College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• Winning the lottery

  Physics alumnus Edward Stanek makes mark on state government.



• The best advice Ed Stanek ('72 physics Ph.D.) may have received came from Dan Zaffarano, the chair of the Department of Physics at Iowa State.
  
  Zaffarano was sitting on Stanek's Ph.D. committee when he commented that the research Stanek was conducting had limited appeal.
  
  "I remember him saying 'only five people understood what I was doing and only two cared,'" Stanek said. "He told me I should do something people could relate to."
  
  Ed Stanek has certainly done that.
  
  As the director of the Iowa Department of Environmental Quality he negotiated programs with Iowa businesses leading to elimination of 97 percent of industrial air pollution. He became involved in the writing of the federal Clean Air Act.
  
  In the midst of the energy crisis of the late '70s, he put together an energy conservation program as director of the Iowa Energy Policy Council that became a model that states used throughout the country.
  
  He served as the executive director of the Iowa Office for Planning and Programming and for four years helped developed Gov. Robert Ray's legislative agenda and budget.
  
  But it's been his job that he has held for the past 19 years that most people can relate to.
  
  As chief executive of the Iowa Lottery, Stanek has taken the Lottery from a one-person operation (himself) to a business with 2,300 retail outlets, annual sales over $200 million and annual profits over $55 million. The Lottery has contributed over $900 million back to the State of Iowa since 1985.
  
  "It took us just 120 days to develop a business plan and bring our first product to Iowans," Stanek said.
  
  Now the Iowa Lottery has a new scratch ticket out on the market almost every week. The Lottery continues to develop new products all the time - an amazing 60 percent of all new lottery products worldwide.
  
  "We were the first to sell lottery tickets out of vending machines. We were the first to have computers monitor vending machines and pulltabs. We're in the process of developing electronic 'scratch' tickets," Stanek said.
  
  "We've been very successful here, primarily because we have always been up front with the public and very creative," he continued. "Plus we've developed lotto games that appeal to lots of people's tastes."
  
  The lotto game with the most appeal is Stanek's most famous invention - Powerball, a product that 95 percent of Americans recognize. That's one of the highest name recognitions of a single product in the country even though Powerball is only sold in 28 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.
  
  But many didn't have faith in Powerball when Stanek first developed the new lotto product in 1992.
  
  "People said that it was too complicated to sell," he said. "Now it is the most successful lotto game in the world."
  
  Stanek not only developed Powerball, but he organized a nationwide consortium to manage and sell the product. Powerball generates annual sales over $2.5 billion. A syndicated television game show is in its fifth year.
  
  What made Powerball unique was the number of ways people can win.
  
  "There are nine different ways to win," Stanek said. "You don't have to match all the numbers to win. This made it easier to win small prizes, but increased the higher odds to win larger prizes. It was a totally different psychology in approaching lottery players."
  
  A psychology that has led to millions playing the game every week.

Ed Stanek

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October 16-29, 2006

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