process re- engineering and rarely achieved the promised efficiency gains. One of the movement’s own champions later explained why: It was “the fad that forgot people.” Headcount reductions, a natural outcome of re-engineering efforts, damaged the morale and engagement of remaining employees, offsetting the efficiency gains from redesigned work. Brent Smith, who advises companies like Phillips 66, MD Anderson Cancer Center and Hess Corporation (now Chevron) on change management, sees echoes of that pattern in AI. Many organizations are training employees on tools and hoping productivity follows — while downsizing based on hypothetical gains erodes engagement. For Smith, AI adoption is less a technology rollout challenge than a change management challenge.
Brent Smith, Ph.D. Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education and Associate Professor of Management and Psychology
If AI Builds the App, Who’s the Designer?
AI can now build entire apps from a single prompt. But knowing whether the result works for users still depends on human judgment. That’s the challenge at the center of Emily Prinsloo’s New Product Development and Management course, where students use tools like Cursor and Vercel to create real apps for a client partner, then learn how to evaluate what the AI produces. During the spring 2026 course, visiting designer Pat Capulong gave Prinsloo’s students a simple test for visual hierarchy: squint at the screen. If nothing grabs your attention, or if everything does, the design isn’t working. Every screen needs a clear visual hierarchy. “AI will help you build faster,” Prinsloo says, “but you still have to be the designer.”
When Vikas Mittal, Alessandro Piazza and their co-authors interviewed 20 CEOs and strategy officers across 11 companies, every single one was already using AI for core strategy tasks — and 90% believed major parts of the chief strategy officer’s (CSO) role would soon be replaced by it. The deeper problem: In an analysis of 717 published correlations, legacy strategy planning showed zero or negative correlation with financial outcomes 79% of the time.
Gen AI excels at gathering and summarizing, but it can’t tell a CEO which one initiative of the dozens being implemented actually lifts customer value. Mittal and Piazza argue that strategists should let AI absorb that synthesis work and rebuild their role around statistical models linking strategy to customer outcomes. At one manufacturer, just 12 of 87 value drivers produced over 90% of the lift in customer value; focusing on three of them pushed sales 22% above industry peers. In other words, strategy excels — when it becomes a science.
Privacy and antidiscrimination requirements can force firms to balance two goals: protecting sensitive customer attributes (e.g., race) and preserving the accuracy of predictive pricing, targeting and recommendation systems. Piyush Anand’s research suggests that AI can narrow this trade-off in two ways. First, firms can share a trained generative model rather than raw customer records, allowing others to analyze patterns without direct access to the underlying data. Second, when protected attributes such as race are involved, simply deleting those fields is not enough. Pattern-seeking AI systems can still infer those attributes via information like ZIP code, income and purchasing behavior. Adversarial AI trains one model to predict customer behavior and a second to guess protected-group identity from the first model’s output, penalizing the first whenever the second succeeds. What survives is predictive signal that carries less identifying information.
The 112,000-square-foot facility expands the business school's footprint by 65%. It creates a central hub for the university’s most popular undergraduate major.
Wondering how to build a career in investment banking? Explore how an MBA, especially from Rice Business, can help you develop the finance skills, network and recruiting experience to launch a career in IB and advance from associate to VP and beyond.
Helen Huneycutt
Investment banking can look intimidating from the outside. Recruitment is highly competitive and moves quickly, and candidates are expected to — build fluency in financial modeling, understand markets, prepare for interviews and decode a seemingly endless number of acronyms. But for many MBA students, that intensity is also part of what makes the field appealing: the work is demanding, analytical, and close to consequential business decisions.
For many aspiring bankers, an MBA can be the bridge between where you are today and where you want to go next.
But there is good news: You do not need to arrive at business school knowing everything about investment banking. You need curiosity, analytical discipline, a willingness to learn and a community that will help you put the pieces together.
Wall Street may be synonymous with investment banking, but it is hardly the only place where deals happen.
Houston, the energy capital of the world, offers a particularly relevant environment for aspiring investment bankers. The city is a global center for energy, infrastructure and industrial businesses, creating opportunities to understand complex transactions close to the companies and executives involved. For students with prior experience in energy, that industry knowledge is a real advantage. Familiarity with the energy sector helps candidates ramp up more quickly, speak more credibly in interviews, and better understand how banking teams evaluate companies and transactions.
The city is home to major corporations, financial institutions, entrepreneurs and investors, and that creates an especially interesting environment for students interested in investment banking. Alumni who stay in town see a better cost of living (by more than 20%) than residents in most other big cities, making Houston highly affordable.
Investment banks evaluate more than whether you have worked in banking before. They are looking for candidates who can demonstrate quantitative ability, strong communication, a clear reason for pursuing IB and evidence that they can perform in a demanding environment.
That is one reason a strong GMAT score can matter for students considering investment banking. Even in a test-optional admissions environment, some highly selective employers continue to ask about standardized test scores during recruiting, and a competitive score can provide another signal of analytical strength.
If investment banking is one of your goals, read more about why taking the GMAT may strengthen both your MBA application and your recruiting profile.
Be prepared to engage once the MBA program begins, because investment banking recruiting starts early and moves quickly during the fall semester.
3. Build a strong foundation in finance
A successful investment banking career starts with understanding the fundamentals: financial statements, valuation, corporate finance, capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, and financial modeling.
You don’t need to be a finance major to get started. In fact, one of the advantages of an MBA is the opportunity to build technical skills alongside classmates and professors who can help you connect the numbers to real business decisions. Candidates who come from industries such as energy often bring sector knowledge that becomes highly relevant when recruiting for employers aligned with their prior experience.
My experience at Rice was great, and now I’m an investment banker. The finance curriculum at Rice is just top tier.
Rice Business’ finance program is ranked No. 7 among MBA programs by The Princeton Review, and we’ve been in the Top10 for almost a decade. Our students learn from faculty whose research regularly appears in leading academic journals and spans corporate finance, investments, financial markets and mathematical finance.
Investment banking recruiting is highly relationship-driven.
During your MBA, connect with alumni, attend finance events, participate in student organizations and learn how different banks — and different coverage groups — actually operate. At Rice Business, the Finance Association, Career Development Office and alumni network give MBA students multiple avenues to build those relationships.
Whether it’s by attending events and conferences on campus or reaching out to our highly engaged alumni on your own, there are many avenues for Rice MBA students to expand their network of finance professionals, both in Houston and across the country.
One of the most valuable aspects of an MBA is the community you gain. From career advisors, to alumni in top roles, to business leaders that recruit at Rice Business, there are many resources for students to take advantage of during their two-year program.
Make the most of your time by utilizing every resource available, such as:
Career Development Office one-on-one coaching with a career advisor
Finance Association recruiting prep, coaching, networking, workshops and peer support
Week on Wall Street Trek
Employer and alumni networking events
Technical and behavioral Interview preparation
The Finance Association is a particularly important resource for students pursuing investment banking. The student club hosts the Financial Services & IB 101 Bootcamp, with hands-on workshops, guest speakers, technical prep, peer feedback and real-world insights into deals.
