Knowledge@wharton

In their book Idealized Design: How to Solve Tomorrow’s Crisis...Today (Wharton School Publishing) authors Russell L. Ackoff Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison build upon a simple notion. They argue that ”the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.” An excerpt based on Ackoff’s experience shows how the process worked at Bell Labs in the 1950s. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lars Kolind is the former CEO of Oticon a leading Denmark-based maker of hearing aids. In his book The Second Cycle: Winning the War Against Bureaucracy published by Wharton School Publishing he argues that size age and success can make mature companies deaf to signals that portend future decline. He summarizes his views in an excerpt from the book. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Peter Killing and Thomas Malnight are professors of business strategy at IMD the Switzerland-based business school and Tracey Keys is a consultant. In their book Must-Win Battles: How to Win Them Again and Again published by Wharton School Publishing they argue that rather than spreading their resources too thin companies must focus on three to five key challenges -- must-win battles (MWBs) that are crucial to achieving their business goals. A well-chosen MWB the authors say must make a real difference be market focused create excitement be specific and tangible and be winnable. An excerpt from the book’s conclusion highlights what can be learned from successful and failed MWB journeys. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The tired old adage ”You are what you eat ” acquires new life in Michael Pollan’s compelling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (The Penguin Press). Tracing our food back to its sources in feedlots and fields Pollan convincingly argues that modern Americans are made of corn -- and that this is a very bad thing for our health our economy and our environment. According to Pollan corn underwrites a national eating disorder even as Americans’ lack of a centuries’ old cuisine makes us exceptionally vulnerable to fad diets trendy nutritional advice and fast food. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Canadian writer Giles Slade was checking out a touring exhibit called ”Eternal Egypt” with his 10-year-old son a few years ago when he had an epiphany. The Egyptians he realized designed great monuments to endure for countless generations while here in North America nearly everything produced is made to break. And that’s no accident. Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (Harvard University Press) looks at 20th century technology through the lens of disposability a concept born bred and nurtured in America. Made to Break traces the history of an industrial strategy that has come to define this country -- a strategy that has taught us to buy throw away and buy again and that now must change because we have run out of room to safely dump all our unwanted used-up or obsolete possessions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Body parts are big business in the United States. Tissue organs tendons bones joints limbs hands feet torsos and heads culled from the dead are the cornerstones of the lucrative and important business of advancing scientific knowledge and improving medical technique. Few people however think to ask where the material that sustains this enormous industry comes from. Journalist Annie Cheney is a timely exception. In Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains (Broadway) Cheney chronicles her quest to find out how human remains are procured processed marketed and used. It’s a complicated detailed and disturbing tale. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

EMI Music backs a label that turns the traditional economics of the recording industry on its head. Vivendi’s Universal Music Group creates multiple pricing schemes for CDs. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo decide to sell a single without digital rights restrictions. These moves typify a flurry of experimentation by major record labels in recent weeks and stand in stark contrast to earlier behavior by an industry that six years ago was best known for launching anti-piracy lawsuits against Napster -- a network that originally swapped music files for free -- and individual users. Today according to experts at Wharton the recording industry is actively trying to create new business models as it navigates the emerging Internet-enabled landscape. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the United States alone an unprecedented 77 million baby-boomers will be living the next 20 to 30 years in retirement. With long lives ahead of them -- and without adequate planning -- what are the risks they are facing? According to Olivia Mitchell Wharton professor of insurance and risk management and Christopher ”Kip” Condron president and CEO of AXA Financial the world’s largest financial services firm the rising tide of boomers in the U.S. and around the world needs to meet challenges that previous generations never faced including changes to key retirement institutions as well as medical-care cost inflation and the ”lump-sum illusion.” Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Mitchell and Condron about how the financial services industry is working to meet the needs of this next wave of retirees. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the workplace trust is essential to day-to-day business whether it’s one colleague trusting that another will do her share of a project an employee trusting that his boss will reward him for working long hours to meet a deadline or a customer trusting that a company will fill an order correctly and deliver it on time. The intertwining issues of trust deception apologies and promises are explored in a new research paper titled ”Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust ” by three Wharton professors who came up with a unique laboratory experiment to see what happens when trust breaks down. ”While deception may be tempting because it can be used to increase short-term profits for the deceiver ” the researchers note ”we find that the long-term costs of deception are very high.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

While a lot of research has been done in the past two decades on work-family conflicts few studies have looked closely at how mood affects workers’ performance. Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard and co-author Steffanie Wilk wanted to find out which mood-altering events have the biggest effect if any -- those that influence one’s outlook at the start of the day or those that nudge one’s mood up or down as the workday advances. The results of Rothbard and Wilk’s study are reported in their paper ”Walking in the Door: Sources and Consequences of Employee Mood on Work Performance.” Among their key findings: The mood you bring with you to work has a stronger effect on the day’s mood -- and on work performance -- than mood changes caused by events in the workplace. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

