LOADING ANNUAL REPORT

Letter from the director

The past year has been one of transformational growth for the Kenan Institute, as we reimagined and restructured our efforts to better align with Frank Kenan's original vision for an organization that would bridge academic research, public policy and the interests of the private sector to drive broad-based economic growth.

We have developed key relationships with business leaders, brought academic expertise from around the world to bear on important societal problems, convened unique groups of stakeholders, and expanded our own brand of translational research and thought leadership. We launched the American Growth Project, an initiative providing up-to-the-minute economic data, analysis and forecasting for towns, cities and counties across the country. And for the first time, we embarked upon a 12-month, deep-dive exploration on a grand challenge facing business and society – examining the rise of stakeholder capitalism and ESG investing.

I invite you to check out our 2022 Year in Review, which highlights a select few of the initiatives and activities responsible for building the institute's reputation as a voice of reason and clarity in today's increasingly divided, highly complex world.

Thank you for your support of the Kenan Institute during the past year, and we look forward to working with you in 2023.

Warmest regards,
Greg Brown
Executive Director
Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise
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2022
Year in Review

Frank Hawkins Kenan
Institute of Private Enterprise

Leveraging the private sector for the public good

Grand Challenge

Stakeholder Capitalism

The Kenan Institute's annual grand challenge marks a concerted, yearlong effort to examine – and drive solutions to – the most complex and timely issues facing business and the economy today.

In 2022 we examined stakeholder capitalism, the idea that businesses would improve societal outcomes by focusing on a mandate broader than that which benefits shareholders alone. While this seems like a great idea in principle, it is challenging to implement in practice (especially when the interests of different stakeholders come into conflict). The collection of work below provides rigorous, solutions-based analyses of stakeholder capitalism that promote win-win solutions when they are available, or can become available with the right set of policies, while also acknowledging and creating frameworks for when difficult trade-offs must be made.

Frontiers of Business Conference

The Promise and Peril of Stakeholder Capitalism

While a welcome paradigm shift for critics of shareholder primacy, the concept of stakeholder capitalism conjures vastly different problems, prospective solutions and desired outcomes for different populations. The controversial broadening of a business's mandate beyond maximizing profits to account for its impact on customers, suppliers, employees and executives is exceedingly complex. And as an increasing number of businesses grapple with the adoption of ESG frameworks and stakeholder capitalism's tenets – along with the inevitable trade-offs between competing stakeholder groups such adoption brings – public and private sector leaders alike need guidance.

Visit Conference Website
Full Stakeholder Capitalism Report
Alex Edmans

Professor of Finance, London Business School; Academic Director, Centre for Corporate Governance; Managing Editor, Review of Finance and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow

Olga Hawn

Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School; Sustainability Distinguished Fellow and Faculty Director, Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow

Lubos Pastor

Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow

Emmanuel Yimfor

Assistant Professor of Finance, University of Michigan Ross School of Business and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow

Jacquelyn Pless

Fred Kayne (1960) Career Development Professor of Entrepreneurship and Assistant Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management, MIT Sloan School of Management and 2022 Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow

Kenan Institute

Distinguished Fellows

The Kenan Institute's Distinguished Fellows comprise an exemplary set of global scholars appointed on an annual basis to leverage their individual expertise, thought leadership, research and networks on behalf of the institute's grand challenge. The 2022 Distinguished Fellows have worked to support the institute's exploration of stakeholder capitalism - and whether the business model could be set to replace shareholder primacy.

American Growth Project

Long depicted as a global melting pot, the United States is home to a collection of sharply divergent geographies, regions and cultures. An overlooked measure of our diversity, however, is economic. While national statistics tell a story of averages, they fail to account for the true drivers of economic expansion and contraction. It is only upon examining America's microeconomies – our cities, towns, suburbs and rural communities – that we can begin to appreciate the myriad and complex determinants of broader U.S., and sometimes even global, economic trends. But the data needed to understand why one town booms even as its neighbor busts has long been lacking, and the effects of these localized economic wins and losses on the lives of workers, businesses and communities have been historically underappreciated.

To address these needs, the Kenan Institute in October launched the American Growth Project – an initiative providing economic data, analysis and forecasting for towns, cities and counties across the country. This effort aims to support government officials, business leaders and other decision-makers seeking guidance to navigate our nation's continuing economic transformation by providing real-time indicators and short-, medium- and long-term forecasts. We have begun to examine measures such as industry growth potential; labor flexibility and readiness; skills levels and gaps; and the urban/rural economic divide. The project will continue to explore both longstanding business, economic and labor issues along with timelier topics, such as the effects of pandemic-related migration and work-from-home policies.