As a Rice MBA, I joined the Rice Business Finance Association, and that was critical for me to get a job in investment banking. The club president actually convinced me to join after hearing about my interests and qualifications, and I eventually pursued a role through investment banking recruitment.
A strong MBA community should give you people to call when you have a recruiting question: a professor who will challenge your thinking, an alum who remembers exactly what recruiting felt like and classmates who want to see you succeed. At Rice Business, 72% of students in the Class of 2025 accepted jobs through the Rice Business community, and finance remains one of the school’s strongest career pathways.
5. Turn your MBA into an investment banking launchpad
For students pursuing investment banking, recruiting begins early in the MBA experience. For many MBA candidates, the summer associate internship is the primary pathway into a post-MBA career in investment banking. A successful internship can lead to a full-time associate offer, while the MBA experience continues to build the technical, leadership and sector expertise that supports longer-term success.
Manage analysts, review models, run workstreams, more client interaction
3-6 years
Vice President (VP)
Manage deals, teams and client relationships; increasingly involved in winning business
6-10 years
Director/Executive Director
Senior client relationships, business development, deal leadership
10-15 years
Managine Director (MD)
Win clients, originate deals, lead relationships and generate revenue
12-15+ years
Standard role progression of a career in investment banking.
Reach your long-term goals
At its best, investment banking is not just about spreadsheets, valuation multiples or long hours. It is about helping companies make consequential decisions: raising capital, acquiring another business, navigating a strategic transition or figuring out what comes next.
The right MBA program can help you build the financial skills, recruiting readiness, relationships and confidence to turn that curiosity into an investment banking career. You do not need to arrive as an investment banking expert, but you should be ready to learn quickly, use the resources around you and engage early once recruiting begins. You may discover along the way that you’re more ready than you thought.
Wondering how to build a career in investment banking? Explore how an MBA, especially from Rice Business, can help you develop the finance skills, network and recruiting experience to launch a career in IB and advance from associate to VP and beyond.
Curious how Full-Time MBA recruitment works? Explore how top programs like Rice deliver high-ROI outcomes through career bootcamps, coffee chats and industry network access.
“Felix embodies the best of Rice Business. He leaves communities stronger than he found them, and I am confident his impact will continue well beyond our campus,” said George Andrews, associate dean of Degree Programs.
"Rice offers an incredibly supportive entrepreneurial ecosystem, filled with classmates, faculty, mentors, and alumni who are eager to advise and open doors. Whether the venture becomes a breakout success or simply an invaluable learning journey, Rice is one of the best environments to take that leap."
Find out why Victor Castleman chose Rice Business and the Professional Evening MBA program, and hear his honest reflections on Launch week.
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Victor Castleman, Professional Evening MBA Class of 2028
Victor Castleman is one of the newest members of Rice Business’s Professional Evening MBA Class of 2028. We asked him to share a little bit about himself and his experience starting the program. Here's what he had to say.
Tell us a little about your current career and background.
Education: Fordham University, BS in business administration with a marketing concentration
Most Recent Employer and Job Title: Director of site selection and acquisition at Ocis Intelligent Energy LLC
Career Highlights and Industry Experience: I lead site selection and acquisition at Ocis Intelligent Energy, a Houston developer of natural gas power generation and powered land for hyperscale data centers in the ERCOT market. My current project is a 500 MW development on 532 acres in Ellis County, south of Dallas. I run the land acquisition, grid interconnection and permitting work that turns raw ranchland into a site a data center operator can actually build on.
Before Ocis, I was a lead project coordinator at Tesla, supporting construction of the company's first U.S. lithium refinery in Corpus Christi and helping manage setup, operation, and breakdown of the We, Robot event at Warner Bros. Studios in Los Angeles.
On the side, I co-own Local Pixel, a web design studio I started with a few college friends as an excuse to stay in touch and build something of our own
What is a fun fact about you?
I partially paid my way through college in the Bronx working three jobs at once: bartender, bouncer and karaoke MC. I can still bust out the mic for Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."
Why did you choose Rice Business?
When I was in high school, I had a mentor named Jae Phan who played football for Rice. Every Wednesday I would come to campus, and he would help me with my chemistry homework, walk me through college applications, or just take me to work out in the student gym. He never asked for payment, a connection, or anything in return for his time. To me at that age, Jae was a superhero. I figured that if Rice produces people like him, then Rice is where I need to be.
That stuck. Rice has the strongest reputation of any school in Texas, and being back on this campus as a student is something my high school self would not believe.
Why did you choose our Professional Evening MBA program?
I chose the Professional Evening MBA to accelerate the career I already have rather than pause it. I want to grow into a C-suite role at my current company, and the honest gap in my profile was financial and strategic acumen. Evening classes let me close that gap while I keep running an active development project, which means everything I learn on Monday night, I can apply on Tuesday morning. Keeping my evenings structured also protects my weekends for rugby, family and the parts of my life that keep me sane through a program like this.
How are you feeling about starting your MBA? What are you most looking forward to?
Grateful, mostly. At the end of Launch Week I sat at Valhalla and cried, because I was proud of myself. If my high-school-self met me now, he would be in awe.
What I am most looking forward to is playing rugby for Rice. I played at Strake Jesuit and at Fordham, and being in the MBA program extends my eligibility, so I get to bring that experience to a young team and help steward it toward a successful season. Beyond that, I am looking forward to being challenged by people who are further along than I am and finding out what I am actually capable of.
Victor playing rugby at Strake Jesuit
Victor playing rugby at Fordham
How was your experience during launch week? What were your first impressions of the program and your classmates?
I was truly impressed by the Rice staff and administration — from the dean and assistant dean to the faculty and support team. Everything was well organized, and the clear communication made Launch Week smooth and enjoyable. My classmates immediately stood out as driven, motivated and intellectually curious. The cohort’s diversity was remarkable, and it was inspiring to see how eager everyone was to collaborate and share ideas. I was also amazed at how quickly a group of 25 of us bonded — taking time in the evenings to unwind and get to know one another made the experience even more memorable and teeing up for the next two years.
Javier chats about his path from club promoter to entrepreneur and what it really takes to build an artist's career from the ground up.
Owl Have You Know
If you told a young Javier Simons that he would one day own his own talent agency and hold an MBA from Rice Business, he would have been in disbelief.
Growing up in Panama, Javier’s path into the music industry was anything but conventional, he says. After years of waiting tables, Javier taught himself the business of entertainment from backstage, and fell in love with the in’s and out’s of talent booking and artist management. It was this passion that drove him to creating KOQ Agency, a global touring and talent agency representing independent artists. With the help of an MBA from Rice Business, Javier has scaled KOQ internationally, even booking Danish band Aqua’s first U.S. tour.
