Although far from a done deal US Airways’ hostile bid to acquire bankrupt Delta Air Lines would result in a strong combined company and would be a feather in the cap of the chief executive of US Airways. But it would also be a mixed blessing for passengers resulting in more flight choices but most likely higher fares as well according to faculty members at Wharton and industry analysts who also note that the overture could lead to further consolidation in the industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast...
Nov 29, 2006•13 min
Africa’s political leaders are taking major steps to build a better foundation for investment one of its most influential business leaders told the recent 14th annual Wharton Africa Business Forum. Mamphela Ramphele a former managing director of the World Bank said that the continent ”has made historic efforts to affirm good governance build strong institutions and fight corruption.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 29, 2006•10 min
After conquering the advertising frontier in cyberspace Google Yahoo and eBay are now turning to traditional media for future growth by brokering ad sales for offline media like radio television and print. The Internet players’ foray into offline advertising could drive down rates but advertisers and media companies may not completely abandon the current system of relationship-based sales for Internet auctions according to Wharton faculty and industry executives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p...
Nov 29, 2006•13 min
Michael J. Critelli isn’t one of the business world’s high-profile CEOs. But his tenure at Pitney Bowes has lasted over 10 years more than twice the average survival rate for Fortune 500 company heads. And those two facts he noted during a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture are probably not unrelated. ”I have deliberately downplayed my role as a leader ” he said in describing how he helped take the firm from ”a hardware company” to a diversified technology company. ”I went the route of not being ...
Nov 29, 2006•9 min
Emerging real estate markets in India and China along with recovering property industries in Germany and Japan are among the top destinations for global real estate investors according to panelists at the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center’s fall meeting. During a session titled ”Global Hot Spots -- How to Think about Hot Foreign Markets ” Wharton real estate professor Peter Linneman called on each panelist to describe the markets they find most intriguing. Hosted on Acast. See acas...
Nov 29, 2006•12 min
Wharton marketing professor Josh Eliashberg has a message for Hollywood: Get geeky. The use of statistical analysis and computer models he says can help managers in the movie industry understand why ratings on a given film will vary from country to country. Even more radically they can lead to the better evaluation of scripts. And using these sorts of techniques he insists won’t dim the magic of the silver screen. Eliashberg Wharton colleagues John Zhang and Sam Hui and Mark Leenders from the Un...
Nov 29, 2006•11 min
If a traveling salesman has to visit a set number of cities in a set number of days what is the shortest route he can take to cover all his stops and then return home? And does the answer to this question relate in any way to the manner in which a shopper navigates her way through a grocery store? In a new paper Wharton marketing professors Peter S. Fader and Eric T. Bradlow and doctoral student Sam K. Hui use a concept known as the ”Traveling Salesman Problem” to study the efficiencies -- and i...
Nov 29, 2006•10 min
Graeme Wood is director of acquisition integration at Cisco the leading worldwide supplier of networking equipment and network management for the Internet headquartered in San Jose Calif. Since In this role he has overseen the integration of 30 Cisco acquisitions -- the most notable of which is Scientific Atlanta. The $7 billion deal completed earlier this year allows Cisco to offer an end-to-end data voice video and mobility solution for carrier networks and the digital home. During a recent vi...
Nov 29, 2006•19 min
As the polls had widely anticipated Democrats defeated the Republicans in Congress and also gained control of the Senate by a narrow margin in the U.S. mid-term elections in early November. As attention now turns to the Presidential elections of 2008 President George W. Bush will need to find ways to increase bi-partisan cooperation with Democrats like Nancy Pelosi who is poised to become the first female Speaker in U.S. history. What do the mid-term elections mean for investors and the stock ma...
Nov 15, 2006•12 min
Church pastors last year had a chance to win a free trip to London and $1 000 cash -- if they mentioned Disney’s film ”The Chronicles of Narnia” in their sermons. Chrysler hoping to target affluent African Americans with its new luxury SUV is sponsoring a Patti LaBelle gospel music tour through African-American megachurches nationwide. Advertising has begun to seep into churches according to religious marketing and academic experts pushing the boundaries by selling products with no intrinsic rel...
