Musings of Technology in Private Equity

Think Tanks This week I will discuss the concept of think tanks and two methods they use.  A think tank is an organization tasked with generating and expanding ideas without restriction (Aly, 2019).  While the word “think tank” has no standardized definition within the academic community, there is consensus surrounding its purpose; the development of novel ideas to holistically solve large and complex problems to be disseminated and for application via public policy (Aly, 2019).  More simply stated, it’s a group of experts or diverse groups of thinkers brought together to think of new ideas to solve specific problems (Aly, 2019; Calongne, 2022).   Of course, when assembling an esteemed group of thinkers, think tanks need to identify and follow a particular methodology or technique to elicit the best and most informed ideas.  Several methods think tanks utilize to provide such structure (Aly, 2019; Calongne, 2022; Gordon, 1994).  A small sampling of these te...

  Hello and welcome to my first post on this new blog, Musings of Technology in Private Equity ! Throughout the last fifteen years of my career, I’ve served as a senior executive for many private equity-owned companies.  In that time, I’ve successfully led five exits, with the most recent at more than 20x ROIC.  Over my career, I’ve found one common denominator leading to higher returns, the deployment of technologies enabling transformational organizational change. I am a doctoral student in the Doctor of Computer Science program at Colorado Technical University (CTU).  I plan to write my dissertation on How Private Equity Firms Utilize Technology to Drive Investor Value.  Today, there is very little scholarly literature focusing on private equity (PE) and even less addressing technology's role in PE (Pang, 2021) .  Therefore, I anticipate my research to be considered one of the seminal works within the field. As a scholar-practitioner, I plan to use...