Javier joins co-host Brian Jackson ’21 to talk about his path from club promoting to entrepreneur, what it really takes to build an artist's career from the ground up, how the MBA gave him the financial and leadership toolkit he was missing, what leading the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference meant to him, and why staying “delusional” is the key to chasing and achieving your dreams.
[00:00]Brian Jackson: Welcome to Owl Have You Know, a podcast from Rice Business. This episode is part of our Flight Path series, where guests share their career journeys and stories of the Rice connections that got them where they are.
Today I'm joined by Javier Simons, a 2025 graduate of the Rice Business Professional MBA program, and founder and president of KOQ Agency, a global touring and talent agency representing independent artists. Javier started his career as a club promoter in Austin, Texas, and went on to work with artists including LeAnn Rimes, Aqua and RuPaul. Today, through KOQ, he's helping underrepresented artists reach bigger stages around the world.
In this conversation, we'll talk about how Javier built a career in the music business, what it takes to grow an independent talent agency, the relationships and risk behind the scenes of live entertainment, and how his Rice MBA has shaped the way he approaches entrepreneurship. Hi, Javier. Hey, welcome to Owl Have You Know.
[00:59]Javier Simons: Hey, Brian, how are you? Thank you for having me.
[01:02]Brian Jackson: Well, I'm good. I'm really excited to have you here. Your background's so interesting, and I wanted to know, going to the beginning, kind of, what was the first concert or live performance where you walked away, and you were thinking, "Wow, this is my calling. I want to be a part of this world?"
[01:19]Javier Simons: Wow. You know, to be frank, I don't think it was a live performance where my love for the arts was born. It was through television. I'm originally from Panama, and major concerts were not a thing when I lived there. We would have Latin American musicians come through, but as far as, like, big concerts, there was this artist named Alejandra Guzmán, and she was one of the first shows that I saw where I experienced production. I actually got to meet her after the show. The performance was full of energy, and it really piqued an interest in me to understand how you get to make so much money for doing two hours of work.
And, you know, as a child you think, like, that's all they did. They just showed up and everything was magically there. There were no expenses, no P&Ls, no planning, no logistics. They just, boom, magically happened. And I think I was at the tender age of, like, maybe nine or 10. I remember because I was just learning to skateboard, and it was around that time when I was able to afford concert tickets, and I went to see her. I think that that moment really allowed me to experience somebody singing live and in this magnitude, and the draw, like, how people connected and how different sides of the audience would sing a song, and we were all... You know how music brought everybody together in that room. It really inspired me. And then that's when I think my love for the arts, kind of, came out.
[02:43]Brian Jackson: Yeah. So, you go from learning to skateboard, seeing a concert, to then a club promoter in Austin. You know, what did 20-year-old Javier think your career was going to look like? I mean, was this just an experience grab, or was it an intentional choice?
[03:00]Javier Simons: You know, Brian, I'm going to be very candid with you. None of this was in the books for me. I think if I go back to 20-year-old Javi and I tell him what he's going to be doing, he's going to be holding his tray, taking iced tea to a table, and telling me, "Hmm. That's not happening. No."
Because I generally felt like my calling was to become a sommelier and somebody that would run a, like, a hotel or hospitality company, because that's all I knew. At that point, you know, your environment becomes everything you know. So, yeah, it definitely will be eye-opening, but I think 20-year-old Javier would be very happy that life has taken me in one of the most incredible journeys that, you know, I could have ever dreamed of.
[03:42]Brian Jackson: Yeah. So, you went to the Berklee College of Music. You got a degree in music business. Was this the point of connecting those dots, all the past experiencing, "Okay, yep, this is a pathway."?
[03:54]Javier Simons: No. My background is very non-conventional. So, I didn't go to college. I was a late bloomer. I describe my 20s as well-lived and my 30s as well-grown. I was waiting tables for many years, and eventually I looked at myself, and I said, "You know, I cannot hit 40 and be holding a tray. This is not what I should be doing."
And the opportunity came about to start driving drag queens for shows. So, there's a show called RuPaul's Drag Race, and I had a friend that was a promoter, and he asked me to help him drive the artists when they were flying in from the airport to the hotel and to the venue. So, I started doing that. I'm thrown into this environment where I don't know what's going on, but I'm fascinated by the idea of hanging out backstage with a major celebrity, quote unquote, and I started learning. I just hung around the backstage of the shows, and whenever I could get my hands on a piece of paper, I would read it. So, I was reading riders, I was reading contracts, I was trying to understand how things work, what the role of an agent versus a manager were.
So, I did the school of hard knocks for about five years. I was a driver, then eventually became a talent buyer and a promoter, and then the opportunity came about to join one of the agencies that represented these artists. I decided that I needed to level up because I was in rooms with people with college degrees and had professional careers, and here I was, five years before, just holding a tray and not knowing where direction my life was taking.
So, the journey itself was one of opportunities were coming to me, and I was taking advantage of them. There was never a job that was too small for me to do. There was never a job that was too big for me to not learn and execute it. And at that point, I felt like I had reached a ceiling. And I started looking into the pathways to grow myself professionally, and that's when I decided to register for school and attend a university and learn about how do you really put an artist on tour? How do you handle music publishing? How do you handle the licensing? How do you structure a management contract? You know, I needed to learn all this.
And through that journey, through my initial journey of personal connections and personal growth, is where my mind clicked and said, "You know, now you have to go to college." College was never part of the plan. I never really had a plan, to be quite frank. I didn't. But when I started seeing the opportunity and the potential, then I decided to enhance what I had to offer. Because if I'm going to walk in a room with agents and artists that are being represented by the top people in the world, and they've all gone to Berklee, Rice, Columbia, you name it, I cannot show up with a high school education.
And it was something I wanted to do also to enhance my artists' scale of being represented. I want them to feel like they had somebody in the room that was not only equal but probably better than the other ones in the room.
[06:52]Brian Jackson: Sure. So, then KOQ. What was the mission, and why was it important to build an agency that focused on really underrepresented artists?
[07:04]Javier Simons: So, KOQ was born out of my passion to not only help underrepresented artists, but through the growth of this specific queer and ally market. So, the Prides around the country were showing exponential numbers, so there was definitely a market there to grow. When RuPaul's Drag Race debuted, drag queens were just an underground artist segment that belonged only in gay bars. And when Drag Race made it universal, there was an industry being built, and I'm proud to say that I was part of the framework and the architecture of that industry as it came up.
Now, back then you only had probably Divine, RuPaul, Sherry Vine, and a couple other drag queens, maybe Jackie Beat, that were making a name for themselves in the mainstream world. But other than that, you didn't have many that were getting booked for concerts and major shows. And now Trixie Mattel, Bob the Drag Queen, or Bianca Del Rio are all household names, and I've been very fortunate to have worked with each and every one of them.
