It’s been a busy few weeks for Adobe Systems Microsoft and Google. All three have announced plans or new technologies that will address the latest vision of software’s future -- one that combines the features of web-based applications with desktop software to create a hybrid model offering the best of both worlds. Indeed the question today is not so much whether this desktop/webtop model will be adopted but rather which company will provide the best platform for implementing it. Knowledge at Wha...
Oct 31, 2007•18 min
When Thomas Friedman wrote his popular book The World Is Flat one of its central arguments was that geography might soon become history. The proliferation of information technology and telecommunications networks has integrated the world in ways that were unimaginable in the past -- and this has transformed how companies produce and distribute products and services. One result of this transformation is the rise of networks of companies that are bound together through IT and logistics. How can fi...
Oct 31, 2007•45 min
For marketers the Internet changes everything -- and nothing at all. For example it enables companies to instantly reach consumers in different countries and economically tailor messages to them based on demographics buying habits and other information. Yet it doesn’t free these companies from the constant challenge of building distinct durable brands. At the 2007 Wharton Marketing Conference participants on a panel titled ”The Challenge of Going Global and Staying Local ” debated the potential ...
Oct 31, 2007•14 min
Entrepreneurs love to grumble about the roadblocks and delays created by bureaucrats. Government officials they say are slow bumbling and concerned only about sticking to the rules and clocking out at 4:55 p.m. But in a study of global entrepreneurship Raffi Amit and Mauro Guillen both Wharton management professors have found that a simple if smart bureaucratic initiative mattered critically in determining a country’s level of entrepreneurship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf...
Oct 31, 2007•10 min
Oil is marching toward $100 a barrel largely due to China’s boom. Demand for ethanol is pushing corn prices up. Soybean prices are rising because so many bean fields have been switched to corn. In short prices of commodities worldwide are soaring making for frenzied action in commodities futures markets. New research by Wharton finance professor Gary Gorton and two colleagues shows how spot and futures prices are good indicators of low-inventory commodities which in turn can offer outsized inves...
Oct 31, 2007•11 min
Consolidation cutbacks and competition from the web -- these are the headlines grabbing the attention of business journalists around the world. Concerns about the quality of reporting and information have risen steadily as the industry has undergone dramatic changes. How has global expansion affected the standards of news organizations? What impact have blogs and ”citizen journalism” had on the industry? And what role does investigative journalism play in an age of around-the-clock cable news up...
Oct 31, 2007•28 min
In an era of rising petroleum prices African oil is drawing new interest from major companies around the globe according to John Ghazvinian author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil who spoke at a recent event sponsored by the Wharton African Students Association. Companies Ghazvinian says see the continent as the most promising place in the world for new production. Yet due to an economic paradox known as the ”Resource Curse ” most Africans are realizing little benefit from this influx ...
Oct 31, 2007•10 min
Kristine Tompkins former CEO of outdoor apparel company Patagonia pulled no punches with the audience attending her recent Wharton Leadership Lecture. Tompkins said that when she began working full-time at Patagonia in 1972 she didn’t understand how the actions of the business world as well as the behavior of individuals ”affected the very underpinnings” of the individual the family and the community. ”You know that now ” she said and ”the choices you make count more and more.” People who can ma...
Oct 31, 2007•11 min
As medical costs escalate and the number of Americans without health insurance continues to rise the 2008 presidential candidates have responded by putting health care near the top of their agendas. Indeed many candidates have already laid out detailed programs to address the nation’s health care problems. As a result meaningful change in the system seems likely to occur once a new president takes office. As Mark V. Pauly Wharton professor of health care systems notes: ”I’m optimistic this time ...
Oct 17, 2007•17 min
Long gone are the days when firms expected their chief information officer to function as ”chief technology mechanic.” As companies look for ways to maintain a competitive edge in new markets CIOs are playing a more central leadership role taking on increasing responsibility for corporate strategy and other duties outside of core technology. Even so CIOs are still expected to ensure the quality and performance of the IT organization. How can CIOs balance these priorities? To answer that question...