K. V. Kamath CEO of India’s second largest banking and financial services conglomerate ICICI is a man in a hurry. When he occupied the driver’s seat at ICICI more than a decade ago it was a financial institution hamstrung by political constraints. As a key member of the top team at ICICI that led the organization into new businesses such as insurance and banking Kamath used technology effectively to pry open market expansion. Today his top challenge is to retain the talent ICICI trains which is keenly sought by other financial services players. In an interview with Michael Useem Wharton professor of management and director of the school’s Center for Leadership & Change Management Kamath discusses ICICI’s foray into rural banking and other challenges. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As most travelers to Europe know French workers tend to take the month of August off shutting down many of their shops and cutting back the hours of some museums. But the French aren’t alone. People in much of Western Europe can afford to check out for a month because they receive an average of nearly two months a year in paid leave a combination of vacation and government holidays. That distinguishes them from citizens of the United States who despite a similarly productive economy and a comparable standard of living enjoy about half as much paid time off. What gives? Why are Americans reluctant or unable to extricate themselves from their jobs and sign up for some serious vacation time? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Music physical movement technology and being cool have long gone hand in hand. Now two iconic brands Apple Computer and Nike are collaborating on a new system of gizmos that take exercising and digital-music players to a new level. The Nike+iPod Sport Kit allows runners and walkers to listen to songs and to record store and share information (such as speed distance covered and calories burned) with others about their exercise sessions. The system also ”talks” to runners in real time providing information as they jog along. Members of Wharton’s marketing department say it’s a winning combination that will bolster each company’s image and open the door to other co-branding opportunities. But they disagree as to whether the joint effort will actually sell more iPods and Nike shoes. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On July 7 General Motors’ board of directors voted to study the pros and cons of entering into a three-way alliance with automakers Nissan and Renault. The alliance was proposed by GM shareholder Kirk Kerkorian who sees it as a way to revive the struggling company and expedite the restructuring taking place under GM’s current chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner. Another central figure in this drama is Carlos Ghosn CEO of Nissan and Renault who is credited with turning around Nissan and who is seen by Kerkorian and others as holding the keys to GM’s future. What would a three-way alliance mean for GM and for the auto industry in general? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In a recent newsletter Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel noted that ”everything is coming up roses for the equity markets -- except for the latest developments in the commodities markets.” What does that imply for the economy and stock markets? Siegel who is also the author of the book The Future for Investors notes that the economy is heading for a soft landing which means it is slowing down. ”But we’re not going to a recession by any means ” he told Knowledge at Wharton in a recent discussion. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

When she worked on Wall Street launching IPOs Alicia Polak helped generate new wealth. Now she is working to build wealth in the dirt-poor black township of Khayelitsha 30 minutes down a dusty road from Cape Town South Africa. Two years ago Polak founded The Khayelitsha Cookie Co. which now employs 11 women from the sprawling shantytown to bake high-end cookies and brownies that are distributed to top hotels restaurants and coffeehouses throughout South Africa. Working in conjunction with the Societal Wealth Generation program in Wharton’s Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center which explores ways to apply entrepreneurial business models to social problems such as healthcare education and unemployment Polak says her ultimate goal is to change the lives of the women she employs ”using this company as the vehicle.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On July 11 Sony Pictures Home Entertainment became just the latest media giant to put its heft behind a small startup as the white-hot online video market has players both big and small placing bets on digital distribution. Add up the venture capital dollars funding online video startups the technology advances the willingness of established players like ABC CBS and NBC to try new distribution models and the increasing web viewership and it’s clear that the video market is at an inflection point say experts at Wharton and media research firms. However several questions remain: What will ultimately become of all the wheeling and dealing in the online video market? What are the most important technologies needed to expand online video? Can online video startups find viable business models? And aren’t all parties simply hedging their bets since it’s unclear which online video distribution models will win? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In 2004 engineers at Massachusetts-based Bose Corp. a maker of stereo speakers and other audio equipment introduced a startling new product that had nothing to do with sound: an automobile suspension. Bose’s founder Amar Bose had suspected that his company’s knowledge of the physics of acoustics could also help drivers defeat bumps and potholes. The suspension now ready for the mass market exemplifies a technique known as knowledge bridging -- taking expertise from one field applying it to a completely different one and thus creating an unprecedented product or service. A recent study co-authored by Wharton management professor David Hsu ”Knowledge Bridging by Biotechnology Startups ” suggests that knowledge bridging can help companies bring products to market faster and raise money more quickly. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The commercial real estate market has been on a tear in the last few years. Banks insurance companies and institutional investors have funneled money into the market because its returns in an environment of low interest rates exceeded those of other asset classes. As interest rates begin to climb how will that situation change? Experts discussed those issues at a recent conference on Innovation and Risk Management in Real Estate Markets organized by the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and Mercer Oliver Wyman. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

For the 41 million Mexican voters who went to the polls on July 2 the major decision was whether they were going to continue to follow the same free-market model with limited spending and greater foreign investment that the country has had for the past six years or opt for change. Ultimately in one of the most expensive and contentious elections in the history of the country Mexicans chose the continuity represented by Felipe Calderón -- by a mere margin of 236 000 votes. Now that the election is over tensions are running high and the defeated candidate leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador has rejected the results announcing that he will appeal the election in the courts. Scholars and other analysts believe that Calderón has no other course but to sit down and negotiate with the opposition so that the country can move forward on the most urgent reforms that it needs. In the process Calderón also has to try to convince the half of the population that did not vote for him that he can redistribute wealth