So, working with them, you know, seeing this phenomenon develop created a market need. And the first rule of entrepreneurship, if you ever took a class with Al Danto, you know, you have to find a problem and then create a solution and then figure out how to monetize it, and so I did. And there are other agents in the country that are doing what we do. They're representing drag artists, and they're working with pride organizations, nonprofits, to make sure that the artists in that demographic have the right opportunities. But for me it was different because I wanted more. I wanted to work with artists that wanted to expand outside of a lip-sync number at a bar, and they wanted to record records or DJ or act or be comedians, and that's where KOQ came about. KOQ stands for King of Queens Entertainment. That's the name of the company.
And when we were just working with drag queens, we were King of Queens. But as we started working with artists like Aqua and LeAnn Rimes and Crystal Waters and Chaka Khan, we realized that maybe we need to be a little bit more inclusive even in our name. So, we pivoted to KOQ, and it was to create those experiences for people that wanted to see themselves represented on those stages and couldn't see those artists. And for me, when I was a kid, I could only see content or concerts that were curated by people that were not necessarily part of my demographic or my community, and I wanted to create those safe spaces. And by creating that safe space, I created a business model that has proven to be successful and pretty sustainable.
[09:40]Brian Jackson: Yeah, and so you found the need. How do you convince the first artist to trust you?
[09:45]Javier Simons: So, for me, when I joined the original agency I used to be employed at, they already had a built-in roster. So, the transition from being an employee at an agency to being the founder of your own agency, it was through the track record that I had created. What work had I done? How had I benefited the artist? Did I have the artist's best interest in mind every time I negotiated a contract, every time I tried to put them in a specific venue?
There's a lot of professionals in my industry that operate with a strategic mind, so they see the artist with a five-year vision, and they have the architecture built from moving them from, like, a club scene to bigger rooms, to bigger festivals, to, you know, now you see them at the Grammys. And I wanted to build that. I understood how to do it, and I needed to do that.
So, that was where our value came in, because we were not only building a sustainable business model for the artists, but we were building it long term. So, no matter where you were, if you're in one place in one year, you can continue to grow that business model. And entertainment is a very tricky business because you have to catch lightning in a bottle. One of my favorite stories that's unfolding in front of our very eyes right now is Slayyyter. Are you familiar with Slayyyter?
[11:06]Brian Jackson: No, I'm not.
[11:07]Javier Simons: You've got to get into her. So, Slayyyter, I worked with her back in 2021, and we had been working with her through my other agency since 2018, and she was an artist that we knew was going to go far. We knew she was going to develop and grow, and what you're seeing now is her career unfold. I think this is her seventh year in the industry. I think she has... This is her third album, and she has headlined every major festival. She has some major brand deals. And to see that vision come to life through a very strong management team. Her manager, Kenny, is a really great individual, and he's a man with a vision.
So, once you see that, that's what I wanted to recreate for my artists. Not only that we're going to put you on a stage, and we're going to let you have a show, but there's going to be a full rollout that's going to become a sustainable business model for years to come. So, that's really where KOQ puts their heart behind their artists. We want to make sure that we develop them. We no longer work with Slayyyter. She has moved on to one of the majors, which makes sense. And when that happened, that's when I realized that now I want to become one of the majors, you know?
So, that is the next step for KOQ, and how we're going to transition from being a boutique agency, and keeping that boutique essence where artists can reach us at any point, artists can have a conversation with us, and we're not losing that human touch, but also grow our artists to be exponentially larger than where they are today.
[12:30]Brian Jackson: Yeah. So, okay, one of the big things I saw was you booked Aqua's first U.S. tour, and for our listeners, Aqua's what big hit that we would all know is "Barbie Girl"?
[12:41]Javier Simons: "Barbie Girl," from the movie Barbie, and it was the biggest song in the '90s, actually. It had the biggest streams. Aqua is an icon. Very proud of that moment.
[12:51]Brian Jackson: Iconic. How did that come together?
[12:54]Javier Simons: Through the value of the network. I received an email once right after this festival, it was one of the first years of this festival called OUTLOUD in LA, and I had booked about four artists with them that year. And their agent in Denmark was looking for... They were rebirthing Aqua, you know? They had been, kind of, dormant, and there was already talks of a Barbie movie being made.
So, we were, you know, trying to play Nostradamus a little bit and, kind of, call out the future. So, they reached out to the agency I was with, and nobody at the agency wanted to take the project, because it was something that they weren't used to doing. People were used to working with the drag artists, and the drag structure is very... It's very simple, for lack of a better word. Most drag artists would do two numbers, would do a meet and greet, and then call it a day, and then they'll get a flat guarantee. They don't get ticket bonuses. They don't do any of those things.
So, I was the only one that was up for the challenge. And they came to us in 2021, right after the hit of the pandemic. And it took a lot of work, took a lot of communication, took a lot of relationship building, and at that time I was starting my MBA journey. So, 2023 was a very big year for me. So, I was starting the MBA, and I was just launching my first national tour with my company. And when the Barbie movie was scheduled to be released, that's when we decided to hit. We were like, "Listen, we have to figure this out." And we went into every contact we had, and Live Nation jumped on as our touring partner and promoter, and we were able to make that happen, and it was a magical experience.
To see a band that you grew up with, listening to their hits, just see them on stage, and you're back there just hanging out with them, you know? Just being part of that experience, 20-year-old me, 15-year-old me, 12-year-old me would've been crazy. It was mind-blowing. But the sad thing is I don't live in the moment. I need to let people know, you need to live in the moment. Because when I was living that, I was already trying to plan my next move. I was already trying to plan how I was going to do bigger and better, so I didn't get to enjoy it.
Now, two, three years later, I look back, I'm like, it's like watching a movie, how everything, kind of, unfolded in front of me. But it was the work that I had done with the festival that spoke to their Danish agent and management, and that's when they reached out to us, and they felt like my agency at that time was the right fit to do it. And I appreciated the trust they placed in me, because I was a junior agent back then. And I figured it out, and I made it happen.
And that's one of the things that entrepreneurs need to have is take the risk, because I didn't know my full potential until I did that. Once I did Aqua, that's when I realized that there was no challenge, big or small enough, that I couldn't achieve. It was really an eye-opening moment, especially when I was going through Launch Week and starting my first semester of the MBA program. And I remember texting my core team at 5:00 a.m. I said, "If you see me with bags under my eyes and you don't hear from me until 5:30 before class, this is why." And I sent them the poster of the tour before it had released, and they were so supportive. They were very excited.
I think, in general, I think, I was the only person working in music, so it was, kind of, fascinating to them to see somebody that was, kind of, working a field that I don't think anybody in my cohort was working. I took them on a journey with me.
[16:12]Brian Jackson: So, I always think, like, your day-to-day has to be... I feel like, kind of, dramatically different than maybe mine. But, you know, people are probably imagining concerts in the evening, backstage passes, all that fun stuff. But what's a normal Tuesday for you like?
[16:28]Javier Simons: Oh, it's very, very boring. We wake up every morning, you know? You have to check your emails. The best analogy I can give you is think of this as a sales job. If you're not out there doing the outreach or connecting with people, it is just not going to work out. So, there is a lot of emails, a lot of reading, a lot of negotiations, a lot of phone calls.