Oct 17, 2007•26 min
It is perhaps the core question in the ongoing debate over corporate governance: Does the corporation exist for the benefit of shareholders or does it have other equally important stakeholders such as employees customers and suppliers? A new study by Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen and two colleagues does not claim to provide a definitive answer but it does show the various benefits of the stakeholder approach. It also demonstrates that the issue is not as settled as some researchers an...
Oct 17, 2007•11 min
”He who takes medicine and neglects to diet wastes the skills of his doctors.” This proverb highlights the findings of a new study by Wharton marketing professor Lisa Bolton and two colleagues that explores how consumers in China choose between traditional Chinese remedies and Western medicine when seeking treatment. According to the study Chinese consumers tend to prefer traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) but will opt for Western medicine in particular situations such as when they are hoping to...
Oct 17, 2007•11 min
It is a scene millions of Americans have been in -- sitting next to a real estate agent at closing to sign the papers for a new home. Often the buyer has spent months with the agent. And to hear agents tell it they are indispensable guides through the hazardous home-buying terrain. How is it then that millions of borrowers took on toxic subprime mortgages that could cost them their homes? Why did their agents not warn them off? While much criticism has been leveled at subprime lenders and mortga...
Oct 17, 2007•11 min
Former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca once noted ”You can have brilliant ideas; but if you can’t get them across your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” In their new book The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor G. Richard Shell and management consultant Mario Moussa provide a systematic approach to the problem Iacocca identified. Using relationship-based emotionally intelligent persuasion to secure both individual and organizat...
Oct 17, 2007•14 min
When the AARP recently announced its seventh annual ”Best Employers for Workers over 50” awards the winners didn’t get there by offering the traditional fringe benefit trio of health life and disability insurance. Instead the AARP recognized companies for providing workers over 50 with ”forward-looking” benefits packages that include for example alternative work schedules and lifelong learning and career training opportunities. But are companies interested in offering jobs or job security to old...
Oct 17, 2007•17 min
After a terrible August when the U.S. stock market appeared to be headed for the pits October 1 saw a massive rally that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average soaring above 14 000. The following day however stocks began to fall again mainly due to a sharp drop in home sales. In short Wall Street still seems to be sending out mixed signals. What will be the long-term effects of the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates? Will the U.S. economy move past the sub-prime mortgage mess? How will these de...
Oct 03, 2007•20 min
The 57 members of AHRMIO the Association for Human Resources Management in International Organizations range from the UN UNICEF and OECD to the World Health Organization the World Bank and the International Labour Organization. Mary Jane Peters executive director and Roger Eggleston president emeritus were at Wharton recently for the group’s 7th annual conference. They talked with Knowledge at Wharton about their successes -- such as the introduction of paternity leave and policies regarding sex...
Oct 03, 2007•30 min
Online retailers may be shooting themselves in the tail -- the long tail that is according to Kartik Hosanagar Wharton professor of operations and information management and Dan Fleder a Wharton doctoral candidate in new research on the ”recommenders” that many of these retailers use on their websites. Recommenders -- perhaps the best known is Amazon’s -- tend to drive consumers to concentrate their purchases among popular items rather than allow them to explore and buy whatever piques their cur...
Oct 03, 2007•12 min
When the Internet was young pioneering online job recruitment firm Monster.com rocked the way people look for work. Now Monster itself has hit a rocky patch marked by the resignation of three top officers a major security breach and the rise of new competitors including Craigslist. According to Wharton faculty and analysts Monster is confronting the ”middle age” that all veteran firms of the Internet’s early days must face. The company remains a force in employment advertising they say but as it...
Oct 03, 2007•13 min
Forget what you learned about markets in your introductory economics class. In a new book titled The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can’t Always Get What You Want Wharton professor Joel Waldfogel challenges the conventional thinking that markets will provide adequately if left to their own devices. His book makes the case that while markets do a good job of offering products that a majority of people desire they can fall short in meeting the needs of consumers with less prevalent preferences. Po...
Oct 03, 2007•10 min
After an unusually long 23-year tenure as chief executive Reuben Mark who is still chairman of Colgate-Palmolive sees corporate leadership like a baseball game that is won not by spectacular homeruns but by singles and doubles. In a recent Wharton leadership lecture titled ”The Essence of Colgate’s Leadership Training ” Mark said effective leadership at the $12.2 billion consumer products company pays off in incremental and consistent gains. ”The essence of leadership is the idea of continuous i...
