Every Last Word

Dallas Innovates’ signature series capturing what leaders across North Texas are saying — in their own words — about innovation, impact, and what’s next.

The Last Word: Dallas Jackals’ Rodd Newhouse on How Rugby Can Succeed in DFW

by | May 30, 2023
You'd think that Newhouse, who grew up in a football-focused home with the 12-season Dallas Cowboys fullback Robert Newhouse as his dad, would have eyes only for the NFL. But Rodd always had a thing for the sport of rugby, according to the Dallas Business Journal's David Moreno—preferring the helmet-less brawn of muscular scrums where a "try" is scored when you touch the ball down in the "in-goal" beyond the goal line. 
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The Last Word: OptiMIND Founder on Winning a $40,000 Award for Research Innovation at UTD’s Big Idea Competition
Associate Professor Chandramallika Basak entered UTD's recent Big Idea Competition in the alumni research commercialization category with OptiMIND, a series of brain training games designed to enhance brain and cognition across the lifespan. The games are designed to ensure that people stay sharp and focused at any age. After winning $40,000 in the competition, she recently tweeted that she's ready to start her startup.
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The Last Word: How LTK’s Amber Venz Box Launched Her $2B Company with $236
Dallas-based LTK helped create the creator economy when it launched in 2011, launching a new category that monetized Instagram and allowed lifestyle creators to become entrepreneurs. It was valued at $2 billion just 10 years later. But when Venz Box first started the company, she had only $236 in her bank account, according to Fortune Magazine.
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The Last Word: Why the NYTimes Says ‘Dallas Is the New Dubai’ of Luxe Restaurants
by | May 23, 2023
If you want a seat in some of Dallas' hottest new high-end restaurants, you'd better get in line. And according to the New York Times, that's just what some of the top restaurant groups in the U.S. are doing as put Dallas at the top of the list for their expansion plans.
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The Last Word: Frank Zaccanelli on Renaming NexPoint’s Plano Life Sciences Project the ‘Texas Research Quarter’

by | May 19, 2023
In February, Dallas-based multibillion-dollar alternative investment firm NexPoint revealed plans and renderings for a proposed 200-acre life sciences development in Plano that could eventually create over 4 million square feet of lab, office, and therapeutic production space. At the time, the working title for the development was the TxS District, short for Technology x Science. But today NexPoint announced that the project has been renamed as something bigger and bolder: the "Texas Research Quarter," or TRQ.
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The Last Word: FC Dallas President Dan Hunt on the World Cup Coming Back to Dallas
The next World Cup is still three years away, but soccer fans in North Texas were already buzzing like crazy today. That roar you might have heard at the AT&T Discovery Center in downtown Dallas or the The Star’s Tostitos Plaza in Frisco coincided with the official unveiling of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Dallas logo and branding.
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The Last Word: TRG’s Scott Luther on Why ‘Attention Metrics’ Drives Agency’s New Group
Two months ago, Dallas-based ad agency TRG launched its new "whole human" approach, with the slogan "To earn people's attention, we must pay attention to people." Now the agency aims to do that with a whole new Brand Performance Group based around human attention metrics.
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The Last Word: Meow Wolf Has a Date With Destiny in Grapevine on July 14
by | May 16, 2023
Meow Wolf says its Grapevine exhibition is "a journey through a technicolor wonderland that blends storytelling, technology, and immersive art." Different dimensions of perspective and creativity will be on display through more than 30 rooms of "multidimensional art and compelling narrative."
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The Last Word: Tekwings’ Sagar Pidathala on the Value of ‘Horizontal Thinking’

by | May 12, 2023
Bio 9 Ventures, a Plano-based boutique healthcare ecosystem consulting firm, has merged its international healthcare IT division with three companies to form a new business called Kanectify. The new entity will add end-to-end integrated benefits to platform engineering, AI healthcare, and a portfolio of digital health R&D solutions.
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The Last Word: Schwab’s Jonathan Craig on the 2023 Charles Schwab Challenge Champion’s Prize
by | May 11, 2023
A certain percentage of Dallas Innovates readers must be salivating at the sight of the 1973 Ford Bronco above. If you'd like to own it, no problem—you just have to win the 2023 Charles Schwab Challenge, a PGA Tour event set for Memorial Day Weekend at the Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth.
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The Last Word: Lauren Lemunyan On How to Get What Matters Most Done Without Losing Your $#!%!

“The average person is only productive for three hours.”

Lauren Lemunyan
Founder and CEO 
Spitfire Coach

.…on why we need to focus on what matters most

....

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The Last Word: Offices.net’s Teresha Aird on How Using ChatGPT Is Like Making a ‘Dream Hire’
Teresha Aird has used ChatGPT for her work with Dallas-based Offices.net, and she's a believer.
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The Last Word: Quadrant’s Chad Cook on His Plans for the Dallas Design District

by | May 5, 2023
Quadrant Investment Properties has broken ground on two office buildings in the Dallas Design District, according to the Dallas Morning News' Steve Brown—a five-story building on Riveredge Drive and the 10-story Thirteen Thirty Three on Oak Lawn near Riverfront Boulevard. QIP's Chad Cook says he doesn't want the district "to become another Uptown."
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The Last Word: Julie Robinson on the Team Behind Beyond the Bar in Richardson
Julie and Reid Robinson, former owners of the bars Brizo and The Forum in Richardson, are opening something new in the same city: Beyond the Bar, which they call the first alcohol-free "bottle shop" in the Dallas area. 
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The Last Word: Mouser’s Glenn Smith on Marking 50 Years at His Company
by | May 3, 2023
Glenn Smith was a junior in college when he got a part-time job as one of 12 employees in the warehouse of an electronics startup in San Diego. Unlike most college juniors, his job lasted longer than a semester—a lot longer. He's now celebrating his 50th anniversary at Mouser Electronics, a Berkshire Hathaway company whose HQ and central hub is in Mansfield, a suburb south of Arlington.
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The Last Word: Dallas AI’s Aamer Charania On ‘ChatGPT in Medicine’
by | May 2, 2023
On Wednesday at 6 p.m., Charania will host a "ChatGPT in Medicine" online meetup sponsored by Dallas AI, the largest nonprofit AI forum in North Texas. His guest: Harvey Castro, MD, author of "ChatGPT and Healthcare: The Key to the New Future of Medicine."
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