Rally Roundup: Pro race driver closes conference with insights, advice

5:03 p.m., Aug. 28

Pro race driver closes conference with insights, advice

It was his skill at a race-themed video game that landed Jann Mardenborough in the real-life racing world—but once he got there, Mardenborough still had a lot to learn.

Mardenborough, the final speaker at this week’s Rally innovation conference, grew up in the United Kingdom and earned a spot as a driver on Nissan’s racing team thanks to his skills at the game series Gran Turismo.

In an onstage conversation with Julie Giese, president of NASCAR’s Chicago Street Race, Mardenborough talked about his transition from online racing to real-world racing, among other topics.

Entering the racing world created “a massive shift” in his life, Mardenborough said. “You were mixing with people who come from a different area of life to you—people that are very successful, 19, 20 years old, gone to private schools. You mix with people you’ve never really mixed with before, and you’ve got to step up. You’ve got to upgrade in all areas. Not just behind the wheel of the race car. It’s the areas of talking to cameras, talking in front of people—yeah, it’s everything. Everything changed.”

One particular challenge, Mardenborough said, was building relationships with fellow racers, most of whom had been racing competitively since they were children in go-karts. “I upset an industry where I kind of showed that you didn’t necessarily have to do that.”

Mardenborough said he worked to earn the respect of his peers so that they felt he had earned the right to race alongside them.

Asked for his advice to young people, Mardenborough recommended that they find something they can “hyperspecialize” in and work to be the best they can.

“You have to create your own value, and you have to specialize in something, no matter what it is … you have to pick something and stick at it and really lock in deep.”

-Susan Orr

2:55 p.m., Aug. 28

Sen. Young says Indiana students need better foundation in math, science

Indiana has some advantages—but also some challenges—when it comes to the economic opportunities associated with the emergence of artificial intelligence, U.S. Sen. Todd Young said Wednesday during the Rally innovation conference.

Young’s remarks were part of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s AI Leadership Summit, which is part of the larger Rally event at the Indiana Convention Center.

One of Indiana’s strengths, Young said, is in the role its higher education institutions play in educating the next generation of tech workers. Ivy Tech Community College is one example of this, Young said. The school has developed programs to train workers for the state’s emerging semiconductor industry, producing microchips that power computers and other electronic devices.

But Young also acknowledged that Indiana’s K-12 education system needs to do a better job of giving students a strong foundation in math and science. Students who lack this foundation, he said, are ill-equipped to pursue higher-level studies in these subjects.

“We’ve got to figure that out,” Young said. “Our state leaders, I know they’re doing everything they can. It takes a while. But this should focus minds, because this is a geopolitical competition in addition to an economic competition.”

On a national level, Young said he also favors making it easier for legal immigrants—especially foreign college students—to remain in the U.S. after graduation.

“We are educating the world’s best minds to become even more talented, more productive,” Young said. “And then we tell them, ‘You’re not welcome here. We don’t want you to stay and create a business and grow our economy. Instead, we want to send you away.’ It is asinine. It’s not the only thing that’s happening in this country that’s asinine, but it’s one of the biggest ones.”

Young also said Indiana should lean into its existing strengths to capture the economic opportunities AI will provide.

“Let’s leverage our existing expertise and not try to become Silicon Valley. Just become a better, more effective version of ourselves and we will be a national leader and international leader in this space.”

-Susan Orr

11:01 a.m., Aug. 28

Business TV personality Marcus Lemonis emphasizes importance of vulnerability, trust

Money is an important part of business—but so are some touchy-feely intangibles, entrepreneur and media personality Marcus Lemonis told a crowd Wednesday at the Rally innovation conference.

“I believe that business is about relationships, it’s about trust,” Lemonis said.

Lemonis, who is one of Rally’s four keynote speakers, kicked off the second and final day of Rally with a talk that combined elements of business advice, audience participation and personal coaching.

An overarching theme of the presentation: to be a successful business leader, one must be transparent and vulnerable in their interactions, including with employees and customers.

“If they don’t know you and they don’t feel connected to you, it just becomes transactional,” Lemonis said. “There’s got to be more to life than that.”

Roaming the aisles during his talk rather than taking the stage, Lemonis opened up about his own struggles and strengths, while inviting audience members to do the same.

Lemonis was born in Lebanon and adopted from an orphanage by American parents. He is the chairman and CEO of Illinois-based Camping World Holdings Inc. which sells recreational vehicles and related products through its more than 200 retail locations.