And then once you have the conversations, and you finally get the yes, out of 25 nos, you finally get the yes, now you have to get to the numbers, and then the negotiation starts, and then the contracting begins, and then the terms of the contract have to be agreed upon.
And then the rider has to be agreed. And then once everything is locked, then comes the advance, which is where you contact the venue and the venue tells you everything they can provide, what they can't provide, if the staging is ready, if the lights are ready, if the instruments are provided, what instruments you need to bring. You have to figure everything out from where you're going to park the tour buses, to getting the city permitting, to making sure that your band is not playing at decibels that are higher than what the venue allows, depending on the area.
So, there's all this compliance and all these logistic elements that have to align right prior to the show, after you have negotiated, after you have made the pitch. And then you build your financial framework from there. You have to make sure that the artist... When you see on the news, "So-and-so got paid X amount of millions to do this show," yeah, but that doesn't go to the artist's pocket, you know? You have to pay your agents and your manager. They're the first ones that are getting a cut of that. You have to pay your musicians, you have to pay for your building.
So, a lot of those costs go to expenses. So, we build all the framework, all the financial management for them, and we have to make sure the show is viable. And that's one of the biggest issues we're having with the industry right now is the costs are outpacing the actual revenue or the gross revenue. So, it's becoming an issue.
[18:15]Brian Jackson: Yeah. You said riders in a contract, and I did a case I remember in law school where it was about a band that had these crazy riders they put in just to make sure that the contract was actually read.
[18:28]Javier Simons: Yeah, I do that.
[18:29]Brian Jackson: What's the wildest rider you've seen?
[18:32]Javier Simons: You know, I am very fortunate that I have been able to work with artists that are down to earth, they're not outlandish. But believe it or not, I had one of my artists ask for hot, not pre-ordered, like, the moment they get off stage, the order for Popeyes has to be made, and they need a two 24-piece basket with... But they want the chicken from Popeyes, and then you have to get the french fries from McDonald's, and then you have to get the sodas, they have to be in a can, chilled, with insulated ice cups and renewable or environmentally friendly straws.
That was one of my wildest riders. But one thing that I do put on my rider, and now that I'm going to say it, I'm going to have to change what it is, is I always put a pack of mango-flavored Tic Tacs. So, if I see that, I know they read the rider. I don't ask for anything crazy. But if I see that, then I'm at peace. Okay, they read the rider. Because sometimes those little things can be left out, because people are like, "Oh, we're not going to do that." And then if they leave that out, then how do I know that my plugins are right, that my drum kits are correct, that my cables are where they need to be, that my mics are accurate? So, yeah, I do that. Sorry. Guilty.
[19:40]Brian Jackson: Mango Tic Tacs. Those are, oddly, I think, challenging to find, so good on you. What's the biggest crisis before a show that you've had to solve?
[19:49]Javier Simons: Oh, yeah. I had an artist, we were flying to Mexico. I was a junior agent. It was one of my first years traveling internationally. I'm just excited to be in Mexico, and our bags never made it, and we have a show that night. We had to run to the store, find clothes, find a tailor in town, cut those clothes, redesign the whole thing, costume it, make sure the artist is on stage. And not only that, but we had to find a makeup artist, a hair person. It was hell. That one is the most memorable one for me because it was my first real crisis where we said, "Well, if this was a reality show, this is a challenge, so we have to tackle it."
But I had an artist cancel the weekend of the event. They had to stop touring due to medical reasons. They were doing too much, and we had to pivot the headliner with 72 hours to the show. When I tell you, that was an all-hands-on-deck day. And we did not let the promoter know until we had the replacement already in place, because it can create an extra layer of stress that you don't need at the time, because you need to focus on finding the solution. So, I came back with a Plan B, C, and D. And to be frank, Plan C and D were not going to happen, so I really needed them to go with Plan B. And thank God they went with Plan B. And the event, sold-out event, it was there in Houston, it executed really well.
[21:06]Brian Jackson: So, I mean, as a leader, I'm sure you've evolved, and you know, as your business has grown, and you were involved in producing a major event like Denver Pride, how have you seen your role as a leader grow and change?
[21:21]Javier Simons: I have to thank Dr. Wisneski and Dr. Miles for this, because I took a ton of leadership courses with them. And it helped me understand what people need and what people want to feel accomplished, for me to understand what I needed to feel and to have to feel accomplished. And as a leader, you have to step away from what your needs are and put your team's needs first. So, leading a massive production like Denver Pride, it's a lot of stress. You have half a million people showing up to the streets of Denver to celebrate this festivity, and if anything goes wrong, if the audio goes out on the stage, if an artist doesn't show up, it's all on your shoulders. It's not on the team's shoulders, it's on your shoulders.
So, you have to have the understanding of this is your responsibility if it goes bad, and if it goes well, you have to give the credit away. And I think that that has been the biggest lesson for me as a leader, and, I think, that has shaped my leadership style, too. To understand that it's not about what I want to achieve, because I'm achieving what I want to achieve through my team and through the projects that I'm put on. But what can my team achieve realistically? And among one of the assessments that I do whenever I'm putting together a team, and I'm hiring, or I'm recruiting, or I'm, you know, issuing contracts, is, what is this person going to bring to the team?
And I'm not talking about whether their experience or their work history is, can I teach this person how to do a job? Are they capable enough of executing a task and keeping a working environment that is fit for everyone to feel comfortable in? And it's very demanding on a leader to create those workspaces where people can feel safe, but you also have to be firm, and you have to be stern on things that may not sit well with people. We have to correct. But when you have some corrective action, how do you give that information to the person that needs to be coached without cutting off or hindering their inspiration?
You know, my biggest goal is to avoid quiet quitting. Like, if somebody's on my team and just doing the bare minimum, then I know it's time for all of us to move on, for the health of the organization. I'm very proud to say I haven't had that just yet.
[23:36]Brian Jackson: No, yeah, absolutely. So, at what point did you decide, "Okay, an MBA..." And I mean, you've referenced a couple professors and things that you've applied, obviously, but how did you know, "Okay, I'm missing some skills, my MBA is going to help me, and Rice is the right place"?
[23:52]Javier Simons: So, I'd applied to a few schools. I wanted to go to grad school because most of the agents, my peers, my colleagues who I have great relationships with, have gone to college. Some of them had attended grad school, and they were very successful in their field, and I wanted that. That was my inspiration. So, I wanted to be successful.
My dream school was Rice, and I applied to five other schools. All of them accepted me. I never thought Rice was going to accept me. And I filled out the application, it was a big effort. I really put my heart and soul into the application. But when I submitted, the first thought to my mind was, they're never going to pick me. Like, a top 20 business school is going to pick me? Never.
And then I got what I asked for, and I got it. And I had already paid my deposit at another school. I had already confirmed. I was selecting my classes. I was ready to move to Barcelona and do my schooling there. And then Sofia called me, and she said, "We want to extend the acceptance to Rice Business School." I pulled to the side of the road because I almost wrecked, and I started crying. It was such a pivotal moment because, like I said, people like me were not... This was not in the books for me.
