The goal of the Growth and Innovation Leaders Forum is to learn more about organizational growth, growth strategy, rates of growth, how to scale a business successfully, leadership strategies, and more. We strive to learn from each other; teach students through experiential learning, and foster the future of innovation through research.
Members are leaders of firms dedicated to the growth of human and financial capital who want to teach and continuously learn and connect with students, faculty, and other firms that are building innovation and growth capabilities.
We have a stream of work on entrepreneurial growth, and we invite organizations interested in learning more about integrating the spirit and foundational skills of entrepreneurship into their own strategy and leadership.
We will explore various growth strategies, such as mergers, acquisitions, initial public offerings, organic growth, and franchise-based growth. Our members share new ideas about structuring businesses and systems to support growth.
Our goal is to make new learning – not just read about it.
A one-day, data-driven workshop for Presidents, CEOs, and their leadership teams as well as their high-potential managers. Senior leaders partner and take on teaching roles.
Each participating company participates in a data-driven learning exercise (focus groups, interviews, surveys). We use real-time and relevant data to inform the program. Participants receive benchmark data to use and drive action from their participation.
The annual summit includes hands-on learning exercises, diagnostic work, and live case studies, in addition to learning sessions facilitated by faculty and senior leaders from The Forum.
Summer 2024
Do you have a project focused on growth or innovation challenges or opportunities for your firm? Work with our team to finalize a project during the summer of 2024, work on it with faculty in the Fall of 2024 and then present the findings with the organization at our first conference scheduled for February 4, 2025.
This is a facilitated round table discussion hosted at Protective Life’s Birmingham headquarters by Will Wright, Head of Innovation at Protective Life. The session is limited to 12 people to foster active and open dialogue. Sign up by writing to Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne at tmwelbourne@ua.edu.
In 2023 we hosted 90 individuals in 12 different ‘booths’ to compete for 12 different $1,000 prizes. The competition is made up of people from the community, faculty, staff and students (from UA and other surrounding colleges). We invite you to judge, facilitate, or come out and watch. Stay tuned for more details. If you want to coach teams or judge, reach out to Dr. Welbourne at tmwelbourne@ua.edu.
This will held at The EDGE (2627 10th Avenue, Tuscaloosa, AL).
Students, faculty and others who were part of the AEI pre-accelerator and accelerator programs showcase their businesses during the day. You can walk around and meet them, and in addition to the networking, you also can come in for keynotes and product presentations in the afternoon and evening. Food and networking available. Many of these companies are seeking funding, and this is an opportunity to meet them and learn more about their business ideas.
The conference is designed to deliver data-driven content on the topics of growth and innovation. Members can invite their leadership and management team members to attend this program (included with the Growth and Innovation Leaders Forum membership). The event will be designed based on an executive development format with keynotes, working sessions, panel discussions and more. We are planning for an all-day event, with student projects and member successes featured, live case studies, sessions that allow attendees to work through challenges, and a portion of the program on the ongoing and large-scale initial public offering (IPO) research being done by AEI team members.
We will schedule a Growth and Innovation Leaders Forum business call with the core founding members. In this call we will discuss ideas for other events to support members’ needs and also to grow membership.
Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne is leading this initiative, and it is part of the overall work being done at the Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute and the Management Department in the Culverhouse College of Business. Theresa runs a large research project on growth companies, specifically looking at what happens in companies post significant milestone events such as initial public offerings (IPOs), new leadership, private equity, mergers, high growth cycles, and more. The research team consists of entrepreneurship faculty in the Management Department at The University of Alabama, along with researchers from other universities who partner on this work. The faculty also teach courses that focus on growth and innovation at the undergraduate, master’s, Ph.D., and executive levels.
