Knowledge at Wharton

A mathematical parrot. A Dutch-speaking orangutan. A chimp that can pass for a boy. These are the otherworldly characters -- and provocative thought experiments -- that anchor best-selling author Michael Crichton’s most recent novel Next. The book weaves together several storylines in order to trace the complex interplay of scientific innovation legal loopholes and economic opportunity. Along the...

From Reading Lolita in Tehran an award-winning account of an underground Iranian women’s book group to The Kite Runner a best-selling novel about modern Afghanistan tales of Islamic culture have entranced Western readers eager for a glimpse into a world that is at once far removed from theirs and yet fundamentally intertwined with it. A recent book adds to this genre. In Kabul Beauty School: An Am...

Marshall Goldsmith the founder of executive coaching firm Marshall Goldsmith Partners has worked closely with more than 70 CEOs during his career. Forbes has named him one of the five most respected executive coaches. The Wall Street Journal ranks him among the top 10 executive educators. Now Goldsmith has assembled a book that distills the wisdom he and his stable of coaches usually dispense in p...

In Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company (Wharton School Publishing) the focus is on optimizing investments in every aspect of marketing whether it’s targeting the right customer delivering added value or generating better product ideas. Authors Leonard M. Lodish Howard L. Morgan and Shellye Archambeau offer tools tactics and strategies...

In The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies ... And How to Break Them (Wharton School Publishing) Jagdish N. Sheth a marketing professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University analyzes why companies that are at the top of their industry suddenly disappear from the landscape. He maintains that successful companies fall prey to complacency arrogance competency dependence competitiv...

According to Daniel M. Cable what characterizes successful companies these days is ”a strikingly different obsessively focused” workforce one that -- compared to competitors’ workforces -- is ”downright strange.” Cable a management professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina makes his case in a new book titled Change to Strange: Create a Great Organization by...

Larry Huston was vice president of knowledge and innovation for many years at Procter & Gamble. During that time he was the architect of its Connect + Develop program the creator of P&G’s Brand Bootcamp operation and innovation leader for the company’s global fabric and homecare business among other initiatives. He is now managing partner of 4INNO and recently joined Wharton’s Mack Center...

David G. Marshall CEO of Amerimar Realty in Philadelphia has made a career of seeking out bitter lemons and turning them into sweet -- and profitable -- lemonade. Through the years he has taken over distressed properties -- such as The Rittenhouse in Philadelphia Pier 39 in San Francisco and Denver Place in Colorado -- and made them into successful enterprises. Marshall recently went to Shanghai a...

One pitch for charity described the needs of Rokia a young girl in Africa who is desperately poor and faces starvation. Another pitch talks about food shortages affecting more than three million children many of whom are homeless. Which pitch is more effective? Not surprisingly it’s the first but Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small and two co-authors delve deeper into the issue of sympathy a...

The bombs rocked the London Underground within 50 seconds of each other near the end of rush hour on July 7 2005 killing dozens of passengers and injuring hundreds more. It was the worst attack on London since World War II. But the majority of the Underground or the Tube as it’s known locally was operating again by the next morning according to Tim O’Toole the Underground’s managing director and c...

Trying to determine what things are worth is a huge challenge in today’s business world where companies are increasingly being pressed to account for the changing values of complex financial instruments -- from insurance policies to employee stock options to exotic derivatives. Consequently firms are turning to ever more intricate financial models that attempt to deduce values using an array of in...

In 2000 Bill Browder manager of The Hermitage Fund sifted through reams of obscure Russian securities registration data to piece together a presentation outlining how managers of the Russian oil company Gazprom were shifting corporate assets to entities controlled by friends and relatives. Browder shared his findings with journalists who then wrote about the case leading to the firing of the firm’...

In 1993 a television ad featuring ”Harry and Louise” -- a ”typical” American couple dismayed by the Clinton administration’s universal health care proposal -- helped to kill health care reform in the U.S. for the next decade. With the 2008 presidential election in sight the debate has resurfaced but are the prospects for universal health care any better today? In an ongoing study of health care sy...

When your family business involves an extended network of 52 family shareholders as it does for Bukit Kiara Properties a Malaysian real estate development firm simply pulling everyone together for family dinner can be hard work. But N.K. Tong who co-founded Bukit Kiara with his father says there’s just one person to call: ”My auntie.” Tong’s aunt plays a role some scholars describe as ”chief emoti...

U.S. financial markets were battered at the end of last week because of a dramatic sell-off of Treasury bonds. The yield on 10-year bonds which has been rising since May neared the critical barrier of 5.25% on June 8 -- the highest level in five years. Media reports suggest that turmoil in the bond market could continue this week making investors anxious about whether interest rates might go up an...

In April Rupert Murdoch made a $5 billion offer to buy Dow Jones and Co. which publishes the Wall Street Journal and also owns Dow Jones Newswires and Marketwatch.com. The Bancroft family majority owners of Dow Jones initially rejected the offer but came back several weeks ago to say it would consider it along with offers from any other groups. Murdoch’s move has dismayed some Journal staffers who...

It seemed only right that James Watson who co-discovered the structure of DNA with Francis Crick and Rosalind Franklin was the first to receive a DVD holding the sequence of his own DNA produced by 454 Life Sciences a division of the Swiss drug giant Roche and academic researchers. While DNA mapping technology under development at Roche and other companies has the potential to bring the long-await...

Think of them as the ”walking dead ” a type of customer who currently maintains service with a particular company but whose next action will most likely be to discontinue that relationship according to a new study that examines how the customers of a telecommunications firm acquire and discard services over time. The paper -- ”Modeling the Evolution of Customers’ Service Portfolios ” by Wharton ma...

As baby boomers retire and start spending their nest eggs they will need new financial products to make their money last according to speakers at a recent Wharton Impact Conference titled ”Managing Retirement Payouts: Positioning Investing and Spending Assets.” The conference explored emerging patterns in spending during retirement and debated new ideas to help retirees manage their finances after...

Last week the United States’ first major immigration reform bill in two decades collapsed in the Senate. Buried in the ongoing debate was the potential economic impact of a measure that could change the composition of America’s workforce in significant ways: By cracking down on illegal immigration the legislation could constrict the future supply of low-skilled workers while a move to skill-based...

Lucrative deals are hard to come by these days for investors looking to extract value from distressed companies around the world. As global markets become increasingly sophisticated success will be determined by those who know how to navigate local corporate legal and cultural terrains. At the 2007 Wharton Restructuring Conference turnaround consultants and distressed asset investing experts noted...

When it comes to rolling out new goods and services companies tend to choose one of two strategies as a way of generating interest in their products whether it’s Apple’s iPhone or Microsoft’s Surface Computing effort. One is pre-announcing the product to give customers partners and even competitors advance notice of what’s to come. The second approach is the surprise unveiling where a company hope...

Earlier this month Cerberus Capital Management bought 80.1% of Chrysler Group from German auto maker Daimler-Chrysler effectively ending a nine-year marriage between the two that never quite worked out. The expectations created by this acquisition are huge and revolve in part around Cerberus’s ability to make a deal with the United Auto Workers union that would include restructuring billions of do...

Some shoppers just can’t help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters who only open their wallets for a discount. Then there are the strategic consumers who are willing to buy full-price sometimes but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new research by Gérard P. Cachon professor of operations and information management...

With an estimated $1.2 trillion under management it’s clear that hedge funds must have an effect on the financial markets. The question is: How? In one of the first studies to shed light on that subject researchers at Wharton and three other business schools find that hedge funds’ efforts to improve companies they hold big stakes in have spillover benefits for all shareholders: a quick 5% to 7% ju...