He’s also the executive board chair of Utah-based Beyond Inc., an online retail company that owns brands including Overstock, Bed Bath & Beyond, Baby & Beyond and others. Beyond Inc. formerly did business as Overstock.com Inc. Overstock acquired the Bed Bath & Beyond brand last year after the retailer went into bankruptcy, and Overstock changed its name to Beyond.

Lemonis was also the star of “The Profit,” a business-themed reality show in which he helped small companies identify and solve their business problems—sometimes investing his own money in the companies. The show aired on CNBC from 2013 to 2021.

But Lemonis said he’s also faced his own challenges, including ongoing struggles with anxiety, depression and an eating disorder.

“I know what failure is like,” Lemonis told the group.

Throughout the talk, Lemonis put some audience members in the spotlight, inviting them to stand up and share with the crowd their personal “superpower” as well as a failure or weakness.

One woman talked about her realization that she had been too much of a people pleaser, using down time during the pandemic to reset her focus and take more time for herself.

A man shared how the death of his father in 2021 caused him to rethink his life and led to a career shift.

Bringing that vulnerability and openness into one’s business life, Lemonis said, creates an environment where employees want to do their best and customers want to do business with you.

That approach can also help influence the wider culture, Lemonis said, fostering a culture of respect in a world that sorely needs it.

“Because, whether we like it or not, money makes the world go around, and businesses are where the money actually goes around,” Lemonis said. “So your ability to influence the outcome of society is greater as a business owner than it ever will be as a politician, greater as a business owner than it ever will be as a media person, greater as a business owner than it ever will be more than anything us—second to maybe religion.”

Rally, an event organized by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, aims to bring together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and educators from a variety of business sectors. The event features keynote speakers, breakout sessions, a demo area for startups, a pitch contest, networking opportunities and one-on-one meetings between entrepreneurs and potential investors.

Event organizers say about 3,000 people are participating in the event, including ticket-holding attendees, speakers and exhibitors.

-Susan Orr

4:16 p.m., Aug. 27

Braun says improving state’s education system to be career-focused is a ‘doable’ goal

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, who is the Republican candidate for governor, spoke about two priorities of interest to Rally attendees: ensuring state government is a partner to private sector innovation and tweaking the education system so it can the workforce to staff it.

He emphasized that the state should not be “exporting its kids,” due to a lack of opportunity or allure. The education system needs to pivot to teach skills, he said, and provide students the ability to explore multiple career paths. That’s a challenge, he said, is “reachable and doable.”

“It will be the laboratory of some states to figure out how to encourage entrepreneurialism,” he said. “Most importantly, just get the proper balance with full transparency so that students and parents can end up seeing what the field of opportunity is like.”

He also said state government should be enabling business and making enterprise easier, something he said he intends to do as governor.

For most of his 10-minute remarks, he recounted leading his Jasper-based logistics and distribution company, Meyer Distributing Inc. and how he intertwined technology by hiring coders as it grew.

-Cate Charron

3:45 p.m., Aug. 27

Department of Defense open to new outside contractors, Rally panelists say

The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Crane Division, is southern Indiana presents the state with opportunity to draw more defense-related economic development, said John Fernandez, Bloomington-based The Mill’s senior vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships and former Bloomington mayor.

Indiana is in the early stages of developing a defense corridor in Indiana, he said, which could result in economic growth through a cluster of defense-focused company investments and new jobs.

At a Rally conference innovation panel on Tuesday, three companies working with the Department of Defense offered advice how to do business with the federal agency and break into the industry.

Startups and adjacent organizations need to look into the government’s landscape to know how to fill a niche within the economic landscape, said Christopher Rohe, CEO of space defense company GuardianSat.

He said companies need to push their solutions, enroll in accelerators and get involved with research institutions to level up their offerings and land contracts.

“Lightning in a bottle in a closet, in the basement is no good for the DOD,” Rohe said. “You have to engage. We’re really, really open right now. We’re really receptive.”

The Department of Defense is looking for non-traditional actors, such as academia, finance and small business,  to work on “our nation’s most prickly problems,” said Ryan Lewis, partner at SRI Ventures. The “market basket,” or opportunity to land a contract, is significant at this time, he said.

Thinking of how a company’s product may solve a problem the military may have will better position it to be successful, said Mike Dodd, principal at the National Security Innovation Capital. He said that may require working backward to simplify how a product or service can meet the needs of more customers.

