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Scott Gale '19 joins host Christine Dobbyn to discuss how entrepreneurship is becoming a key part of a successful company and the future of Houston as the energy capital of the world.
Owl Have You Know is Rice Business’ podcast created to share the experiences of alumni, faculty, students and other members of our business community – real stories of belonging, failing, rebounding and, ultimately, succeeding. During meaningful conversations, we dive deep into how each guest has built success through troubles and triumphs before, during and after they set foot in McNair Hall.
The Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.
Christine Dobbyn:
Today on Owl Have You Know.
Scott Gale:
In 2015, there were something like five or six startup development organizations in the City of Houston. Halliburton Labs is the 38th. When you think about the kinds of resources that are being made available in and around the city, it's significant.
Christine Dobbyn:
Scott Gale started Rice Business with an entrepreneurial mindset. He took full advantage of everything the program had to offer. Less than two years after graduating from the executive program, he was tapped to lead the new Halliburton Labs, advancing cleaner, affordable energy. He talks about his new role starting in the middle of a pandemic, how he helped to improve the integration of executive students at Rice Business, and his side hustle, which involves that voice of his.
Christine Dobbyn:
Thank you for joining us on Owl Have You Know, Scott.
Scott Gale:
Thanks for having me, Christine. It's great to be here.
Christine Dobbyn:
Well, first of all, let's talk a little bit about your current role, a really exciting role and venture really that started in June. You were named executive director of Halliburton Labs. Can you talk a little bit about what is Halliburton labs, its mission and how you came to be named as executive director?
Scott Gale:
Our mission at Halliburton Labs is to advance cleaner, affordable energy. For us, we're nearest akin to a startup accelerator in terms of our model. Our approach is to take a small single digit percent of equity from an early stage company that's solving problems in the clean energy space, and in exchange, we give them access to Halliburton's facilities, our people, our network, and in an effort to help them prepare for scale.
Scott Gale:
We give them 12 months of access. To summarize, we put an industrial wrapper around an early stage company. We're focused on companies that are working and/or have solutions in what I term tangible tech, so material science, hardware, chemistry. We're not saying no to software, but our starting places in kind of this tangible tech realm. Usually, startups that are solving hardware based problems, they have more difficulties in terms of getting to scale.
Scott Gale:
Need more patient capital, need additional support. As we looked out across the landscape, it was clear that there were certainly support organizations, university, incubators, other really well-known groups that are out there that are focused in the hardware space, but we found that Halliburton have some really unique skillsets and capabilities. We've been taking the hardware to scale for decades and
decades. I like to joke that we package up our scar tissue and make it available for these early stage companies.
Christine Dobbyn:
We've seen what some people call sort of entrepreneurship with a lot of major companies starting something like this internally. Do you see that as an area where we're going to see even more growth? Obviously it's important to Halliburton.
Scott Gale:
Yeah, and I would say certainly, to your previous question of sort of how I came to get involved and be in the role. I think it's definitely that entrepreneurship experience. I'd say my entire career, I joke Halliburton's the youngest company that I've worked for in my career, but all of the jobs that I've done throughout my career didn't exist until I stepped into them, including this one. In terms of scope or remit or whatever that might be, and so I've really had the opportunity throughout my career to have the backing of a large established corporate, but work on something new and novel, and in many cases, something that the company has never done before.
Scott Gale:
I do think that entrepreneur model makes a lot of sense. I think that, as companies look at various approaches and models and ways to breathe new innovation and bring in new ideas, I do think there's a lot of interest, and I think you could certainly consider Halliburton Labs an example of that.
Christine Dobbyn:
It has to be incredibly exciting for you personally in your career path.
Scott Gale:
I'm having a lot of fun. It's really pretty fascinating when I looked at the initial deck that ... The slide deck that was put together to say kind of, hey, here's the concept, this is what we want to go do. You're talking about a Venn diagram of the startup community, the venture capital community, and what we'll term, just broadly clean energy, and we can get into a bit more detail about how we define that, but those three areas were, in many cases, blank sheets of paper for Halliburton. To stand up a new organization that's focused on those three areas presented a lot of interesting challenges, but those are things that, with time and persistence, you overcome them, you get up and running.
