Biography

Ryan Sougstad is a fourth year doctoral student in the department of Information and Decision Sciences at the Carlson School of Management. Ryan received undergraduate degrees in English and Business Administration from the University of Kansas (Lawrence). He earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas. Ryan spent seven years with the IBM Corporation in client sales and marketing. He also has university teaching experience that he obtained prior to entering the Carlson School. In his first term at Minnesota, it was natural for Ryan to build on his prior teaching experience. He taught a course in the Undergraduate Program called IDS 4421, Financial Information Systems and Technologies, and expects to teach that again in 2005-2006.

Background: “During my time with IBM, I had the opportunity to work with clients in a wide range of industries to address a broad spectrum of information technology needs. One of the overriding concerns I felt was the need for a better understanding and justification of the information technology investment decision. While at IBM, I worked on valuation models for various supply chain and e-marketplace solutions. These experiences led me to pursue research on the financial impact of information technology investments.”

Research: “While perusing my MBA at the University of Texas at Dallas, I undertook an independent study with Professor Indranil Bardhan. Eventually, this work led to the creation of a paper co-authored by Indranil Bardhan, Dr. Sugato Bagchi of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York, and myself. The paper is entitled “Prioritizing a Portfolio of Information Technology Initiatives.” It was intended to be a critical contribution, specifically, as an application of real option theory to an interdependent portfolio of e-business initiatives. Using real world data, my coauthors and I developed an algorithm for the dynamic prioritization of these initiatives under budget constraints. The work was successfully presented by our research group at the Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science (HICSS) in January 2004, in the Competitive Strategy, Economics and Information Systems mini-track. This mini-track was co-chaired by faculty from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester and the University of Minnesota. I was fortunate to be invited to have my paper selected for fast-track development and publication in Fall 2004 in a special issue of the Journal of Management Information Systems. This was edited by Rob Kauffman, the Director of the MIS Research Center, and through this process I was invited to join the Carlson School’s doctoral program in Information and Decision Sciences.”

Current Research: “I am currently expanding my research on the application of Financial Economics to the information technology investment decisions. With the convergence of business process outsourcing, web services and information systems, firms will be faced with an ever more complex and highly dynamic set of IT investment choices. IT portfolio optimization and risk management offer the potential to enable managers to make sense of the new complexities of an on-demand environment. My goal is to help them figure out how to do this well.”

General Impressions: “In my brief time at the Carlson School, I have been impressed by the quality of research and scholarship of the faculty and my fellow doctoral students. The University of Minnesota offers an open environment where doctoral students are encouraged to work with other faculty and departments. The Information and Decision Sciences department and the MISRC offer an ideal environment for doctoral students to conduct quality research with real managerial implications.”