-Cate Charron

3:01 p.m., Aug. 27

Fever exec says Rally offers opportunity to ‘grow and innovate’ women’s sports

To hear the top executive for the Indiana Fever tell it, the stars have aligned for the Indiana Fever over the past couple of seasons—to the point where the team’s games are among the hottest in the league and the franchise is outperforming its counterparts on social media and in sponsorships.

Allison Barber, president and chief operating officer for the Fever, spoke during Rally’s panel on “Clarkonomics,” which tackled how women’s sports can harness the moment it is having in light of successes of players such as star Fever rookie Caitlin Clark and the growing ability to building fanbases and business interest across the board.

Barber was joined on the panel by Ashley Kelly, senior manager of sponsorship and engagement marketing for Allstate Insurance Corp. The pair spent about 45 minutes discussing the team’s growth strategy as well as how women’s sports has generally responded to the boom in interest amongst sports fans, new and old.

The Fever executive said the team leads the WNBA in sponsorships this season, up 245% year-over-year. The team also sold out of its first wave of 10,000 jerseys for Clark within days of her being drafted. That came after the team received 6,000 phone calls within a three-day period to inquire for game tickets after Clark declared she would forego another college season at Iowa and became the team’s presumptive top pick in the draft.

The shift in attitudes surrounding the Fever—which began some with the 2023 season but have largely taken hold since the team made Clark the No.1 pick in the WNBA Draft in April—has also changed the way the team has looked at its marketing, Barber said. In fact the swing has led the team to work more in lockstep with some of its players on branding and advertising efforts, particularly on social media.

The Fever “brand might be stepping back a minute, because Caitlin’s brand is stepping forward, and then it’s a dual” effort, she said. “Sometimes you lead and sometimes you’re at the side, and sometimes you’re behind, but it’s okay, because it advances women’s sports. So, every situation is different, but for us, we show up in a big way with Caitlin and and for our partners … and that’s how we build our brand.”

Following the panel, Barber told IBJ she believes sharing the insights with Rally attendees was important because the event focuses on finding solutions for future challenges, and charting out new ideas across numerous industries, not the least of which is sports and sportstech.

“I think that people at Rally are innovators and future thinking and for women’s sports to succeed, we have to surround ourselves with people that are thinking about what’s next, not just where we’ve come so far,” she said. “If we’re only looking backwards, we’re not going to grow and innovate, and this is the crowd that only thinks about what’s next.”

-Mickey Shuey

2:45 p.m., Aug. 27

Ramping up an innovative workforce requires ‘earn-and-learn’ education, panel says

Creating a talent pipeline equipped to enter an innovative workforce will require education reform to channel students toward skill-building opportunities and employer buy-in to provide those opportunities, panelists at the Rally conference said Tuesday.

State Rep. Bob Behning said Indiana is headed in that direction and the goal is to steer students toward hands-on, skills-focused training, which he calls “earn and learn,” compared to a traditional education track of “sit and get,” where students attend lectures in pursuit of a diploma.

He detailed that state’s recent efforts to “reinvent high school,” including a diploma overhaul and expansion of career technical education opportunities. This model is inspired by what Hoosier government, education and business leaders saw when visiting Switzerland to investigate its apprenticeship program, he said.

“Our structure is not like Switzerland,” he said. “So it’s going to take us a little bit longer, or maybe not longer, but we have to read and design it in a little bit different way.”

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-Cate Charron

1:03 p.m., Aug. 27

Modernizing the electrical grid will take ‘moonshot’ approach, speaker says 

The electrical grid is in urgent need of modernization—a herculean task but one that’s achievable using a “moonshot” approach, Rally speaker Page Crahan told listeners Tuesday.

“[The electric grid] is the biggest machine we’ve ever built, and we run it the same way it was designed 130 years ago. Imagine that,” said Crahan, who is the general manager of X Development LLC’s Tapestry effort. X is a research and development effort founded by Google in 2010, and Tapestry is the name of its grid-modernization effort.

During a breakout session at Rally, Crahan gave an overview of Tapestry’s work on this project—and how to use a moonshot approach to solve other big challenges.

Crahan said today’s moonshots are comparable to the original moonshot that landed Americans on the moon in 1969.  The space race of the 1960s, she said, was a huge challenge that required collaboration, radical thinking and breakthrough technology to solve.

Tapestry, Crahan said, aims to transform the electrical grid into something that can handle demands from electric vehicles while adding renewable energy and operating affordably, reliably and with less climate impact than is currently the case.

