Forefront

While many of us believe we are safe drivers, about eight people die in crashes involving a distracted driver every day in the United States. Phil Renaud, executive director of the the Risk Institute, provides insights into why distracted driving is such a dangerous problem and what can be done to prevent it.

Middle-market companies aren’t unique in facing the many challenges brought on by the pandemic, but many of them have the resiliency to emerge from it successfully. Anil Makhija, dean and John W. Berry, Sr.

Phil Renaud, executive director of the Risk Institute, said the governor's new distracted driving measures are part of a larger strategy for eliminating the problem. Through research and building partnerships, The Risk Institute is addressing distracted driving through legislation, behavior, technology, and urban planning/infrastructure design.

After a tumultuous year, a more optimistic outlook prevails for the middle market segment of the U.S. economy, according to the latest research from the National Center for the Middle Market.

Phil Renaud, executive director of the Risk Institute, writes that it is more important than ever that organizations pay attention to the business resilience needs of corporations facing severe weather-related risks.

COVID-19 has forced changes in the way people work — and created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to increase engagement and productivity, write Tom Stewart, executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market.

In this episode of Appreciating Real Estate, the Ohio State Center for Real Estate talks with Kyle Waldrep, founder and CEO of Dottid, a commercial real estate SAAS technology platform provides a single location for brokers, landlords and tenants to share information, work seamlessly throughout the leasing process and ultimately, close deals faster and with greater efficiency.

In this episode of Appreciating Real Estate, the Ohio State Center for Real Estate talks with Peter Cummings, CEO and executive chairman of The Platform, a company focused on the rebuilding of Detroit.

Phil Renaud, executive director of The Risk Institute, runs down the level of risk to supply chains created by relationships with third parties — and relates how a certain type of third party can help to mitigate it.

In this episode of Appreciating Real Estate, Executive Director Mary Beth McCormick talks with Mark Wagenbrenner, founder of Wagenbrenner Development, and managing principal and president of Thrive Companies. 

In this episode of the Center for Real Estate's Appreciating Real Estate podcast, Executive Director Mary Beth McCormick talks with Jeff Witherell, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Plymouth Industrial REIT. They discuss the company, what it does, how it has grown and the secret to Jeff's success and advice to real estate students.

Insurance prides itself on its ability to model risk, but when it comes to predicting flood damage, it consistently falls short. Technology and better mapping is just one aspect of handling catastrophic flooding. Understanding business resilience is another, says Phil Renaud, executive director of the Risk Institute.

COVID-19 has produced conditions never before seen in the eight-year history of the Middle Market Indicator (MMI). Fewer companies than ever say their past-year performance has improved compared to the historical MMI average. Both revenue and employment growth rates are negative and many companies have put investment plans on hold. Despite the data, middle market leaders see better times ahead.

Amid falling revenue and employment, capital spending cuts, growth initiatives put on hold, tight cash and disrupted operations brought on by COVID-19, middle market companies are maintaining and even slightly accelerating their digital transformation, writes Tom Stewart, executive director of the National Center for the Middle Market.

Dennis Hirsch, director of the Program on Data and Governance at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and a fellow at The Risk Institute, researches data analytics, how it can pose ethical risks, and how leading companies are responding.

On average, executives expect it to take about 6.4 months for businesses to get back to full capacity. That's one of the findings of a new report from the National Center for the Middle Market.

Business executives are feeling more confident in the long-term prospects of the economy, but the Covid-19 pandemic continues to take a toll in the short term.

Research from the National Center for the Middle Market details COVID-19’s impact during the first three months of the pandemic.

According to a recent study by The National Center for the Middle Market, middle market companies with a strategic approach to their digital transformation grow faster than their peers. And while more than half of the executives surveyed said digital transformation was important, less than 10 percent said it was critical to their company’s strategy. This disconnect represents a failure to tie digital transformation to value creation.

As technology evolves, risk managers will need to be more agile than ever before as they develop creative risk solutions for the future. By far and away, risk managers and university risk management professors identified new technologies and cyber threats as being one of the biggest contenders of risk that future risk managers will have to understand. 

Middle-market businesses may be bracing for tough times, according to the National Center for the Middle Market. In a late March survey of 250 executives in that business sector, half say the impact of the virus downturn will be "major," and 44 percent say their companies "will undergo major restructuring as a result of the crisis." That's bad news for Chicago's private-equity firms because most of them focus on that segment of the U.S. economy.

How can we leverage data analytics to help us make informed decisions during this COVID-19 crisis?

A report by the National Center for the Middle Market reveals that the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will derail middle market performance. But executives believe they have the resilience to recover.

From disaster preparedness to public health concerns to the cost faced by insurance companies, a panel discussion recently  brought together leaders from throughout Ohio State and beyond to examine the wide-ranging impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and how the university is joining the fight against it.

As part of a nationwide analysis of distracted driving, research conducted by the Risk Institute provided insights into how law enforcement in Ohio views the dangers of distracted driving in the state and how to mitigate the growing risk.