Scott Gale:
A big part of it is, is just beating the drum on what our mission is and what it is we're trying to accomplish and where we try and fit in. I like to think of ourselves as kind of another voice in the choir in the startup development world. There's a lot of interesting resources, again, that I've referenced that are out there and available. We're trying to position ourselves as the graduate program to some of these other startup accelerators and incubators.
Scott Gale:
It was certainly a gap that we saw and is something that, for us, we have to learn by doing. You just get out there and you start trying things, you start having conversations. That's really been the case over the last number of months. The pandemic has kind of allowed me, from the comfort of my home office, to
meet 10 to 15 new people every single day, and that has really helped to accelerate the network of Halliburton Labs and the number of people that we're getting connected with from the venture community to the academic community, to the entrepreneurial community. Really, just trying to be actively involved and getting out there, and raising awareness about the resources that we're making available.
Christine Dobbyn:
We'll dive a little deeper into your experience at Rice Business in just a moment, but I do want to touch on this sort of internal entrepreneur role that you have. I was speaking to a current Rice Business student last week, and she even talked about a lot of MBA students are sort of realizing that you can have this entrepreneurial mindset and role even within a corporation. Is that something that earlier in your career you saw as an opportunity or possibility, or was that not until more recently when you were offered this opportunity?
Scott Gale:
No, I've absolutely seen that sort of throughout my career, and it's something that, while my career initiated with a very large established company, it was clear that having the resources and the backstop of a large corporation can really help to take and mitigate some of the risks and still get out there and build something new, have an impact, and in many cases is easier to scale. It comes with other difficulties. I would say, generally speaking, large corporations are not built for change. They're built for the opposite of that. We have well-established processes. We get really good at something as a corporation, regardless of what it is.
Scott Gale:
I term it, the whole big kind of entallada, I describe it as the weight of incumbency, and it's just, when you have a big incumbent position, you've been doing something for a long time and that's made money, you build process around it, you protect it, you make sure that it stays as efficient as possible. Those kinds of things are really tough to change. When you think about sort of change leadership and the things that are necessary, you have to have this impetus for change.
Scott Gale:
That's, I think, what's really interesting about change leadership is in, particularly in 2020, is everybody's expecting something different. You have this unique period of time right now, where change is expected, but the risk is changing for change sake, and oftentimes, that's not done rooted in the right principles of strategy and ensuring that you're focused on the things that make you as an organization distinct and unique. That's something that many organizations sort of lose track of as they get pressured to change and do something different and bring in new innovation.
Scott Gale:
So, you really have to have both of those things. You have to have that impetus for change. You have to be really clear about why you're changing and where you're heading, and that when you arrive there, that you're going to be in a strategically competitive advantage space as you go through that. That I think is really important as we've considered Halliburton Labs and the capabilities that we bring to bear, and the rationale for why we're doing what we're doing.
Christine Dobbyn:
Your mission is advancing cleaner, affordable energy. What exactly does that mean? Does it include renewables or is it more traditional, or a mixture of both?
Scott Gale:
I would say we're looking in five primary buckets when we think about cleaner, affordable energy, particularly for Halliburton Labs. First is energy generation, next is transmission or distribution, so kind of the grid energy storage, energy conservation, and broadly circular economy kinds of applications. For us, it really has a very broad definition. It's almost easier to describe it as we're looking at things that are outside of what Halliburton do today in energy. We do a lot in energy today, but generally speaking, we're an upstream oil field services company.
Scott Gale:
The kinds of things that we're looking at from an application standpoint are really quite broad. Maybe just a quick comment about that. For us, the reason that's the case is because there's a fundamental belief here that the energy landscape is changing and it will change, and the future mosaic of energy will be different than what it is today, but in terms of where that lands, no one can say exactly where that's ultimately going to go, but it's going to take a long time. It's going to take decades for us to get there while there's a lot of great momentum right now when we will see incremental improvements and changes along the way.
Scott Gale:
It's going to take a long time for say, renewables or other energy sources to be on scene in mass. But it's also a recognition that it's going to take hundreds, if not thousands of different technological improvements and advancements, whether incremental or breakthrough to get us there. For us, we're starting with a pretty broad remit.
