Home > 125 Events > The 2007 Wharton Economic Summit
The 2007 Wharton Economic Summit ::
Panels
| Competitive Strategy |
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Moderator: Lawrence Hrebiniak, Associate Professor of Management Panelists: Gerald Adolph, Joel A.Cantor, Derek C. Hathaway, David C. Karlgaard |
| Thursday, April 12 - 10:00-11:15 a.m. :: Full Summit Schedule |
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This session will feature discussion and topical coverage of formulating competitive strategy and making that strategy work. The discussion of strategy formulation will include frameworks and factors that contribute to the competitive landscape and affect the attainment of competitive advantage. The discussion of strategy implementation will be on developing, in a systematic way, an understanding of the key factors, decisions, and actions that affect the execution of a chosen competitive strategy. If time allows, we will apply the concepts and ideas developed to actual strategic decisions. |
| Panelists |
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:: Gerald Adolph
Senior Vice President Booz Allen Hamilton Gerald Adolph is a New York-based senior vice president with Booz Allen Hamilton with a specialty in strategy and operations for technology-driven businesses. Mr. Adolph's work primarily focuses on assisting clients with growth strategy, new business development, and industry restructuring. He has led numerous assignments in corporate and portfolio strategy as well as business unit strategy. In addition, he deals with value chain and industry restructuring driven by technology changes, and how companies respond to these disruptions and opportunities. In support of his clients' growth agendas, Mr. Adolph has led M&A pre-deal assessments as well as multiple complex and challenging post-merger integration assignments. Most recently these have included: leading a worldwide $100+ billion pharmaceuticals and consumer products integration; leading a $500 million restaurant business integration; leading a $3 billion food business combination; leading a $3 billion chemicals merger; leading multi-billion clinical labs combinations on two separate occasions; leading a $9 billion agribusiness combination; leading a $3 billion telecomm combination; leading a $12 billion health services integration; leading a $12 billion industrial gases integration; consultation to other clients teams for airline, insurance, distribution, financial services, media and industrials mergers; and providing candidate screening, valuation and negotiation support Mr. Adolph and his consulting staff have provided clients pre-deal candidate assessments, board reviews, and communications support for the announcement. In the pre-closing period, he has led efforts to create detailed integration and synergy plans, which balanced external/strategic and tactical imperatives along with employee concerns and culture/organization integration. Integration support post close focused on those areas of most need for specific clients. A recognized thought leader in his field, Mr. Adolph has contributed to numerous strategy+business articles, including "The 'Nine Deadly Sins' of Mergers," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do - and to Manage," ''A Merger's Success Is the CFO's Job," and "Mergers: Back to 'Happily Ever After'." Mr. Adolph is a former member of the Booz Allen Board of Director's, a past leader of Booz Allen's global chemicals practice and of the global consumer & health practice. He currently leads the mergers & restructuring practice. Mr. Adolph holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He also holds a BS degree in chemical engineering, a BS in management science/organizational psychology, and a Master's in chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). |
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:: Joel A.Cantor , WG'89
CEO and DirectorCantor Development Joel Cantor is the CEO and founder of Gulf Atlantic Real Estate Companies based in Tampa, Florida. Founded in 1989, the company is one of the largest privately held real estate firms in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. Holdings consist of apartment communities, shopping plazas, office buildings, and medical office buildings located in Florida and Colorado. The firm's development arm, Cantor Development, LLC builds ultra luxurious beachfront and unique high-rise urban mixed-use condominium projects. The firm's mission is to "Conceive of and develop livable works of art that are timeless - creating a Masterpiece Lifestyle". The firm's most recent project "Signature Place" located on the waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg will consist of 246 units and 900,000 sq. feet rising 36 floors and will be the tallest building in Pinellas County. The project has received critical acclaim locally and internationally for its dramatic architecture designed by international architect Ralph Johnson of Perkins + Will, regarded as one of the top 10 architects worldwide. An article about the project was featured in the Wall Street Journal, China Post, and 250 newspapers nationwide. Mr. Cantor received his MBA degree in 1989 from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in the top 5% of his class. He was the youngest enrollee out of 1,200 students. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst majoring in international finance and Chinese (Mandarin). He also attended the University of Copenhagen on a full scholarship. The topic of the program was East/West Business Relations and included visits to U.S. Embassies in countries then considered to be the "Eastern Block" such as Poland and the GDR (East Germany). Mr. Cantor's career began with a position at Chase Manhattan Bank in their international department on Wall Street. He then moved on to a position in the real estate department of Solomon Brothers, also on Wall Street, and traveled the U.S. buying pools of loans from savings institutions. After completion of business school at Wharton, Mr. Cantor was recruited by the venerable Trammell Crow Company to structure a financing package to construct the $84 million dollar Florida Aquarium in Tampa. Mr. Cantor is active in the community. He is a member of the Young Presidents Organization, on the board of the Gorrie Elementary Foundation, a participant in the local Habitat for Humanity chapter, and an advisor to several local philanthropic and artistic organizations. Mr. Cantor and his wife are intrepid travelers. Prior to having children (3 boys including one set of twins, and one on the way), he and his wife traveled to approximately 90 countries taking each summer off for eight years. His wife was a school teacher and now is a homemaker. Some of his adventures include attempting to climb Mount Everest in Nepal, jeeping 5,000 miles through-out southern Africa in Namibia, Angola, and Botswana, hiking for six weeks and 400 miles in the northern territories of India bordering the tribal areas of Pakistan's Zanskar Region, and traveling the entire distance of the Amazon River on local transport ferries. Mr. Cantor is an avid skier, tennis player, golfer, and boatman. |
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:: Derek C. Hathaway
Chairman and CEOHarsco Corporation |
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:: David C. Karlgaard , WG'81
Vice Chairman, Board of TrusteesPEC Solutions Dr. David C. Karlgaard has served as a technical contributor, manager and executive in the information sciences industry since 1968. He began his professional career as an electrical engineer at several U.S. Government research laboratories from 1968 through 1975. He then worked as an electrical engineer and executive at Computer Sciences Corporation from 1976 through 1984. In 1985 he founded PEC Solutions, a government information technology services company. He took the company public in 2000 on the NASDAQ National Market and merged the company with Nortel Federal Solutions in June of 2005. He recently retired as vice-chairman of the Board of Directors of Nortel Government Solutions, a subsidiary of Nortel Networks. Dr. Karlgaard's technical education includes a BS in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, an MS in Mathematics from Michigan State University, and a doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from The George Washington University. His management education includes an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Karlgaard is an Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University. He was a founding director of James Monroe Bank, a Northern Virginia publicly-traded community bank. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Argon ST, Rising Edge Technologies, Micro-Optics Technologies, and Freedom Bank of Virginia. Dr. Karlgaard has been associated with the Professional Services Council, Northern Virginia Technology Council, American Electronics Association, and has served as president of the Washington Technology Fast 50 Council. He is active in a number of charitable organizations. He is married with two grown children, has lived in the Northern Virginia area since 1968, and enjoys travel and an occasional round of golf. |
