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Poole College of Management
Enterprise Risk Management Initiative

Risk Identification and Assessment

Bruce Branson and Bobby Thomas

May 28, 2020

Simplifying How We Think About Hard-to-Measure Risks

We interviewed Bobby Thomas, Senior Manager, US Risk Management at AFLAC, about how the ERM function helps simplify management’s consideration of harder-to-measure, qualitative issues.
Bruce Branson and Jennifer MacKethan

Feb 18, 2020

Advanced Risk Scoring Techniques

Jennifer MacKethan of Cisco Capital discusses advanced risk scoring techniques that Cisco Capital employs in their risk assessment exercises.

Jan 24, 2020

Categorical Thinking

Categorical thinking is the old-school thinking style and change is necessary in order to succeed in the modern day economy. This article from Harvard Business Review provides an in-depth analysis of the four most important dangers created by categorical thinking through a series of real-world examples and studies. The authors proposed a simple four-step process to combat those dangers and best prepare business leaders for the next wave of the data revolution.

Jan 24, 2020

Preparing for an Uncertain Future: Scenario Planning and War-Gaming

A Risk Intelligent Enterprise puts an organization in the best position to plan for and manage risks, take advantage of opportunities and be flexible enough to respond as the environment changes and risks arise in the future. In doing so, an organization can engage in various strategic initiatives and risk management efforts to identify and mitigate the impact of uncertain futures. This article published by Deloitte, outlines two tools to help companies think outside the box and perform a what-if analysis to gain a wider view of future events that could impact an organization's ability to achieve its strategic objectives.

Jan 24, 2020

Predictive Risk Intelligence Strategies

Predictive Risk Intelligence, or PRI, is the future of risk management. The article, published by Deloitte, introduces the concept, explains monitoring methods and provides examples as to how advanced analytics can help organizations prepare for emerging risks by leveraging both internal and external data sources. This concept can provide value in many ways such as reducing manual intervention and the potential for human error and helping companies predict risk before the loss event occurs.

Jul 31, 2019

Endpoint Security Risks

Cyber security is an ever-changing risk with continuing innovation of new technologies. As new technologies develop, cyber-attacks evolve with the times. This results in organizations having a difficult time securing their endpoints and incurring substantial costs for each successful cyber-attack (an endpoint device is an internet-capable computer hardware device such as desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, and printers). This article focuses on a survey that was conducted to find how endpoint security is breaking down and what these organizations are doing to correct the issues.
Dan Ortiz

May 14, 2019

Building Cross-Functional Risk Expertise

Dan Ortiz of Genworth Mortgage Insurance discusses building cross-functional risk expertise.

Jan 29, 2019

Joint Venture Blind Spots and Strategies to Avoid Them

Joint ventures are developed through a five stage process requiring complex decisions to be made by varying teams. Joint venture success depends heavily on cross-process discipline throughout business planning and implementation while simultaneously be aware of and counteracting common blind spots. These blind spots are pressures that can undermine joint venture success. They include rushing to completion, a lack of leadership continuity, declining parent involvement, and insufficient planning to respond to changes in risk. This article discusses the causes of these blind spots and strategies to avoid them.

Jan 29, 2019

The Three Types of War Gaming

War gaming is a tool that is not utilized often enough by organizations. War gaming provides an organization with realistic situations and outcomes based on a certain set of information. There are three types of decisions that war gaming can have strong influences on which are product level decisions, portfolio level decisions, and market entry decisions. Each type of war gaming provides an assessment of how competitors will react to certain offerings and how they will innovate their own products. This will give an organization insight to make the necessary changes to their services or products to be successful in the market.
Angela Hoon

Jan 17, 2019

Analyzing Root Causes of Risks

Angela Hoon, Executive Director of Strategic Risk Management at General Motors talks about how her organization analyzes root causes of top risks in order to identify common triggers and points of interconnection.