Christine Dobbyn:
Launching in the middle of a pandemic has been a challenge, I'm sure. What has that been like exactly? Do you see some silver linings or has it been pretty difficult to start something up in the middle of all this?
Scott Gale:
It comes with some difficulties, for sure. I would say, though for us, I mean, the roots of the effort here go back about a year and a half, two years ago. I would say that we spent a lot of time researching corporate innovation from Bell Labs, to Kodak, to Lockheed Martin, and looking at sort of other organizations in other markets and industries, how they thought about these kinds of challenges. And then looking ahead to what are the components and constituent parts of an innovative environment and what's needed and what's required.
Scott Gale:
With all of that sort of foundational work behind us, I would say the pandemic, it's certainly created, I would say a distraction. I mean, there's things that we have to work through and burn calories on to make sure that we get right, but once we create a safe environment and do the things that are necessary to keep social distancing and wearing masks and all of these things, a big part of it is networking and giving to the startup community. That's been something that we've been actively involved with since launch.
Scott Gale:
For us, I would say I could probably make the argument that the progression of Halliburton Labs has actually been accelerated due to the pandemic versus hindered.
Christine Dobbyn:
Given the acceleration, the landscape of change, do you believe that Houston will remain the energy capital of the world?
Scott Gale:
Houston has all the makings to remain the energy capital of the world, be the energy transition capital of the world. There's a few things related to that, that I think are really important. As I talk to startups, not only in the city, but around the country, around the world, those companies that are solving energy related problems, they all have Houston on their radar. They all see that getting to Houston at some point in their journey is going to be an important milestone for them, whether that's moving their headquarters or whether that's setting up a satellite office or whatever it might be, but Houston is on their radar.
Scott Gale:
I would say the expansion of startup development organizations in Houston can't be overlooked. Houston Exponential quoted something to me, that in 2015, there were something like five or six startup development organizations in the City of Houston. Halliburton Labs is the 38. When you think about the kinds of resources that are being made available in and around the city, it's significant. You hear Mayor Turner talk about the focus and the importance of bringing new innovative organizations to the city, and they're really coming.
Scott Gale:
I think that one of the things as I think about the development of startup communities and those again, key components of that, one of them is the focus on what's termed the creative class more broadly and having the right concentration of the creative class and curating collisions and working through all these things, but one of the things that is underappreciated in terms of a member of the creative class is engineering. The city of Houston has every science discipline, every engineering discipline that you could imagine, we have that in spades, we have that in mass.
Scott Gale:
I think that, that's something that, as this energy transition progresses, we have all of the right components to make it successful. There is a lot of effort underway to ensure that that continues to progress, and I think that's certainly rooted in the leadership of the city. It's rooted in the universities that are actively working and investing in those kinds of resources. I think it's over time, as entities like Halliburton Labs and others start to come into the city and make those resources available, it's going to make it easier for an entrepreneur to initiate that journey and be successful along that journey.
Christine Dobbyn:
You were part of the Rice MBA for executives class of 2019, just a class ahead of me, how did that experience help you move into the position you're in today, first of all, by having the degree, having that
on paper, but also just what you were able to gain from the program and how you're able to put that in action today in your day-to-day work?
Scott Gale:
One of the big draws for me in going to Rice was their entrepreneurship program sort of broadly, if I can sort of generalize that, that's maybe not a fair way to characterize it, but Rice is very passionate about entrepreneurship, not only at the business school, but in other parts of the university. It was something that was just of interest to me. It was sort of this elusive thing for me, being a guy that had spent a bunch of time in large corporates. I'd launched products and done other things, but the idea of entrepreneurship was just really fascinating to me.
Scott Gale:
I had taken some entrepreneurship classes in undergrad and other things, and so when I got into Rice, I was very much actively trying to plug into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the city. A lot of the networking conversations that I would have is around that topic. Didn't matter application, obviously I had spent a lot of time in energy, but that actually led to an opportunity to mentor medical startups out of MD Anderson's venture mentor system, which I've been doing for the last couple of years, and meeting great people like Jane Henry, and other alum that are working on really interesting things.
