In their book Idealized Design: How to Solve Tomorrow’s Crisis...Today (Wharton School Publishing) authors Russell L. Ackoff Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison build upon a simple notion. They argue that ”the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.” An excerpt based on Ackoff’s experience shows how the process worked at Bell Labs in the 1950s. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Aug 09, 2006•16 min
Lars Kolind is the former CEO of Oticon a leading Denmark-based maker of hearing aids. In his book The Second Cycle: Winning the War Against Bureaucracy published by Wharton School Publishing he argues that size age and success can make mature companies deaf to signals that portend future decline. He summarizes his views in an excerpt from the book. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aug 09, 2006•7 min
Peter Killing and Thomas Malnight are professors of business strategy at IMD the Switzerland-based business school and Tracey Keys is a consultant. In their book Must-Win Battles: How to Win Them Again and Again published by Wharton School Publishing they argue that rather than spreading their resources too thin companies must focus on three to five key challenges -- must-win battles (MWBs) that are crucial to achieving their business goals. A well-chosen MWB the authors say must make a real dif...
Aug 09, 2006•14 min
The tired old adage ”You are what you eat ” acquires new life in Michael Pollan’s compelling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (The Penguin Press). Tracing our food back to its sources in feedlots and fields Pollan convincingly argues that modern Americans are made of corn -- and that this is a very bad thing for our health our economy and our environment. According to Pollan corn underwrites a national eating disorder even as Americans’ lack of a centuries’ old cuisin...
Aug 09, 2006•10 min
Canadian writer Giles Slade was checking out a touring exhibit called ”Eternal Egypt” with his 10-year-old son a few years ago when he had an epiphany. The Egyptians he realized designed great monuments to endure for countless generations while here in North America nearly everything produced is made to break. And that’s no accident. Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (Harvard University Press) looks at 20th century technology through the lens of disposability a concep...
Aug 09, 2006•9 min
Body parts are big business in the United States. Tissue organs tendons bones joints limbs hands feet torsos and heads culled from the dead are the cornerstones of the lucrative and important business of advancing scientific knowledge and improving medical technique. Few people however think to ask where the material that sustains this enormous industry comes from. Journalist Annie Cheney is a timely exception. In Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains (Broadway) Chene...
Aug 09, 2006•8 min
EMI Music backs a label that turns the traditional economics of the recording industry on its head. Vivendi’s Universal Music Group creates multiple pricing schemes for CDs. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo decide to sell a single without digital rights restrictions. These moves typify a flurry of experimentation by major record labels in recent weeks and stand in stark contrast to earlier behavior by an industry that six years ago was best known for launching anti-piracy lawsuits against ...
Jul 26, 2006•13 min
In the United States alone an unprecedented 77 million baby-boomers will be living the next 20 to 30 years in retirement. With long lives ahead of them -- and without adequate planning -- what are the risks they are facing? According to Olivia Mitchell Wharton professor of insurance and risk management and Christopher ”Kip” Condron president and CEO of AXA Financial the world’s largest financial services firm the rising tide of boomers in the U.S. and around the world needs to meet challenges th...
Jul 26, 2006•20 min
In the workplace trust is essential to day-to-day business whether it’s one colleague trusting that another will do her share of a project an employee trusting that his boss will reward him for working long hours to meet a deadline or a customer trusting that a company will fill an order correctly and deliver it on time. The intertwining issues of trust deception apologies and promises are explored in a new research paper titled ”Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust ” by three Wharton pro...
Jul 26, 2006•10 min
While a lot of research has been done in the past two decades on work-family conflicts few studies have looked closely at how mood affects workers’ performance. Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard and co-author Steffanie Wilk wanted to find out which mood-altering events have the biggest effect if any -- those that influence one’s outlook at the start of the day or those that nudge one’s mood up or down as the workday advances. The results of Rothbard and Wilk’s study are reported in the...
Jul 26, 2006•10 min
K. V. Kamath CEO of India’s second largest banking and financial services conglomerate ICICI is a man in a hurry. When he occupied the driver’s seat at ICICI more than a decade ago it was a financial institution hamstrung by political constraints. As a key member of the top team at ICICI that led the organization into new businesses such as insurance and banking Kamath used technology effectively to pry open market expansion. Today his top challenge is to retain the talent ICICI trains which is ...