And for me to know that I was able to not only improve my life but, you know, had a chance at a future, it was incredible. But the choice for the Rice MBA was because it was a top school in entrepreneurship, and I had read up all about all the great things that all the alumni were doing. I had a friend from high school that I had not seen in 20 years, which is the magic of Rice, I saw a friend from high school I hadn't seen in 20 years at the alumni reunion when I got my Rising Star Award. And I knew she went to Rice, and she loved the experience. And Rice was always one of those schools that was very highly regarded in Panama and around the country and in the entrepreneurial circles.
So, I made the decision right there and then that I was going to step out of my imposter syndrome, not be afraid, and just do it, and just step into it. It was a mix of pride. It was a mix of feeling inadequate. It was a mix of, "WTF, what am I doing?" It was something that I really wanted so bad that I didn't want to screw it up, because I knew that this was my ticket to not only leave a legacy, not only with my business, but hopefully with the school.
I wanted to do better for me. I wanted to do better for my artists, and I picked Rice as my top choice because of the entrepreneurial environment.
[26:01]Brian Jackson: And I mean, you did, kind of, ping on something I wanted to touch, which is like leaving a legacy, and you chaired the Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition Conference. You've later said that it was one of your proudest accomplishments at Rice. You know, why was that the moment that you picked?
[26:16]Javier Simons: So, that conference was my validation of everything I had built up for those two years. When Chris Frank built that conference, I attended the conference because I wanted to dive more into what entrepreneurship was. I had no idea what ETA stood for. Like, I walked in there with a blank slate. And when I left, I walked up to Chris, and I said, "Hey, I love this. I want to be involved next year. How can I get involved?" And he said, "Well, we don't have anybody, so you're in charge." And I said, "Challenge accepted." Just like my entire journey. My entire journey through life has been accepting challenges that I think I'm not fit to fulfill, but there I go.
I really had to deliver. And it not only gave me a chance to validate my experience at Rice, but to leave something behind that was going to not only benefit generations to come, but it was going to benefit the school.
And the ETA Conference gave me the chance to not only use all the skills that I have developed through the MBA program, but also through my career as far as event programming, logistics, and planning and all this stuff. But yeah, it was a moment where I knew that no matter what happened in years to come, I did that. It was the second year we sold out. I got a personal letter from Peter Rodriguez. So, to me, it meant a lot. It was my validation.
[27:32]Brian Jackson: No, I mean, there are a lot of moments during the MBA and then even post. I mean, you received the Rising Star Award, and, I mean, that's a great recognition. You know, I think I was there when you received the award, and I think the big point was, it's just getting started. What did that mean?
[27:49]Javier Simons: It meant exactly that. I think that, for me, life happens in... It's like a series, you have Season One, you know, it happens in seasons. So, my season at Rice had come to an end, but there was also another season coming after that, which is now real life, and it's just the beginning. I think that what I have achieved has built a really strong foundation of where I want to go.
I'm continuously delusional on what I want to achieve and where I am in life, and I don't think I'll ever lose that because... What we call delusion as an adult is what a kid calls a dream, you know? And we always need to keep dreaming. I think as adults, we tend to not dream anymore. We tend to just go by facts and figures and analytics and understanding what the results and predictability. And we really lose that charm, that innocence that really drove us when we were young to do things that we never thought we could do.
And I know that this is the beginning of something great, because I feel a big change coming. And I think the journey of where I'm at has only really begun. Like, there's pre-MBA Javier, and there's post-MBA Javier, and I like this one a lot better.
[28:57]Brian Jackson: Aging like wine is getting better, right?
[29:01]Javier Simons: It really is.
[29:02]Brian Jackson: So, if someone were listening today and they have dreams of building a career in music or live entertainment, but they don't have the industry contacts and really don't know where to start, what's the first piece of advice you'd give them?
[29:15]Javier Simons: The first piece of advice I would tell them is, don't give up. Like, really don't give up. It's sad how many people I meet daily that always tell me, “I really wish I would've done that.” And if you want to make a career out of it, you have to be passionate about it, and you really have to love it. People don't get into the arts for the money. The money is a good side effect of the passion and the work that you put in there, but do it because you really want to, because you really live it, you know? Have a soul and stay delusional. You have to continue to dream.
But if you want to start, for example, if you're an artist and you want to start growing, then hone in on that craft, and surround yourself with honest people. Don't surround yourself with yes-people, because I've seen a lot of bad artists that can't sing or perform, and they feel they're left out because people don't support them. And it's, well, sometimes that may not be the right path for you. So, also, stay a little real. But if you're able to produce, if you're able to play an instrument, and you're good at that, then do it.
If you're great with business and you want to navigate in this industry, find an artist and take that and become their project manager, build a business plan, put everything that you're learning in this program, put everything that you know in life, and treat this industry as serious as you would treat a full-time job, because this is a full-time job. If that's really what you want to do, find the right path. In Houston, there's so many amazing, incredible artists that need development, that need that push. And we are in a very privileged spot, because we understand how to build a business. The artist understands how to create the art. That's a marriage made in heaven.
[30:54]Brian Jackson: What's one mistake you've made as a founder that completely changed how you lead?
[30:59]Javier Simons: Money management. That's the value of the MBA. I learned how to create my financial forecasting. I create my financial models. I know what a balance sheet is. I know what my income statement is. Yeah, not knowing where my finances were was a big issue. Not anymore.
[31:18]Brian Jackson: Absolutely. So, how do you know when to bet on an artist before everyone else sees the potential?
[31:24]Javier Simons: The artist has to be passionate. You know, we're very fortunate that we get a ton of up-and-coming artists knocking on our doors that want representation. And, you know, being in the MBA, you do look at the numbers and the statistics and what a business model will look like for every artist. But all that is garbage if the artist is not passionate about what they're doing and invested in their own self.
So, I always look for that. If the artist has 12 streams on Spotify and has two followers on Instagram and has three songs and hasn't done anything with, but they're passionate and they're good, they have a great voice, they have a great presence, they have everything, they just need somebody to really take them to the next level, that's what I look for. It means more to me than an artist that has 300,000 followers on Instagram, a million streams. They're easier to monetize, but that doesn't give you longevity. That's where one-hit wonders come from.
[32:12]Brian Jackson: Well, Javier, thank you so much for joining me today. It has been just a ton of fun.
[32:17]Javier Simons: It's been an honor. I've been wanting to do this for a while. And I would love to leave everyone with a message. If you have any questions, please contact me. I'm an open book.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to connect with my beloved Rice alumni and current student network. I couldn't be more proud of what everybody's achieving.
[32:40]Brian Jackson: Thanks for listening. This has been Owl Have You Know, a production of Rice Business. You can find more information about our guests, hosts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe and leave a rating wherever you find your favorite podcast. We'd love to hear what you think. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, Brian Jackson, and Maya Pomroy.
