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Casual observers may have concluded that Google’s introduction this week of its ’Chrome’ web browser was a direct assault on the dominance of Microsoft’s Explorer. But Wharton professors David Hsu and Kevin Werbach see a longer-term strategy at work. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
New York-based teen apparel retailer Aéropostale has had a bullish summer with second-quarter net income rising 43% over the previous year. Meanwhile other teen-focused retailers including The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch have suffered losses. Experts from Wharton and elsewhere suggest that teen retailers are competing intensely for attention in hard economic times even as these new conditions are giving rise to a changing landscape of winners and losers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privac...
Now that the FCC has approved a merger of the two satellite radio companies Sirius XM’s big challenges are to stop the flow of red ink and settle on a strategy to compete with the myriad of other portable music providers. Says one Wharton professor: ”They may have one more shot at a Hail Mary pass.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Rather than hire experienced people from outside many companies might be better off training fresh recruits with little experience in the industry. That approach can give the firm more control over how the new workers adapt to their employer’s corporate strategy and culture according to a research paper by Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard titled ”Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
One research firm estimates that at least 2% of global atmospheric carbon emissions can be traced to the information technology industry because of the electricity consumed by PCs servers cooling systems telecommunications gear and printers. Now under pressure from tightening global anti-pollution standards the threat of environmental lawsuits and more awareness of corporate responsibility many technology firms are racing to place a ”green” stamp of environmental approval on their operations and...
In the past business in Africa behaved like a ”caterpillar” -- uninteresting slow moving and easy to step on says Eric Kacou managing director of OTF Group a U.S.-based consulting firm focused on emerging economies. Today the continent is poised for a metamorphosis that requires a ”new mindset” relying less on natural resources and more on innovation and private sector growth. At the Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Cape Town South Africa Kacou was among the speakers on two panels exploring the po...
In a year when airlines all over the world are reeling from the double whammy of high oil prices and a faltering economy Embraer -- the Brazil based aircraft maker -- doubled its net income in the second quarter. The company’s growth during difficult economic times offers an example of the way that companies from rapidly developing economies are reshaping global business say Harold L. Sirkin James W. Hemerling and Arindam K. Bhattacharya in their new book Globality: Competing with Everyone from ...
Sandeep Jauhar’s book Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation is the unsettling account of his medical residency at a New York hospital largely focused on his first year. It represents his take on his internship interweaving that experience with something of his childhood family history previous studies and work experiences. In the process Jauhar tells us about himself medical education and health care. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
While many companies are scrambling to gain competitive advantage by finding ways to innovate using technology the film industry -- as characterized in Scott Kirsner’s book Inventing the Movies -- has had a century-long history of shunning innovation and eschewing technological progress. Subtitled Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs the book is a case study in the difficulties of introducing technological change in an industry that caref...
Does reforming institutions always result in benefits to the system regardless of when and how they take place? Are some institutions more important than others? Elena Panaritis’s debut work Prosperity Unbound not only answers these questions but targets what the writer believes to be the most valuable institution necessary for growth -- the property system and its underpinning laws and regulations. Panaritis who heads Panel Group a Washington D.C. based organization that works with governments ...
How can a company deliver continuous exceptional growth year after year? J. C. Larreche a professor of marketing at INSEAD answers that question in his book The Momentum Effect: How to Ignite Exceptional Growth. According to the author’s research momentum-powered firms delivered 80% more shareholder value than their slower rivals. ”Momentum leaders are not lucky -- they are smart ” he writes in this excerpt. ”They have discovered the source of momentum and with it the beginnings of a smarter way...
In their book Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track authors Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg point out that today’s education system is seriously flawed -- it focuses on teaching rather than learning. ”Why should children -- or adults -- be asked to do something computers and related equipment can do much better than they can?” the authors ask in an excerpt from the book. ”Why doesn’t education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments t...
Why don’t we see the truck racing toward us or the treasure of gold beneath our feet? Are these just invisible events? In this excerpt from the book It Starts with One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations authors J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen offer examples from the mobile phone industry and from the Spanish exploration of America in the 16th century to explain why organizations and individuals fail to see the need for change. ”Why do we fail to see the need for change?” the autho...
Scrabble -- the board game in which you compete with other players in making words -- has become a familiar household name since it was introduced in 1948. Its unofficial online double Scrabulous has become one of the most popular applications on Facebook since it was launched in July 2007. Now both games are making waves as Hasbro the copyright holder for Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada has filed a lawsuit against the creators of Scrabulous -- following which Scrabulous was yanked off Facebook ...
Progress toward unfettered international commerce stumbled last week with the collapse of the World Trade Organization’s Doha talks a seven-year effort to establish new global trade rules. The lengthy talks were complicated by the rapid emergence of China and India as major economic powers with commercial and strategic interests to protect and the clout to do so. Many observers say the talks’ collapse is a setback for poorer nations which need access to larger markets in order for their economie...