The project launched in 2022 with two report releases – Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities, Ranked and The Power of Productivity – followed in January by Big-City GDP in 2023. Stay tuned for new releases of our latest analysis across a variety of economic indicators.

Explore Full Project

Translating Key Research Findings for Business and Policy

The Kenan Institute produces cutting-edge, rigorous thought leadership that is accessible and actionable for a broad audience of nonacademic decision-makers in the private and public sectors. This past year, under the direction of Chief Economist Gerald Cohen, we have made investments to increase our reach and enhance our ability to respond to the latest in business and economic news – enabling us to tackle an expanded schedule of insights, commentaries, white papers and video content. These products have allowed our thought leaders to leverage their expertise in new and increasingly meaningful ways, providing solutions-oriented applications of both published and emerging findings by our global network of researchers. Our cadence of output to our network of 50K+ follows.

Weekly

Kenan Institute Business Insights: This weekly roundup of our newest and most relevant written and video content responds to the most buzzed-about business news of the day.
Kenan Insights: This signature series of written content – sometimes accompanied by video interviews – translates rigorous academic research in a way that is both accessible and actionable.
Data Commentaries: Experts analyze and respond to the most pressing economic and business news of the moment.
Research briefs, white papers and other reports with key findings for business and policy.
Virtual and in-person events ranging from closed-door business roundtables to public-facing fireside chats.

Biweekly

Monthly

Long-form video providing more thorough investigations of topical and compelling questions.
Economic briefings featuring Kenan Institute experts on timely topics.

Responding to Real-Time Issues

For more than 30 years, the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise has worked to leverage the private sector for the public good. At no time in our history has this mission been more relevant or vital than during the global COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, we quickly pivoted to produce press briefings, webinars, op-eds and more to leverage our thought leaders' expertise on the business and economic ramifications of COVID-19. This new slate of content proved critical to our partners working both in business and in policy, and resulted in articles in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Politico, among others.

Building upon that engagement, we now host monthly economic briefings to coincide with the release of the monthly employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These briefings, which target members of the press reporting under tight deadlines, begin at 9 a.m. ET, just 30 minutes after the report drops at 8:30 a.m. While the report's release drives much of the expert analysis, each briefing also features Q&A to allow reporters to ask about other business and economic topics of interest. In total, the institute secured more than 250 unique media hits during 2022, including coverage by globally prominent publications and wire services such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Hill, The Associated Press and Reuters.

In addition to our economic briefings, we regularly feature thought leaders from the institute and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School through our data commentaries and video content. Each offers a unique platform through which our experts may offer insights in response to timely business topics related to their own area of research expertise or specialization.

Data Commentaries
Economic Briefings
Video Content

The University of North Carolina System spends more than
$5 billion
each year on goods and services to keep students learning, faculty teaching and researchers generating new findings.

NCGrowth + AICER

Where and how these funds are spent can be leveraged as a tool of economic development to invigorate new and established businesses, create new wealth, reduce inequality and offer job opportunities for all North Carolinians. The UNC System has the opportunity to support private sector business growth and job creation among historically underutilized businesses (HUBs) in North Carolina while keeping taxpayer dollars in our state. In short, the overall goal of the Anchor Institutions Create Economic Resilience (AICER) initiative is to increase HUB participation and utilization in UNC System procurements. To this end, NCGrowth is developing a detailed strategic plan for increasing utilization of North Carolina-based HUB firms, with a particular focus on those that are not yet significant suppliers to the system. The plan considers short-, medium-, and long-term approaches, is to be informed by best practices across the United States, and will forge new ground.

AICER Highlight

Kenan Scholars Program

Business and public service are at the heart of Frank Kenan's vision for the institute, and our Kenan Scholars continue to live out that vision as future business leaders committed to changing the world for the better. In 2022, the program continued to build on its success – providing transformative experiences for our scholars, refining operations and preparing for future growth.

The class of 2022 spent their senior year engaged in a wide variety of research activities, and were recognized for their leadership, receiving awards from the Kenan Institute, the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the greater university. In the fall, we selected a group of 25 dynamic, diverse and passionate students from our most competitive pool of applicants to date. We welcome you to read details of all our activities in this year's Kenan Scholars Annual Report.

Program graduates from the class of 2022 accepted full-time positions in areas of business including consulting, sustainability, marketing and investment banking with top firms such as Amazon, Dell Technologies, EY and Procter & Gamble.