Oct 03, 2007•10 min
CBS launches an online editing studio called EyeLab so fans can edit short versions of video programming. ABC distributes full versions of its television shows on its own site and via AOL for free. NBC Universal teams up with Amazon.com to distribute its shows. The frenetic wheeling and dealing for digital distribution of TV programs -- just as the fall season is gearing up -- reflects the television networks’ attempts to find Internet business models that can be profitable and still protect bot...
Oct 03, 2007•17 min
When Apple dropped the price of its iPhone by a third after only two months on the market even its most loyal buyers complained bitterly forcing CEO Steve Jobs to apologize and offer a partial rebate. According to Wharton faculty and analysts the iPhone episode reflects an evolving marketplace where innovation fierce competition and globalization are changing strategic approaches to pricing. Meanwhile pricing is gaining new interest as management looks for ways to increase revenues after years o...
Oct 03, 2007•12 min
When mortgage default rates started to climb earlier this year many experts thought the damage would be confined to the minority of issuers that had binged on subprime lending. It hasn’t turned out that way. Consumer spending is off the credit crunch is spreading and the housing market is in a slump. ”The degree and the extent of the harm done were not expected. It surprised me. But the fact that this would end badly was not surprising ” says Wharton real estate and finance professor Susan Wacht...
Sep 19, 2007•18 min
Among the U.S. auto industry’s many challenges are the ongoing negotiations between General Motors and the United Automobile Workers union aimed at coming up with a new contract to replace the one that expired on September 15; the recent takeover of Chrysler by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management; and a possible slowdown in consumer spending as a result of fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis. Meanwhile industry watchers are awaiting the outcome of reported efforts by India’s Ta...
Sep 19, 2007•31 min
Men are bigger tightwads than women; younger people are more likely to be spendthrifts than older people; and the more educated a person is the more likely he or she is to be a tightwad. While ”tightwad” and ”spendthrift” are not exactly labels that most people would welcome in a discussion of their spending habits they are valuable as predictors of consumer behavior. Indeed Scott Rick a visiting professor at Wharton and two colleagues recently came up with a scale to determine the extent to whi...
Sep 19, 2007•14 min
Sam Zell the master real estate investor has built a fortune on the cycles that shape his industry. These days he believes the current turmoil in financial markets is more an emotional reaction to yet another period of excess rather than a true credit collapse. In a talk at Wharton moderated by real estate professor Peter Linneman the Chicago-based investor said markets currently are spooked by problems with U.S. subprime lending. However they still have capital to deploy unlike other real estat...
Sep 19, 2007•10 min
Because the U.N. has an aggressive agenda for gender equity you might think it would ensure that women play a prominent role in its high-profile peacekeeping arena. According to Rachael Mayanja an assistant U.N. secretary-general and special advisor on gender issues and advancement of women you would be wrong. At the 2007 annual conference of the Association for Human Resources Management in International Organizations (AHRMIO) held at Wharton this month Mayanja noted that none of the U.N.’s 18 ...
Sep 19, 2007•10 min
The corporate apologies are piling up. Mattel CEO Robert Eckert apologized on September 12 for lead paint found in millions of the company’s toys. TD Ameritrade CEO Joe Moglia apologized on September 14 for a database breach. Apple CEO Steve Jobs apologized on September 6 for cutting the price of the high-end iPhone. Dell executives apologized in August for delayed deliveries of certain models. JetBlue apologized in February for canceling flights and leaving passengers stranded during an ice sto...
Sep 19, 2007•13 min
Pop singer Britney Spears would seem to have little to teach candidates for the U.S. presidency. But her lame performance at the MTV Video Music Awards on September 9 -- she forgot the words to a lip-synched song -- is a cautionary tale about the speed with which news travels in a wired world. Indeed news reports and video clips of political gaffes travel just as fast as bad music reviews and elicit judgments just as quickly. For presidential candidates it leaves little room for error in how the...
Sep 19, 2007•13 min