Scott Gale:
I just love hearing the story. It was always just kind of this, I've got my own weight of incumbency with a family and four kids and quitting my job and going and starting a company seems like a big hurdle for me, but I'm going to swim in the shallow end of the pool here and hang out with entrepreneurs and help where I can, and provide my perspective. It was very much sort of in and around those kinds of things. That actually led me to launch my voiceover business, which I do on the side, and that was something that I could connect with startups on, and I would help them with explainer videos or do different things.
Scott Gale:
So, I was at station Houston and I was at the Cannon and I was talking with ... Wherever I could spend my spare time around startup founders and other things. I very much attribute sort of my experience at Rice to that. Took Al Danto's class and that just continues to stoke the plane. But for me, it was never enough to sort of launch my own venture. It was just clear to me that there was a lot of opportunity to be around unique, interesting people that are passionate about their different problems and challenges, and that my focus and skillset around strategy development and corporate strategy and M&A and other things could help an early stage company.
Scott Gale:
I would say my view on that is, that as the diligence team that was kind of putting together the initial strategy around Halliburton Labs was out talking to people, my name, I think, continued to come up as somebody that was involved and actively having conversations with these various groups. When I got the call from our CEO to step in and take a leadership role, that was something that, for me, it was a no-brainer. It was like, yeah, absolutely. I get to do all these really cool things and still work for Halliburton and make all that happen. It was just really great. I very much attribute sort of that connectivity to, in part, to the Rice experience, no doubt.
Christine Dobbyn:
It seems like it sort of put you on a path and moved you in the direction in which you were hoping to go.
Scott Gale:
Yeah. It's funny how life works. It's just kind of like, if you decide where you'd like to spend your time, you start thinking in that way, you start talking to people about that and some of those opportunities arise. Never, in a million years, would I have thought that that was something that Halliburton would be interested in doing. I really didn't anticipate that, but it was a perfect fit, and it's something that I think is, in my mind now that I'm six months deep into it, it's like, why not Halliburton? Halliburton has got great resources and capabilities to be able to help the startup community here, and it's just been a lot of fun.
Christine Dobbyn:
I know. When I started the program at Rice, one common thing I heard was a lot of people said, you get out of it what you put into it, and it seems like you put so much into it. Not just your coursework, but also just some opportunities at the Jones School, in general, for executives. You were one of the founding members of the Jones Student Association for Executives. Can you talk a little bit about what that is for our listeners who maybe don't know, and why you found that that was so important to start?
Scott Gale:
Yeah. The Jones Student Association for Executives, it's pretty self-explanatory. I think what's novel about it is we had a student association for the full-timers, we had a student association for the evening and weekend professional program. For whatever reason, we didn't have one for the executive program. I think there's some historical context as to why that was the case, but it was something for me that, as I was jumping into the MBA, that I was really passionate about the networking aspect of it.
Scott Gale:
There are really interesting, unique people here, lots of different backgrounds. I've been kind of in this pocket of industry for the last 10 years. I'm just really interested in meeting new people and understanding where they're at sort of, regardless of which program that they were in. The executive program just felt a little bit isolated. There's good reason for that in terms of sort of where they're at, generally the student body is in terms of their career and other things, but more and more, I thought there was some really interesting professionals and full-timers that just felt like we were not sort of connecting with.
Scott Gale:
I just started asking questions and I got plugged in with the JSAE president and sat in on some of their meetings and other things, and it was just kind of, why couldn't we have something like this with the executives? And help to sort of marry up that student association effort and engage the executive students in a unique way. Once it became clear that that was possible, and I had some conversations with the administration and asked questions, why are things the way they are? Is there some by law or something somewhere that I'd be ... Some rule I'd be breaking or whatever.
Scott Gale:
As we were having the discussions, it was just like, yeah, nobody really could answer why it wasn't the case. So, just drafted up the documents and got a team together and we stacked hands and said, we think this would be interesting and we put it in front of the class. We voted on it and made it official and had support of the administration. Really, it was just a lot of fun to be able to take something again, just an idea. It was, again, that entrepreneurial spirit of there's a gap. Let's go create something that might have some staying power, and have just been thrilled to see that that has continued forward and continued to help support and drive additional connectivity.