AES Corp., whose service area includes Indianapolis, began working with Tapestry in 2021 on tools for its electric distribution grids in Indiana and Ohio.

Other partners have included the government of Chile, which has worked with Tapestry on tools to help the country move away from coal-powered energy production by 2030.

One of those tools is a grid-planning tool that allows operators to quickly run multiple simulations that help with operational decision-making.

Chile, Crahan said, is “the first place in the world to do this, and now we’re getting calls from all over the world.”

Crahan also offered advice on using a “moonshot” mindset to solve other big problems:

• Realize that the effort will require collaboration with a variety of partners, including researchers, policy makers, government entities and customers.
• Fall in love with the problem you are trying to solve, but don’t fall in love with a particular solution. “You need to know when to stop, when to pivot and when to double down.”
• Embrace the idea of “moonshot compost.” That is, an idea that didn’t pan out might still be useful as a spark for other ideas, or as a solution for a different problem.

-Susan Orr 

11:15 a.m., Aug. 27

Take a video tour of the Rally conference

9:50 a.m., Aug. 27

High-energy dance leads to invitation to embrace vulnerability

The Rally innovation conference kicked off this morning at the Indiana Convention Center with a high-energy dance performance followed by an earnest invitation—embrace the uncertainty and vulnerability that come along with innovation.

The two-day event, organized by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, is designed to bring together innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and others from a variety of industries, with the goal of sparking the state’s innovation economy.

After a performance by the Fishers-based 31SVN Street Dance Academy, Elevate Ventures CEO Christopher Day took the stage to encourage attendees to embrace Rally’s spirit.

“The most profound innovation emerges from unexpected collisions: the vulnerability between people, the fusion of technology and health care, the integration of art and science, the collaboration between the public and private sectors,” Day said. “These are the frontiers where advancements in society and groundbreaking ideas are born.”

Over the next two days, Rally’s schedule includes dozens of breakout sessions and more than 200 speakers focused on key areas of relevance to Indiana’s economy: entrepreneurship, software, agriculture/food, health care, hard tech and sports tech. It also includes a demo/exhibit area, five pitch contests offering combined prize money up to $5 million, keynote speeches and more.

This is the second year for Rally, which is being supported with a $1 million investment from the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The conference’s total budget this year is $2.4 million, and its goal is to draw 3,000 attendees from within and outside of Indiana.

Check back later for continuing coverage of Rally over the next two days.

-Susan Orr

6:30 a.m., Aug. 27

Rally conference planners hope to spur ‘creative collisions’

Elevate Ventures’ second annual Rally innovation conference, starting this morning in downtown Indianapolis, includes a jam-packed agenda of keynote speakers, pitch contests, breakout sessions and one-on-one meetups.

But the real name of the game is what Elevate Ventures CEO Christopher Day calls “creative collisions”—bringing people together from different sectors and backgrounds to spur innovation and new ideas.

The event itself takes place Tuesday and Wednesday at the Indiana Convention Center. Registered attendees can also attend a host of associated off-site events such as happy-hour gatherings.

“Prepare to be immersed in cross-sector convergence with people you never thought about getting value from,” Day told IBJ.

Even if you can’t be there, you can immerse yourself in the daily happenings by periodically checking out this blog space over the next two days and watching for individual stories on topics such as sports tech, artificial intelligence and plans for an Indiana tech corridor.

Day said some of Rally’s logistics have been adjusted this year to increase the event’s density, increasing the odds of these serendipitous encounters. Practically speaking, that means that the event this year takes place over two days as opposed to last year’s three, and in fewer rooms.

Event highlights include keynote speeches by pro-athlete-turned-business-executive Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez and entrepreneur and media personality Marcus Lemonis; five pitch contests offering combined prize money of up to $5 million; dozens of breakout sessions focused on entrepreneurship, software, agriculture/food, health care and more than 200 speakers.

Last year’s Rally conference drew just over 3,110 attendees. About 60% of them came from Indiana, while the other 40% were from out of state or from other countries. Organizers are aiming for similar attendance this year.

The event’s big-picture goal is to bolster innovation and entrepreneurship in Indiana. Rally’s largest single sponsor is the Indiana Economic Development Corp., which this year is contributing $1 million towards the event’s $2.5 million budget.

Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, which invests in Indiana startups, acts as the IEDC’s venture investment arm.

Tickets, which were selling for an “early bird rate” of $699 per person as of Friday, are still available at Rally’s website.

Check back here regularly for updates on key Rally happenings.

-Susan Orr