Jul 26, 2006•16 min
As most travelers to Europe know French workers tend to take the month of August off shutting down many of their shops and cutting back the hours of some museums. But the French aren’t alone. People in much of Western Europe can afford to check out for a month because they receive an average of nearly two months a year in paid leave a combination of vacation and government holidays. That distinguishes them from citizens of the United States who despite a similarly productive economy and a compar...
Jul 26, 2006•11 min
Music physical movement technology and being cool have long gone hand in hand. Now two iconic brands Apple Computer and Nike are collaborating on a new system of gizmos that take exercising and digital-music players to a new level. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit allows runners and walkers to listen to songs and to record store and share information (such as speed distance covered and calories burned) with others about their exercise sessions. The system also ”talks” to runners in real time providing in...
Jul 26, 2006•12 min
On July 7 General Motors’ board of directors voted to study the pros and cons of entering into a three-way alliance with automakers Nissan and Renault. The alliance was proposed by GM shareholder Kirk Kerkorian who sees it as a way to revive the struggling company and expedite the restructuring taking place under GM’s current chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. Another central figure in this drama is Carlos Ghosn CEO of Nissan and Renault who is credited with turning around Nissan and who is seen by ...
Jul 12, 2006•22 min
In a recent newsletter Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel noted that ”everything is coming up roses for the equity markets -- except for the latest developments in the commodities markets.” What does that imply for the economy and stock markets? Siegel who is also the author of the book The Future for Investors notes that the economy is heading for a soft landing which means it is slowing down. ”But we’re not going to a recession by any means ” he told Knowledge at Wharton in a recent discu...
Jul 12, 2006•17 min
When she worked on Wall Street launching IPOs Alicia Polak helped generate new wealth. Now she is working to build wealth in the dirt-poor black township of Khayelitsha 30 minutes down a dusty road from Cape Town South Africa. Two years ago Polak founded The Khayelitsha Cookie Co. which now employs 11 women from the sprawling shantytown to bake high-end cookies and brownies that are distributed to top hotels restaurants and coffeehouses throughout South Africa. Working in conjunction with the So...
Jul 12, 2006•10 min
On July 11 Sony Pictures Home Entertainment became just the latest media giant to put its heft behind a small startup as the white-hot online video market has players both big and small placing bets on digital distribution. Add up the venture capital dollars funding online video startups the technology advances the willingness of established players like ABC CBS and NBC to try new distribution models and the increasing web viewership and it’s clear that the video market is at an inflection point...
Jul 12, 2006•13 min
In 2004 engineers at Massachusetts-based Bose Corp. a maker of stereo speakers and other audio equipment introduced a startling new product that had nothing to do with sound: an automobile suspension. Bose’s founder Amar Bose had suspected that his company’s knowledge of the physics of acoustics could also help drivers defeat bumps and potholes. The suspension now ready for the mass market exemplifies a technique known as knowledge bridging -- taking expertise from one field applying it to a com...
Jul 12, 2006•9 min
The commercial real estate market has been on a tear in the last few years. Banks insurance companies and institutional investors have funneled money into the market because its returns in an environment of low interest rates exceeded those of other asset classes. As interest rates begin to climb how will that situation change? Experts discussed those issues at a recent conference on Innovation and Risk Management in Real Estate Markets organized by the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and ...
Jul 12, 2006•13 min
For the 41 million Mexican voters who went to the polls on July 2 the major decision was whether they were going to continue to follow the same free-market model with limited spending and greater foreign investment that the country has had for the past six years or opt for change. Ultimately in one of the most expensive and contentious elections in the history of the country Mexicans chose the continuity represented by Felipe Calderón -- by a mere margin of 236 000 votes. Now that the election i...