Emma and Jacob trace their unlikely path from Citibank trading desks to startup life and share how Tierra Climate is helping reshape the energy industry.
"I think part of what I’m hoping to accomplish here is to put Rice on the map for some of these firms who might not have otherwise thought of it as a place to recruit,” says Robert Dittmar, associate dean of the Virani Undergraduate School of Business.
Sydney Harrison '27, Rice Full-Time MBA, shares what she learned along the way while moving from construction to the classroom.
Sydney Harrison '27
This article was originally published on Poets&Quants.
Six years into my career in heavy civil construction, my days rarely looked the same. I might have started the morning by walking the jobsite in my hard hat and steel-toed boots, checking progress with foremen, or troubleshooting an issue with a crew. By midday, I could be coordinating with subcontractors, reviewing schedules, working through a problem with an inspector, or figuring out how to recover time after something didn’t go according to plan.
There were real consequences to the decisions I made. Crews were waiting. Equipment was moving. Concrete was being poured. A rainstorm could be on the way. Schedules and budgets did not pause while I collected more information or waited until I felt completely certain about a decision. Over time, I had grown comfortable being uncomfortable—and making decisions in high-stress situations.
Then I decided to leave it all and go back to school.
I wasn’t leaving construction because I disliked it or had hit a dead end. That’s what made leaving so hard. I had built credibility in a male-dominated industry where experience matters. I had earned the kind of respect that takes years of showing up, making decisions, and delivering in the field. But as my responsibilities grew, the questions that interested me started getting bigger than the jobsite. I still cared about how we executed the project in front of us, but I became increasingly curious about the decisions happening above it. Why did companies pursue certain opportunities? How could two organizations facing similar challenges produce such different results?
I knew how to execute the work. I wanted to understand more about how businesses decided what work was worth doing in the first place. An MBA offered a chance to widen that lens. It would expose me to how leaders think about investment, growth, risk, and strategy beyond the day-to-day realities of a project.
But was I actually smart enough to do it?
It was a strange question for me to be asking myself. I have an engineering degree. I made it through Calculus III and differential equations. I spent six years applying technical knowledge to problems that were messy, complex, and very real. I led people in an industry that does not leave much room for indecision or mistakes. But I had never taken a finance or accounting class. I had never spent a day in corporate America. When I imagined walking into an MBA classroom, I pictured being surrounded by former consultants, bankers, accountants, entrepreneurs, and people who seemed to already speak the language of business. To me, that was intimidating.
Embracing Being a Learner
For the first time in years, I was choosing to leave an environment as unpredictable and volatile as it could be. I would be moving from one where I knew I was capable and enter one where I wasn’t so sure of myself. Why leave something I was so good at? That may have been the hardest part of the decision. I wasn’t just changing careers. I was willingly giving up the comfort and confidence that came with being an expert in my field. In the process, I would be putting myself back in a position where I would have to be a beginner again. And being a beginner again is humbling.
In my first finance and accounting classes at the Rice MBA, there were moments when classmates would casually use terms I had never heard before. I would hear terms like unlevered beta and deferred tax liabilities and wonder whether I was already behind. Ironically, the math was rarely the intimidating part. Engineering had taught me how to work through difficult quantitative problems. The challenge was learning an entirely new language and understanding the story behind the numbers.
But somewhere along the way, I realized I had been measuring myself against the wrong standard. I did not need to walk into business school already knowing everything there is to know about business. That was why I was there in the first place.
I also began to recognize how much of my construction experience had followed me into the classroom. Case studies may look very different from a jobsite, but they often present a familiar challenge: how do you make the best decision with imperfect information, and how do you support and defend that decision?
Different Experiences, Different Strengths
I wasn’t in corporate America, but construction had taught me how to make decisions with imperfect information, communicate with people who had competing priorities, and keep moving forward when the plan ran into unforeseen obstacles. It had also taught me that the technically “correct” answer is not always the best solution if you cannot get the right people aligned around it. A plan only matters if people can effectively execute it.
At the same time, business school has forced me to grow in ways the field never did. In construction, the chain of command was often clear. MBA teams are different. Put five people with different backgrounds and strong opinions together on a project with no obvious hierarchy. Suddenly, leadership becomes less about having the answer and more about listening, influencing, and knowing when someone else in the room has the better solution.
Perhaps the biggest lesson from the transition has been learning that being inexperienced is not the same as being incapable. My entire cohort entered the classroom with different areas of expertise and something to learn from one another. In almost every class, discussions were shaped by the experiences people brought with them. Sometimes those differences were cultural; other times they came from the industries, roles, or situations classmates had encountered before Rice. In leadership classes, for example, not everyone had managed a team before, while I had spent years leading crews in the field. I could contribute what I had learned about motivating people, handling conflict, and earning trust. Ironically, classmates with entirely different experiences often approached those same challenges in ways I had never considered. The person who was the beginner in one discussion could easily be the expert in the next.
Before starting my MBA, I worried that pivoting meant leaving six years of experience behind because it wouldn’t translate well in this new environment. Instead, I realized how much of it has stuck with me throughout my MBA experience. Construction shaped how I lead, solve problems, manage uncertainty, and think about execution. Business school is teaching me how to apply those skills to a broader set of questions.
The hard hat may be gone, but the lessons that came with it are not. There are still plenty of moments when I encounter something unfamiliar, but I no longer see unfamiliarity as evidence that I am incapable of learning it. A career pivot isn’t starting over. It’s taking everything you’ve already built and learning what else you can build with it.
Get To Know Sydney Harrison, Full-Time MBA
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Sydney Harrison, Rice MBA
Sydney Harrison '27, Forté Fellow, is a Full-Time MBA student at Rice Business. Before Rice, she spent six years at Zachry Construction, where she managed complex infrastructure projects and field teams across Texas. She holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University, with a concentration in Construction Management and minor in Sustainable Architecture and Planning. Harrison serves as vice president of the Rice Business Student Association, marketing chair for the Rice Business Energy Case Competition, co-president of the Rice Business Cork & Cask Club, senior lead fellow for Strategic Business Communications I, and is a recruiting and admissions ambassador.
Wondering how to build a career in investment banking? Explore how an MBA, especially from Rice Business, can help you develop the finance skills, network and recruiting experience to launch a career in IB and advance from associate to VP and beyond.
Curious how Full-Time MBA recruitment works? Explore how top programs like Rice deliver high-ROI outcomes through career bootcamps, coffee chats and industry network access.
As corporate value has become more intangible, leaders have less control over how their organizations are perceived. Anastasiya Zavyalova explains what that means for reputation strategy.
As corporate value has become more intangible, leaders have less control over how their organizations are perceived. Anastasiya Zavyalova explains what that means for reputation strategy.
In this Q&A, Professor Zavyalova discusses why reputation has become a core strategic concern and how social media, polarization and AI are changing the way people judge companies.
For much of the 20th century, companies could shape their reputations more deliberately, with more time to respond to emerging issues and greater control over how information reached the public. Traditional media served as gatekeepers, and crises unfolded over days or weeks in newspapers and media broadcasts.