Scott Gale:
That was something that was really important in terms of driving unity, not only amongst our individual class, but two other classes within the executive program, and then more broadly across all Rice MBA alum. I thought that was just really important. One final little comment that really motivated me was when you graduate with your MBA at Rice, you get a piece of paper and it doesn't matter which program you're in, the full-time program or the professional program, or the executive program, you get the same piece of paper.
Scott Gale:
I thought that was just a really unifying aspect in terms of outcome, is we're all in this together. There's just really unique opportunities for us to connect. That has continued to bear fruit in my life, in my career, in people that I have the opportunity to meet while in the executive program. Sure, I burned some extra calories through that, bu I'm glad I did it, and it's something that I look back on and I'm really proud of in terms of contribution back to Rice.
Christine Dobbyn:
Absolutely. I think it's great in your point about sort of uniting the different programs. I had the opportunity to take some electives and I was on Teams with full-timers and professionals, and that was great, and I've stayed in touch with some of them and they've reached out to me, and I've reached out to them. It's important, I think, to make the most of the Rice network across the programs, and I think JSAE was the perfect outlet to do that.
Scott Gale:
It was just a ton of fun. It really was. We were solving some really interesting challenges and got to meet some interesting people, and the feedback continues to be positive. It was a pretty simple, I would say, a simple fix when it was all said and done. But again, I'm glad to see that it's continuing to add value to the program overall.
Christine Dobbyn:
You grew in Washington State, got a chemical engineering degree at Brigham Young University. What initially brought you to Texas?
Scott Gale:
Kind of dumb luck. I really lucked into getting into oil and gas and getting into the state. I had never stepped foot in the State of Texas until I moved here with my first job. Pacific Northwest kid. I was a canvas paper maker, was our mascot, small paper mill town. For me, growing up, you were either a lumberjack or you were an engineer at the mill, and it was just the people that were in my life that seemed to be doing well and seemed to know what was going on, were associated with the mill. I had it
in my head at a young age that getting a chemical engineering degree would be a good idea. I didn't know really what that would entail.
Scott Gale:
I made my way to Brigham Young. My first, I would say experience with engineering was out at a plant in West Virginia, where I discovered that chemical engineering is really, you're just a glorified plumber. It was clear to me that I, and no disrespect to the engineers out there, but for me personally, it was something that I couldn't wrap my head around doing that kind of work, and so that internship was really valuable for me.
Scott Gale:
I went searching for business related jobs with an engineering degree, and Dow Chemical had this program, they call it the commercial development program, where they take engineering undergrads, and they put them through six months of, I joke, bootcamp for sales, and they turn you into a B2B chemical sales person. But one of the things you commit to in doing that program is geographic flexibility, that they can send you to anywhere in the US in any one of their business lines, and that seemed like a good idea to me.
Scott Gale:
I showed up, did that program, and they said, okay, we just launched this oil and gas facing business. We're going to move you to Houston, and your first customer is going to be Schlumberger. That was, to me, having learned that, obviously that's not how you say it. They'd done some market research and other things, but our engagement with the oil and gas sector, at the time, as business was something nascent. I moved to Houston and started calling on oil field services companies, and really fell in love with the concept of hydraulic fracturing and that, that technology could bring energy independence to the US.
Scott Gale:
It was just a really fascinating thing. I started to chase that, and that's what I was solving for. My role previous to this one was I was managing Halliburton's global hydraulic fracturing strategy. For me, that was something that I had set my sights on a number of years ago. That's a long way to say that's ultimately how I got to Texas is I just lucked into oil and gas. I sort of signed up for this lottery. They trained me to sell chemicals to large organizations, and they parachuted me into Houston, and that's where I've been ever since.
Christine Dobbyn:
You could have just said, it was Schlumberger.
Scott Gale:
[crosstalk 00:28:42].
Christine Dobbyn:
I hope you learned how to say it correctly before you started calling on them.
Scott Gale:
I did. I figured that out quickly.