Jul 12, 2006•12 min
The biggest takeover battle in the global steel industry came to an end in late June when Mittal Steel the world’s biggest steelmaker acquired Arcelor the industry’s second-largest company. For five months before shareholders signed off on the $32.2 billion transaction both sides were engaged in an acrimonious fight. At times it seemed as though the deal would collapse but finally after Mittal Steel significantly increased its offer it went through. What was Mittal Steel’s strategy in pursuing t...
Jul 12, 2006•9 min
Earlier this week Warren Buffett made a $31 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help find cures for the world’s 20 worst diseases and to improve the educational opportunities for all Americans. Buffett’s contribution -- in the form of 10 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to be transferred in increments over a number of years -- will more than double the size of the existing Foundation which is already the world’s largest. But questions have immediately arisen as to ...
Jun 28, 2006•15 min
In the spring of 1980 ”Dallas” ended its season with the biggest network television cliffhanger ever. Viewers waited all summer to discover who shot conniving oilman J.R. Ewing; when CBS finally provided the answer that fall a record 76% of American TVs in use were tuned into the show. In that pre-Internet pre-podcast pre-TiVo world networks had only each other to compete with. Today under pressure from on-demand media networks are using new tricks to retain viewers. Their strategy this time aro...
Jun 28, 2006•10 min
Over the past three decades index-style investing has moved from the fringes to the mainstream with an estimated $3 trillion now committed to this simple strategy -- to match broad market returns and give up as little as possible to fees and taxes. Clearly indexing has served investors well and is here to stay. But can it be made even better? Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel thinks so. The standard index which gives more weight to stocks of bigger companies should be replaced by ”fundamen...
Jun 28, 2006•12 min
Ray Ozzie is in. Bill Gates is heading out (but not entirely). And Steve Ballmer is staying right where he is (at least for now). What does this game of musical chairs among the members of Microsoft’s high command portend for the world’s biggest software company? Far from being a source of confusion and uncertainty Gates’ recently announced decision that he will relinquish his full-time day-to-day involvement in the company in July 2008 may be just the breath of fresh air needed for a firm facin...
Jun 28, 2006•10 min
At Wharton’s 10th annual leadership conference on June 13 the theme of ”Leading with Resilience: Coming Back from Challenge and Adversity” brought together speakers who had faced hardships in a number of different areas. Perhaps none of the speakers however had experienced as much physical danger as David Breashears filmmaker and mountaineer who recounted how he and his team survived one of the deadliest accidents in the history of Mt. Everest. ”So where does a mountaineer and filmmaker fit into...
Jun 28, 2006•8 min
The greatest future growth in the United States is likely to take place in the West the Sunbelt and along the I-85 corridor between Raleigh N.C. and Atlanta Ga. In a literal sense Americans are following the sun since factors such as the number of ”bright” or ”sun” days in January and the absence of winter heating costs are significant aspects of this anticipated redistribution of population note Wharton real estate professors Peter Linneman and Albert Saiz in their study ”Forecasting 2020 U.S. ...
Jun 28, 2006•10 min
Risk is part of the landscape when investing in start-up firms and venture capitalists need to approach this peril across a range of dimensions including geography industry and the timing of investments in the product development cycle according to speakers at a Wharton conference titled Innovation and Organic Growth: Balancing Risk and Reward hosted by the Mack Center for Technological Innovation. ”We have generated a lot of wealth for people and also created our fair share of losses ” noted on...
Jun 28, 2006•12 min
On June 8 the House of Representatives squashed an amendment that would prevent telecommunications companies from charging Internet content companies more to deliver enhanced services such as high quality audio and video content. The amendment would have required ”network neutrality ” an often-debated term that means different things to different people. To its supporters like Google Yahoo and eBay it means that telecommunications companies should be required to treat all Internet traffic -- whe...
Jun 14, 2006•12 min
Almost everyone these days will agree that an organization’s intellectual capital or knowledge assets are as important as its physical assets. The challenge of how to track organize and use knowledge assets however is easier said than done. How can companies tackle this challenge? Michael Lynch founder and CEO of Autonomy a company with offices in Cambridge England and San Francisco believes that his company’s technology can help organizations extract meaning from reams of unstructured data. Aut...
Jun 14, 2006•30 min