Nov 15, 2006•18 min
To drive home the subject of his speech at the recent third annual Wharton Marketing conference Michael Polk president of Unilever United States flashed up a definition straight from the dictionary: ’Innovation: a new idea or method; a change in something established.’ Polk who manages such brands as Dove Axe Slim-Fast Country Crock Wishbone and Q-Tips said innovation not invention lies at the heart of successful marketing campaigns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 15, 2006•10 min
Contrary to rumors about its imminent ”death” following the transfer of power from the British Hong Kong has emerged as the financial intermediary through which foreign investors seek to invest tens of billions of dollars into mainland China. Meanwhile once-booming Shanghai’s star is starting to fade. What happened? According to Wharton faculty and other experts while Hong Kong was crafting a strategy to position itself as both a legal and financial services center for China Shanghai was weighed...
Nov 15, 2006•13 min
High definition televisions are expected to be hot sellers this holiday season but consumers are likely to have a tough time sorting out the newest generation video discs and the players that go with them. The culprit: Two competing high definition DVD formats -- Blu-ray and HD-DVD -- and no sign of a clear winner. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Nov 15, 2006•11 min
The recent elections have made Business Roundtable chairman Harold (Terry) McGraw III hopeful that a less partisan political atmosphere can lead to real progress in addressing America’s economic challenges. In a Wharton Leadership Series talk two days after the November 7 elections McGraw who is chairman president and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies called for measures to lower trade barriers improve the competitiveness of the country’s work force modernize health care and ”level the playing fi...
Nov 15, 2006•10 min
One of the biggest complaints employees have according to Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade is that ”they are not sufficiently recognized by their organizations for the work they do .... When employees don’t feel that the organization respects and values them they tend to experience higher levels of burnout.” Barsade and doctoral student Lakshmi Ramarajan look at the role of respect in a paper titled ”What Makes the Job Tough? The Influence of Organizational Respect on Burnout in Human ...
Nov 15, 2006•14 min
In mid-October the Chicago Board of Trade agreed to be purchased by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for about $8 billion topping a wave of exchange mergers in the U.S. and Europe. Two factors drove the deal: the enormous growth in the use of futures options and other derivatives to hedge risks and speculate and the need for economies of scale to compete with exchanges that have grown through mergers. Wharton professors analyze the deal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information...
Nov 01, 2006•9 min
With all the statistics showing how many adults in the United States are obese (30%) how many deaths are caused each year by obesity (365 000) and how bad the problem is (getting worse not better) it’s no surprise that obesity is definitely on employers’ radar screens this year. But Wharton experts and others point out obesity is not just bad for the individual; it also weighs heavily on companies’ rising health care costs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 01, 2006•17 min
As Chinese firms increasingly turn their attention to strengthening their ability to compete in the global economy they have a new challenge -- developing international expertise. One way they are doing this is by turning to Western executive education programs which can include everything from courses in finance marketing and corporate governance to a visit to Bloomingdale’s and meals at noted Western restaurants. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 01, 2006•12 min
In India regulatory protections for investors are weak banks don’t lend much money to small- and medium-size businesses and the country’s legal system is highly corrupt. Yet when it comes to economic growth India seems to be doing everything right. How can this be? According to a new study by professors at Wharton and three other business schools owners of small- and medium-size firms have found ways to finance growth and settle legal disputes outside the system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/p...
Nov 01, 2006•16 min
Shoppers with tastes or sizes that fall outside the mainstream may have more trouble finding what they want in stores as retailers attempt to shift low-volume items to Internet sales. According to Wharton faculty and industry analysts retailers are paring back in-store selections in order to save inventory handling costs as well as precious floor space. The strategy however has its drawbacks. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Nov 01, 2006•12 min
Errors in corporate strategy are often self-inflicted and a singular focus on shareholder value is the ”Bermuda Triangle” of strategy according to Michael E. Porter director of Harvard’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. Porter who recently spoke at Wharton as part of the school’s SEI Center Distinguished Lecture Series challenged managers to stop trying to be the best company in their industry and instead deliver ”a unique value” to their customers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/priv...
