Day 7. June 1, 2007At 7:00 AM our Accelerator teams joined executives from 25 businesses for a Business Breakfast Social. Participating companies included Avondale Partners, Axis Accounting, Caterpillar Financial, Centerfield Advisors, DDM, Forba Holdings, Ingram Barge, General Mills, Healthways, Healthcare Realty Trust, LBMC, Pinnacle Financial Partners, Raymond James, Stifford Video, Wachovia, Vanderbilt University and Websults.
At 8:00 AM, we proceeded to the Averbuch auditorium for Accelerator team presentations. Each team had 10 minutes for its presentation to MAPCO, a division of Delek US Holdings (www.delekus.com). Using PowerPoint and Storyboard followed by 5 minutes of Q&A, each Accelerator team presented their proposed recommendations to five MAPCO executives. By 9:30 AM, each team had presented and responded to Q&A. The MAPCO executive panel deliberated for about 10 minutes and then announced the winning teams.
The first place team was Team 4 (DeBenigno, Carroll, Gunn, McGuire, Smith-Mui, Nordholm, Peterson, Klaeveman and Fettig). Each member of the team received a $100 gas card from MAPCO. The second place team was Team 3 (Watson, Gottfried, Grumney, McGill, Shafer, C.Carpenter, Kierstead, Puchon and Agostino). Each member of the team received a $50 gas card from MAPCO. The third place team was Team 1 (Moreno, Fox, M.Carpenter, Bowling, Mayer, Black, O’Brien, Bernard, and Oetting). Each member of the team received a $25 gas card from MAPCO.
All teams did a very impressive job for MAPCO. I had the opportunity to spend some time with the MAPCO executives at the end of the session. They expressed their amazement at the progress the Accelerator teams had made in 7 days (the project was launched this past Saturday).
By 10:45, we were in the classroom with Ms. Cherrie Clark to evaluate and discuss consulting tools that will be useful in our current Lexus and upcoming American Airlines projects. After a quick lunch, Dr. Dave Owens hosted a studio on “innovative thinking” to prepare for our upcoming project with American Airlines.
At 2:00 PM, members of the American Airlines team (www.aa.com) arrived at the Owen Graduate School to launch our project for their airline (Rob Britton – Advisor to the Chairman of American Airlines; Chris Koller and Boyce Adams – a recent Vanderbilt graduate and a new member of the AA team).
We launched this project for American Airlines with a new Accelerator team rotation. As of today, Accelerator participants are now juggling 3 different projects: 2 with their original team (Lexus and Gomez Photography) and a new one with a second team (American Airlines). We worked on American Airlines till 6:00 PM.
After dinner, the teams met for a working session on the Lexus project. Given it’s Friday, we ended the day a little early - the teams only clocked 13 work hours today, bringing our first week to 93.5 total work hours. Tomorrow we will conclude Week 1.