Website
Meet the Scholars
Scholar Spotlight
Research Spotlight

Key Partnerships

We were fortunate this past year to develop several partnerships with both external and internal thought leaders in the fields of emerging technologies and workforce strategies. These partnerships have allowed us to build key connections between industry, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Kenan Institute and other thought leaders across UNC-Chapel Hill's campus.

Advance Auto Parts has made a three-year, $150,000 gift to support the launch of the Rethinc. AI Management Lab. The lab will determine how managers can best use AI, give students exposure to AI issues seen across industries, and develop AI methods to inform operational decision-making. The relationship was launched through UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School Operations Professor Saravanan Kesavan, who was conducting research using data from Advance Auto Parts to understand how AI may be augmented with managers in the workplace to produce superior outcomes for organizations. In November, the lab held its first student datathon, hosting nine interdisciplinary teams composed of UNC Kenan-Flagler MBAs and undergrads along with both undergraduate and master's level students from the computer science department and the School of Information and Library Science. Teams were given a dataset from Advance Auto Parts and had 24 hours to produce a sales forecast and an explanation behind the models they used. The teams with the five closest forecasts to what happened in reality were afforded the opportunity to present their findings to a panel of data scientists from Advance Auto Parts.

The Kenan Institute is partnering with NTT Data to design and conduct a Future of Work Market Study. The study will analyze cross-industry trends specifically to generate insights and data related to the evolution of work, the workforce and workplace implications. The data and insights from the study will produce additional inputs for the institute's 2023 grand challenge, and the associated focus groups, corporate roundtables and industry discussions will build brand awareness among NTT Data's vast client base.

2022 Dean's Speaker Series

Hosted in partnership by the dean of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, the Dean's Speaker Series brings preeminent private and public sector leaders to the school both virtually and in person. These nationally recognized experts offer students and the broader community insights and perspective across a broad range of timely issues, while sharing the highlights, challenges and turning points of their individual career paths.

Machelle Baker Sanders
North Carolina
Secretary of Commerce
Andrew Rose
President and CEO,
Worthington Industries
Hope Bryant
Vice Chairwoman,
First Citizens Bank
Ukonwa Ojo
Chief Marketing Officer,
Prime Video and Amazon Studios
Zach Clayton
Founder and CEO,
Three Ships
Bill George
Executive Fellow,
Harvard Business School
Aaron McKethan
General Manager of New Ventures,
Aledade

Save the Date: 2023 Events

Feb. 10
Demystifying ESG: Charting a Career in Sustainability
The Kenan Scholars program, in partnership with UNC's Program for Public Discourse, will present a program addressing the opportunities and risks of an ESG-centered approach to financial decision-making.
More
March 2
The Future of Digital Assets Symposium
Policymakers, practitioners and academics will gather for conversations on how to move forward with digital assets from use case to regulation, focusing on topics that are top of mind for legislators.
More
March 3
DeFi Academic Research Conference
This research conference will feature emerging findings on decentralized exchange, decentralized stablecoins, DAOs, NFTs, Web3 applications, lending, derivatives, payments, insurance, prediction, tokenization, identity, oracles and other protocols.
More
March 30
Alternative Investments Conference
This annual event provides a forum for private equity, hedge fund, venture capital and other alternative asset professionals to network, share ideas and stay abreast of industry trends.
More
April 20
Kenan Fellow Talk
A talk by Ricardo Perez-Truglia, associate professor of economic analysis and policy at the UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business.
April 27
Kenan Fellow Talk
A talk by John Haltiwanger, Dudley and Louisa Dillard Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland.
Oct. 12-13
Frontiers of Business Conference
Our most popular annual conference will make the jump to fall in Chapel Hill! Be sure to mark your calendars for this gathering, which will feature expert discussions related to the Kenan Institute's 2023 grand challenge.
More
2023
Virtual Economic Briefings
Monthly webinars on the morning that the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its employment report give institute experts a platform to offer analysis and allow the press an opportunity to ask questions. Dates: Feb. 3, March 10, April 7, May 5, June 2, July 7, Aug. 4, Sept. 1, Oct. 6, Nov. 3, Dec. 8
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Grand Challenge 2023: Workforce Disrupted

The labor market has fundamentally shifted following the COVID-19 global pandemic. Some changes are directly tied to the pandemic, such as the growth of work from home options and decline in international immigration. Others are less directly linked, as workers have reassessed what they are looking for from their employer, propelling record levels of quits. Meanwhile, demographic shifts continue to accelerate as the U.S. population ages and Gen Z workers make up a growing segment of the workforce. The population is also becoming more diverse, but diverse representation in senior roles remains low at most firms (keeping the pressure on DEI initiatives).

Learn More