Nov 01, 2006•12 min
Ever since Netflix launched its online video rental service in 1999 conventional wisdom has suggested that the clock was ticking on its business model. First there were worries that Blockbuster would squash Netflix. Then it was Wal-Mart’s DVD rental service which Netflix absorbed in a partnership arrangement last year. Today Netflix is under fire from movie download services offered by powerhouses such as Amazon.com and Apple. Looking ahead what kind of sequel is likely for Netflix? Hosted on Ac...
Nov 01, 2006•11 min
A recent issue of the Wall Street Journal had two front page stories one on executive compensation and the other on backdating of stock options. The headline for the first was ”Behind Soaring Executive Pay Decades of Failed Restraints ” the implication being that executive compensation is out of control and seems to resist all attempts to rein it in. Wharton accounting professor Wayne Guay talks with Knowledge at Wharton about his views on executive compensation including the role of stock optio...
Oct 25, 2006•30 min
Mike McCallister CEO of Humana one of the United States’ largest publicly traded health benefits providers is leading the company’s change from a traditional ”one-size-fits-all” health care delivery model to one in which product innovation is driven by consumer needs. McCallister spoke with Wharton management professor Michael Useem and Stephen Wilson engagement director in George Group Consulting’s Conquering Complexity practice about managing complexity while innovating in a rapidly changing i...
Oct 25, 2006•27 min
The crisis at Hewlett-Packard over allegations that its chairwoman Patricia Dunn authorized illegal surveillance of HP board members in order to find out who leaked sensitive company information to the press is dragging on perhaps longer than most people first expected. And it has raised a number of important issues about corporate governance privacy protection and surveillance of employees. Tom Donaldson professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton joins Knowledge at Wharton to tal...
Oct 18, 2006•18 min
Next week the Federal Reserve meets to decide whether to increase interest rates or to keep them unchanged -- but the picture on inflation looks unclear. On October 17 the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the Producer Price Index for finished goods fell by 1.3% in September. Much of this was driven by the drop in energy prices -- which have seen the sharpest decline in nearly three years. Core wholesale prices however went up by 0.6% because of a recovery in the cars and light trucks bu...
Oct 18, 2006•12 min
Seven years ago Rajesh Jain ignited a dot-com storm in India when his portal IndiaWorld was sold to Sify an Internet service provider for $115 million. Today he is CEO of Netcore a Linux-based messaging software firm and also maintains an active blog emergic.org. Jain met with Knowledge at Wharton at his offices in Mumbai to discuss how mobile phones could hold the key to the Internet’s evolution in India and other emerging economies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 18, 2006•19 min
Tough Choices Carly Fiorina’s new book about her rise to the top of corporate America as CEO of Hewlett-Packard and later her firing at the hands of the HP board is almost like two books in one: A story about the passion and dedication that drove her to succeed along with an unwillingness to fully address why her tenure at HP was so short-lived. Knowledge at Wharton reviews Tough Choices and in an interview conducted earlier this week talks to Fiorina about her book her image the leadership at H...
Oct 18, 2006•14 min
Clear Channel Communications which owns more than 1 200 stations and is the nation’s largest radio company has begun selling five-second two-second and even one-second spots that they hope will appeal to cost-conscious marketers. But how much can an advertiser communicate in a five-second ”adlet” or a two- or one-second ”blink ” as these super-short ads are called? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Oct 18, 2006•11 min
If 401(k)s and similar plans are the main way Americans invest for retirement how can employers improve them? By making enrollment automatic minimizing the use of the employer’s stock expanding the role of annuities and improving employees’ financial knowledge according to a set of recommendations issued by the Financial Economists Roundtable a group of about 50 prominent economists including several Wharton faculty members. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Oct 18, 2006•13 min