Christine Dobbyn:
You alluded to this briefly earlier, but you talked about voiceover work that you do on the side. For our listeners, in case you haven't noticed, Scott has a pretty amazing voice. The very first time I met Scott, he spoke at our kickoff. He was a year ahead of us in the executive program and spoke about the program and what to expect. I remember, in the break, all anybody could talk about was, that guy has an amazing voice. He should do something with it. So, you are doing some voiceover work. Talk a little bit about ... Some people don't know what voiceover work is. Explain what it is and what you're doing with it, and how you enjoy that. I'm sure it's completely different from your day job.
Scott Gale:
It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate that. It's something that I'd gotten that throughout my life. The creative side of was always dormant. I was doing math and science and other stuff and never had any interest in acting or getting on stage or doing any of that. I avoided the conversation for a long, long time. I got into it just by asking somebody who had made a comment like, hey, ever thought about doing radio or something along those lines? I just said, "Maybe, I just have no idea how to get into it." It actually precipitated a conversation, he knew a gal who did anime voiceover for Netflix, and she helped me to work through kind of next steps and what that would look like.
Scott Gale:
I mean, voiceover is just basically, if you're ever hearing somebody's voice and you're not seeing their face, that's generally voiceover work. It comes in the form of commercials, it comes in the form of voiceover on explainer videos, or trailers, or audio books, or whatever it might be. It's really a big industry and a growing and expanding industry as digital content continues to expand. I get a lot out of it. I think it's a lot of fun. Something that I didn't expect in terms of, I would say sort of becoming a professionally trained voiceover artist, which I've spent the time to do, is that it's relatively straight forward, but it's something that it all boils down to reading a script while not sounding like you're reading a script, and that's sort of easier said than done.
Scott Gale:
But it also helped, just in terms of communication more broadly, being clear about who your audience is, the message you're trying to convey. I have found that to be very helpful in my day job as well as I think about having conversations with various parties and different people solving for different outcomes. That was certainly unexpected as I was going through that training and just in terms of how to think about an audience and think about a message. I have a lot of fun with it. I don't have as much time to do it as I would like, but I usually have one or two projects kind of in the hopper at any given time.
Christine Dobbyn:
I definitely think we don't always think about all the voices that we hear commercials, explainers, and people don't stop and think, oh, that's somebody doing that on the other end, although some of the automation in artificial intelligence is taking over, but right now I can usually still decipher when it's a real person, but I think over time that might change.
Scott Gale:
No doubt, no doubt that's going to get better and better, but that tonality and voice inflection, the human vocal chords are a pretty distinctive instrument. It'll take some time. I'm sure digital tech will catch up.
Christine Dobbyn:
When you look ahead in your role at Halliburton Labs, where do you see it in five years, 10 years?
Scott Gale:
I mean, for us, we're a startup in and of ourselves. We're up and running. We just ramped up last week our first finalist day event, where we had 10 startup companies presenting. We had over 150 registered attendees. For us, we want to bring on something like 15 companies a year, need 12 to 15 is kind of our target, and we want to do that in three different cohorts. For me, five years from now, we will have spent 12 months with something like 75 different companies. For us, that gives us an opportunity to have a front row seat as the energy transition is unfolding.
Scott Gale:
I think for us that also creates some interesting opportunities as we think about future strategic decisions for the company, etc. I would say that's probably where that spills over then into 10 plus years from now. I could anticipate that a new service line maybe springs out of something that Halliburton Labs curated and incubated and worked with. But it's absolutely, for us, we're focused on the success of the entrepreneur. Ensuring that we've got a number of great startups that are participating, but then also that, as they graduate and wrap up their time with us, that ultimately they're more investible than when they came in.
Scott Gale:
That's something that's really critical in everything that we're solving for. There's no corporate overreach, so we're not taking offers or board seats, anything the company invents while they're with us belongs to them. I think that's really important in terms of driving investability of the startup as they come in and participate, is having some kind of entanglement with Halliburton in some form or fashion, is something that we've really tried to make it as low friction as possible.
