General Summary: Professor Clay Spinuzzi discusses his research on the role of rhetoric in early stage entrepreneurship and organizational communication. Undergraduate rhetoric students discuss the role of persuasion in entrepreneurship, the importance of knowing your audience, and the role of mentorship in learning rhetorical techniques.

Detailed Summary: Introduction of Spinuzzi and his work (00.00-02.15); Spinuzzi on organizational communication (02.15-03.58); Spinuzzi describes the changing nature of work and the evolution of his research (03.58-06.24); Spinuzzi discusses his book and the concept of “all edge” (03.58-9.12); Spinuzzi discusses recent research on SEAL, an entrepreneurship program at UT Austin (9.12-12.35); Spinuzzi explains the importance of persuasion in product pitching (12.35-14.25); Spinuzzi describes ideal mentorship (14.25-18.54); Spinuzzi responds to a comment on the role of rhetoric in product creation from Sydney Jones (18.54-23.04); Spinuzzi responds to a question on mentorship in the SEAL program from Kendall Haase (23.04-27.53); Spinuzzi describes implicit versus explicit rhetorical instruction (27.53-30:21); Conclusion, description of program, and credits (30.21-33.47).

Scholarly Article Informing this Production: Spinuzzi, Clay et al. “Go or No Go: Learning to Persuade in an Early-Stage Student Entrepreneurship Program.” 2019, pp. 112-120. 10.1109/ProComm.2019.00026.

Credits: This podcast was produced by Aaron Anaya, Cason Hunwick, Nick Ramirez and Olivia Speed with resources and assistance provided by the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. It features the voices of Nick Ramirez, Cason Hunwick, Clay Spinuzzi, Kendall Haase, Sydney Jones and Olivia Speed. Music featured in this podcast, titled “commonGround,” was created by airtone and has been repurposed here under Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license 3.0. Additionally, conversation.wav was adapted and incorporated under Creative Commons 1.0 license.