Knowledge at Wharton

Fortune 500 companies claim to be ”entrepreneurial ” as do charities and government agencies. Members of many Washington think tanks dub themselves ”policy entrepreneurs.” Even children who mow lawns and run lemonade stands get the ”entrepreneur” label. But as the term has come into wide use its meaning has gradually eroded leaving open the question of who entrepreneurs really are and what disting...

”Black Friday” -- the day after Thanksgiving that signals the start of the holiday shopping season in the U.S. -- was particularly charged this year marked by midnight store openings and brawls over scarce sale items. Despite the hoopla retailers are expected to post only modest gains this month according to Wharton faculty and retail analysts. A key problem they note is that shoppers continue to...

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 no...

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 Aca...

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 Inte...

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...

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...

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 t...

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...

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...

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 firs...

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 relig...

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 hea...

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 stra...

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.

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 imp...

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...

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 merge...

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...

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 We...

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 w...

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. Host...

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 i...

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...

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 w...