Retailers are in a tough situation locked between rising product costs and a limited ability to raise their prices. Even cost-savvy market leaders such as Costco are having a difficult time. But Wharton faculty say that handled carefully the current inflationary period may actually be a business opportunity for some companies. The key: Forgetting some of the old rules of retailing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Managing the forces arrayed against them -- hostility against Islam in the Western world resistance to change among Muslims and hostility to the West among Muslim populations -- is no easy task for Muslim women in positions of leadership. As one of the participants in a recent leadership conference noted: ”A Muslim woman must prove not just that she is as good or better than a man but as good as a Western woman.” Two Wharton leadership experts were among the presenters at the three-week event. H...
Many public funds don’t adhere to basic norms of modern money management and most don’t even appear to make an effort to match their investment strategies with their future financial obligations. ”As [sovereign wealth funds] have grown they appear to be demonstrating an increasing risk appetite very little transparency and virtually no clarity of objectives ” write three researchers including Wharton professor of insurance and risk management Olivia Mitchell in a soon-to be-published paper title...
After the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 2005 that Internet file-sharing sites Grokster and StreamCast had illegally aided their customers’ efforts to share pirated copies of copyrighted music and video files many commentators predicted the demise of businesses that depended on online file-sharing. But new start-ups say they have found ways to make peer-to-peer (often called P2P) file-sharing legal and perhaps profitable. Still their business plans need tweaking according to a paper published re...
Despite warnings of a bubble investors and entrepreneurs see long-term promise for firms that make efficient technology and alternative energy. Unlike the vaporware of the tech bubble that burst in 2001 these technologies are up running and proven say participants at a recent conference sponsored by Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
These days when the U.S. Department of Defense buys a fighter jet from Lockheed Martin it doesn’t simply pay Lockheed for the physical product. Instead the government has a ”performance-based contract” with the defense supplier according to Serguei Netessine professor of operations and information management at Wharton. This contract says in effect that the government’s reimbursement to Lockheed hinges on the jets’ performance -- that is how often the planes are able to fly. In this interview Ne...
Gasoline at more than $4 a gallon has proved to be the price point at which U.S. consumers make big changes in their driving habits. With SUVs and pickups suddenly out of favor in the world’s biggest automobile market Asian manufacturers who invested heavily in fuel-saving technologies -- and European car makers who sell to markets where expensive gas is nothing new -- are better positioned to meet new consumer demands. Just how dire is the situation for U.S. auto manufacturers and is there any ...
The stock market’s June swoon has carried into July with key indicators pointing to a bear market weighed down by rising oil prices the credit crisis and more bad news from Detroit as the Big Three auto manufacturers reported substantial losses. Meanwhile the G-8 gathered in Japan to discuss global warming and the economy but didn’t include the two largest emerging economies -- China and India -- in the talks. Knowledge at Wharton spoke to Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel about these deve...
Companies spend too much time worrying about the burdens brought by global warming -- the possibility of carbon taxes and greater regulation of emissions -- and ignoring the potential commercial upside according to participants in a recent Wharton conference titled ”Winners and Losers in Green Technologies ” sponsored by the William and Phyllis Mack Center for Technological Innovation. To showcase a proactive approach to the issue two companies -- DuPont and NetJets -- shared their tales of ”goi...
A new global middle is rising up in emerging economies around the world providing competition for labor and resources along with enormous promise for multinationals eager to sell to the burgeoning ranks of first-time consumers. But don’t expect this new group to act in the same way -- and have the same preferences -- as prior generations of middle-class consumers suggest Wharton faculty and analysts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
Companies like Hewlett-Packard Ernst & Young and Del Monte Pet Foods have more in common than one may think: They are all savvy participants in the growing trend of consumers’ use of social networking technologies to access information and get what they need. According to speakers at the recent Supernova conference in San Francisco too few companies study how people actually interact with the Internet and utilize online collaborative tools and are therefore not using the social networking ph...
When are investors like termites? When they are trying to avoid government rules. And that is one reason a host of new regulations won’t prevent a crisis like the subprime housing mess from happening again according to a speaker at the recent annual financial risk roundtable held by the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and the Oliver Wyman Institute. He and others focused their discussion on the causes of and possible solutions to the housing and banking crises. Hosted on Acast. See acast.c...
Since 2004 Steven R. Loranger has been chairman president and CEO of ITT a diversified high-technology engineering and manufacturing company that plays a key role in global defense and security. The company had $9 billion in 2007 sales $4.2 billion of which were generated by its defense electronics and services business and it ranks among the top 10 U.S. defense contractors. Loranger recently spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about how ITT has positioned itself for growth despite the economic slow...
Managing commodity risk has emerged as a key issue in today’s economy. Consider airlines which have seen fuel costs rise seven-fold over the last few years says Bob Tevelson a partner and managing director at BCG. In this interview Tevelson says commodity risks are associated with both price volatility and supply availability. More and more companies may wish to turn to hedging strategies to manage commodity risk he notes but such strategies can pose risks themselves unless they are properly imp...
Marshall W. Meyer professor of management at Wharton has made many trips to China to research the rapid growth of its economy and the successes and difficulties it has had in growing so quickly. In this interview Meyer discusses the recent controversy surrounding China’s exports of substandard toys and pharmaceuticals to the United States and the implications for supply-chain management. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information....