Christine Dobbyn:
I know with a lot of the more mainstream accelerators and incubators, they have sort of a demo day at the conclusion of the program. Does Halliburton Labs have that sort of demo day, and if so, how is it similar and how is it different when a startup has gone through your program?
Scott Gale:
I would say, for us, we anticipate having a demo day, we just haven't turned the crank completely because we just haven't gotten to that point. But I agree that having sort of a culminating event at the startup founding team is working towards is very important in terms of their participation. We'll have a mix of formal programming that they will go through. We provide well term curated mentorship engagements with the founding team, and so that becomes a part of their experience. But then, as they're trying to solve their problems and scale their business, as they run into issues and challenges, that's where we have the Halliburton Labs backstop.
Scott Gale:
They can come and ask us, and we put them in touch with, whether that's a Halliburton employee or somebody in our network. I like to tell these founding teams that a 30 minute conversation with the right person at Halliburton or in our network could save them as a company months and months of headache and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, as they go along in their journey. We think that, that's something that is an important aspect of what we're bringing to the table.
Christine Dobbyn:
If someone is founding a company right now, and they think that it could be a good fit, how does one get involved with Halliburton Labs? Is it an application screening process, a pitch process, how does it work?
Scott Gale:
Yeah, a little bit of both. We have a website, halliburtonlabs.com. There's an application form that's there. We go through our diligence process three times a year. We invite applicants to come and pitch as a part of our finalist day. Once they've applied, once they've presented at a finalist day, then those are the two hurdles to be selected as a participant. That is really the simple two-step process to become a participant at Halliburton Labs. But we will be launching in 2021, in Q1, what I'll call term a digital extension of Halliburton Labs, where we're bringing a crossroads of investors and entrepreneurs, members of academia, and kind of enthusiastic more broadly launching an online platform called Constellation.
Scott Gale:
Where we'll encourage those that are not formal participants in Halliburton Labs to be a part of the clean energy dialog, to network, meet people, learn about sort of how things are evolving, and so we're excited about bringing that to the forefront as well here in the next month or two.
Christine Dobbyn:
As you've had a couple of years now to reflect on your Rice Business experience and sort of looking back at your career how it started, where it is now, what advice would you give a potential business school student?
Scott Gale:
My mantra was always, you got to start to finish. I think that, for those that have started on the path, that's the first key step, but it's really, I would now amend that to, you got to have an idea of where you want to go. It really is sort of, no one has ownership of your career and your life and trajectory and all the things you spend your time doing. You've got full ownership of it, and sure, you've got a mix of experiences and skills, and maybe you've got a current job, or a current life situation, or whatever it might be, but maintaining that tenacity and persistence, I think that's something, and I would echo, Christine, something that you've already mentioned, is you get out of the program what you put into it.
Scott Gale:
That's, I think, very widely different experiences at Rice Business simply based on the kinds of things that they choose to do and get involved with etc. That I think is just really important. It is what you make of it. Taking ownership of that, taking stock of that personal accountability, all of those things, I think, are really important components so that when you do walk across that physical or virtual stage, however
that's working out and you get that degree that you can look back and say, you left it all on the field and that you really got the most out of the experience.
Christine Dobbyn:
Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners about our conversation today?
Scott Gale:
I would just say there are so many opportunities out there, lots of different things to be done. I'm just a big fan of being mission-driven. There's a lot of things that are happening in this world that need improvement and need change, and just be a force for good and use your powers for good, so to speak. That's something that I would just express, people should think about their purpose and what they're trying to accomplish and the legacy that they want to leave behind and in whatever form that takes.
Christine Dobbyn:
Scott Gale, executive director of Halliburton Labs and Rice Business Executive MBA, class of 2019. Thank you so much for joining us today, Scott, on Owl Have You Know.
Scott Gale:
Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Appreciate it, Christine.
David Droogleever:
This has been Owl Have You Know. Thanks for listening. You can find links and more information about our guests, posts, and announcements on our website, business.rice.edu. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts and leave us a comment while you're at it and let us know what you think. Owl Have You Know is a production of Rice Business and is sponsored by the Rice Business Alumni Board. The hosts of Owl Have You Know are myself, David Droogleever, and Christine Dobbyn