Those days are over. With the rise of social media, AI and online polarization, the traditional levers of reputation management have fragmented. Organizations are expected to manage relationships with shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, the media, regulators and the public more quickly and directly than ever. At the same time, intangible assets like patents, trademarks, copyrights, branding, software, proprietary data, customer relationships, trade secrets and goodwill have risen in value, now accounting for over 90% of the market value of S&P 500 companies, up from 17% in 1975.
Rice Business professor Anastasiya Zavyalova studies how these forces are shaping “organizational social evaluations” — the collective judgments that audiences form about a company — into a core strategic concern. She recently co-edited the new Oxford Handbook of Organisational Social Evaluations, a 700-plus-page volume that brings together cross-disciplinary research and practitioner experience and provides critical insight for business managers and executives.
Congratulations on the release of the new Oxford Handbook. Can you tell us about it?
The project came out of conversations at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Corporate Reputation, where I’m an International Fellow. It brings together scholars from different disciplines, but the Center also invites practitioners. We meet once a year for a reputation symposium.
At one of those meetings, we were talking about research on what we now call social evaluations of organizations. Really, what that means is: How do people form judgments about companies and organizations? How do companies build relationships with stakeholders? How do they manage the way stakeholders think about them, especially in the age of social media and AI?
In the 1970s, top companies’ market value came from tangible assets: factories, equipment, machinery — everything you physically owned. But in the past 25 years or so, company valuation has become increasingly intangible, including just the public’s belief in the company’s future earnings. What do investors think? What do shareholders believe they will get out of this company? Can you deliver on the promise? A big part of that is reputation, or what people believe about your organization and your leadership.
You can see it in acquisitions, because that is one of the rare moments when someone actually puts a dollar amount on what they believe a company is worth. When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, for example, most of the purchase price was goodwill. It wasn’t the servers or the physical things they owned. It was, essentially, belief that the company would provide value in the future. From a practitioner perspective, that is why this area is important. Do stakeholders trust your company to deliver value?
We realized that this research has just skyrocketed. The research has proliferated over the last two decades, but there was not one go-to source. The ambition of the book was to put scholarly and practitioner minds together in one place.
It sounds like the speed of our communications is one of the primary challenges leaders face today.
Years ago, companies had more breathing room. In the 1980s, when an oil spill happened, company leadership had time to figure out a communications strategy and what they were going to say. Now, if a major oil spill happens, the news can spread all over the world in a matter of seconds. As a leader, you have to be ready to deliver your message.
Companies that want to be prepared have strategies in place for different scenarios. Some have what they call war rooms. They practice: If this happens, what is the message? For a large company, inevitably something will happen, so you need to be ready.
But this is where the fundamentals still matter. If you actually do what you do well, you can withstand a crisis that is brewing on social media. Your underlying business should be strong. And you have to be consistent, both across stakeholders and over time. You cannot communicate one thing to employees and something else to the public because the internal message can also become public. If you are consistent, you can build a strong reputation, and that becomes a safety net when a crisis hits.
Social media seems to make company scandals easier to learn about but somehow also easier to forget about. Is that the case?
I think social media and now AI have contributed to two countervailing forces. On one hand, news cycles have sped up so much that when something new happens, we often forget what happened only a week or so ago. Very few stories keep going in the media for long.
On the other hand, digital technology has preserved an archive of everything companies have said or done. When a company does something today, it’s easy to go back and hold it accountable for actions in the past. Even if you erase something from your website, someone may have taken a screenshot. The digital history of each company is now preserved forever.
That makes social evaluations more challenging to manage, because you can be held accountable for past deeds even as information about a new crisis is spreading almost instantly.
If stakeholder perceptions are that impactful, doesn’t that encourage companies to focus on looking good instead of actually performing well?
Some companies do that, but I think that strategy will backfire, and quite quickly, especially in the era of social media. It’s more and more costly to be inauthentic. Employees will sense it right away. They are often the first stakeholders who know that what you are saying diverges completely from what you are actually doing.
Eventually, that gap can backfire publicly. Employees can leak information confidentially or anonymously. Then investors may start asking: Is turnover going to increase? Are the most valuable employees going to competitors? It all trickles down. Enron was a great example of this.
If you are consistent, you can build a strong reputation, and that becomes a safety net when a crisis hits.
In some of the research, we refer to this as the reputation-identity gap. Identity is who you truly are. Reputation is what others believe you are. The larger the gap, the more troubling it is, the more like a house of cards your company becomes. If the goal is sustainable competitive advantage, you want your words to match your actions.
One way to close that gap is to make fewer rosy public declarations. Another, and I think the one many leaders aspire to, is to make the internal workings of the company as good as what they publicly declare them to be. That is more sustainable.
Does polarization make that harder to do? How should a company think about taking public positions when it knows it cannot please everyone?
You can see evidence of how much more polarized the United States has become in polling on where Democrats and Republicans stand on different issues. If you look back to the 1990s, the means of those distributions were much closer together. Now they are much farther apart. On many issues, the two sides have become much more divided.
I think there are two views on this question, and there is no right or wrong answer. Ultimately, each CEO or manager decides what feels right.
One view is: These are my values. I am going to stand by them. If I lose customers or investors, so be it. Patagonia is a good example. Chick-fil-A is another. You know an issue will be polarizing, but you are willing to have a smaller group of loyal followers.
The other view is: I am not going to take stances. I am going to make a product and run a good company. In recent years, I have had students say, why would I care what the company thinks about every social issue? I want a paycheck, a good salary, a stable work environment and decent co-workers.
I think some leaders are being prudent and deciding not to take stances regardless of their personal beliefs. But it is a conundrum. On one hand, you want to please more polarized stakeholders. On the other hand, you want as many customers and investors as possible. That is the landscape companies are in.
Where does AI fit into this now? Is it changing reputation management or mostly accelerating what was already happening?
I think everyone is still figuring this out. If we stay in the realm of social perceptions about companies, what AI has enabled is the production of content, lots of information about companies. What matters is that some of that information could be fake, and it can be produced very quickly.
People attend to emotional messages about companies and organizations they care about. So fake emotional content can spread very quickly online. You can be damaged for things you have not done. AI has also enabled deepfakes, where a company leader can appear to say something they never said. From a reputation management perspective, that fake information can have true, tangible consequences.
And it is not difficult to imagine how it spreads. You can tweak the emotionality, insert an issue you already know is polarizing and make it sound plausible. Just plausible enough.
Like any technology, there are pros and cons, and it can be used by bad actors. But in another forthcoming article, my co-authors and I argue that AI can be a very useful technology, but it has to co-evolve with human input. If we step in now and have a strong hand in how the technology is used, I think it could have more benefits than costs to society. But that is a big if.
As corporate value has become more intangible, leaders have less control over how their organizations are perceived. Anastasiya Zavyalova explains what that means for reputation strategy.
