UVA, Oxford, CEIBS Rise in All-New Financial Times 2019 Ranking
The latest Financial Times MBA ranking is officially out, with several international schools rising closer and closer to the top in 2019.
Gig Jobs vs. Full-Time and Revenue Sharing – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Should It Be a Gig or a Job? – Questrom School of Business News
New research from Boston University Questrom School of Business‘ Associate Professor Andrei Hagiu and National University of Singapore’s Julian Wright examines how firms classify an employee versus an independent contractor, and how this relates to revenue sharing.
Hagiu notes that this classification greatly depends on the amount of decision-making power that firms cede to workers—and that appropriate revenue sharing should follow suit.
“In many cases, the share of variable revenue that is retained by workers is a good proxy for whether they can be considered independent contractors or regular employees,” says Hagiu.
The research notes:
“Firms that wish to classify their workers as independent contractors and provide a higher share of transferable decisions to workers should be paying them at least half of variable revenues. Firms that pay less than half of variable revenues to a worker should likely employ the worker, but provide a lower share of transferable decisions to workers.”
You can find out more from the research here.
Your Acquired Hires are Leaving and Here’s Why – MIT Sloan Ideas That Matter
Large companies often acquire startups in order to eliminate competition, with the added benefit of gaining skilled and innovative workers. Unfortunately, new research from MIT Sloan doctoral candidate Daniel Kim shows that this “acqui-hiring” strategy is not as effective as some think.
According to Kim’s paper, “Predictable Exodus: Startup Acquisitions and Employee Departures,” within the first year of a company’s acquisition, 33 percent of acquired workers left, compared to 12 percent of regular hires.
While those percentages tend to level off over time, in the three-year window Kim studied, acquired workers were 15 percent more likely to leave than new hires. This exodus is largely due to an organizational mismatch and new hires’ lack of agency.
Employment retention data, courtesy of Meredith Somers at MIT Sloan.
“People who work at startups join a startup for a reason,” Kim says. “Primarily they want to be in a very entrepreneurial, scrappy organization. But once they get acquired by a big firm, that is in direct opposition with the preferences that they have.”
You can read more about Kim’s research here.
The Accidental Restaurateur – Carroll School of News
Joe Essa, BC Carroll Alum ‘79, told the Carroll School of Business Blog that it was “a bit of a fluke” that he ended up becoming a successful restaurateur and ultimately the President and CEO of Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, overseeing more than 50 eateries across the nation along with licensing Puck’s cookbooks, canned soup, and other consumer products.
In 1983, when tending to his ill father in Greensboro, Essa was approached by a real estate developer friend, who needed a restaurant to complete a shopping center project. Café Pasta, Greensboro’s first casual Italian restaurant, was born.
Essa refers to the curriculum he learned at Carroll to keep him on track: “I always drew upon my accounting training … I knew you had to end up with some money in the bank! So I was very disciplined in that regard from day one.”
Eventually Essa sold his share of Café Pasta and came to work with Wolfgang Puck in 1999. He spoke passionately about his eclectic role within the organization.
“It’s not just one kind of dining, it’s many different kinds of restaurants, different cuisine. And then looking into the leases, license agreements, and marketing and promotion for all those businesses. And the people you get to meet along the way are fascinating. You get up every day and it’s different, it’s exciting, and it’s humbling. I just count my blessings.”
Click here to find out more about Essa’s life and career.
Harvard Talks Managing Disorganized Employees, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
How to Manage Someone Who Is Totally Disorganized – Harvard Business Review
Disorganized employees can be wellsprings of frustration, but there are ways to help them better understand how disorderly tendencies impact others.
Harvard Business School‘s Rebecca Knight recently discussed strategies in HBR, addressing root behavior causes and ultimately develop better systems to manage workloads.
“’Is this person’s approach creating negative outcomes, or is it just a style difference?’ If your report indicates ‘disorganized but otherwise reliable, you may have to back off.'”
Rosie Perez (not the actor), Lead Financial Officer of Global Consumer Business Planning and Analytics at American Express, adds, “It takes a lot of time to change ingrained behavior, but it can be addressed. Most importantly, as leaders, it is our job to help coach our colleagues [with] constructive and pointed feedback.”
You can read more about the research here.
Bye-Bye Ivory Tower: Innovation Needs an Ecosystem to Thrive by Tracy Mayor – MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter
Innovation is not exclusively indigenous to Silicon Valley. We continue to see exciting developments in London, Tel Aviv, New York, Boston, China, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa. However, despite the benefits of globalization, the world of innovation is not wholly flat.
New MIT Sloan research has determined that there are geographic hotspots, or “innovation ecosystems,” where ideas move more easily from inception to impact.
Phil Budden, a Senior Lecturer Specializing in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, notes how the traditional “triple helix” that has long driven innovation—university, government, and corporations—is now joined by two additional players: entrepreneurs and risk capital.
“It’s so important to have innovation-driven entrepreneurs involved. They’re producing the companies of the future. You can’t just have today’s companies [in an ecosystem], you need to have those leaders who are going to produce future companies.”
Fiona Murray, Associate Dean for Innovation, urges corporations to take advantage of startups and entrepreneurs to help experiment on their behalf.
“What these startups tend to do very well is define, order, and test their assumptions through a series of what we call ‘innovation loops. So, one of the benefits of going from a purely internal research and development process to working externally is that you can really rely on the universities and startups in an ecosystem to do that experimentation for you.”
You can read more about global innovation here and watch the recent discussion below.
Joy Field Garners Top Award from Decision Sciences Institute by William Bole – Carroll School News
BC Carroll School of Management Associate Professor of Operations Management Joy Field has received the highest honor bestowed by the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI), a global society of more than 1,800 scholars dedicated to fostering knowledge for better managerial decisions.
Field was named the 2018 co-recipient of the Dennis E. Grawoig Distinguished Service Award, named for a founder of the 50-year-old Institute. The other recipient was Morgan Swink of Texas Christian University.
DSI President Johnny Rungtusanatham of Ohio State University asserts, “This is a highly competitive distinction awarded to those who have made a continual impact on the Institute and the disciplines it serves.”
Field reflected on her two decades of involvement with the Institute. “DSI has been a major contributor to all aspects of my professional development—publishing, teaching, and service—and I am delighted to have been chosen to receive this award from among the many colleagues who have also contributed so much to DSI.”
Find out more about the recent award here.
Babson MBA Alum Wins Virtual IAN Global Startup Competition for $250,000 in Funding
Finding funding for a startup isn’t easy. Not only are there few angel investors looking to fund early-staged startups, but time and distance can make it even more difficult to succeed on the fundraising path. That’s why Babson College F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business works together with the Indian Angel Network (IAN), India’s first and the world’s largest business angel network, to develop a new type of startup competition: the IAN Global Startup Competition.
“We are pleased to host such a vibrant initiative that demonstrated the breadth of talent and truly innovative ideas being created by Babson startups,” Padmaja Ruparel, co-founder of IAN and Founding Partner of the IAN Fund, says in a press release.
“For more than ten years, IAN has worked to advance the transformative power of entrepreneurship across the globe, opening the door for emerging businesses to draw on in-depth operational and strategic mentorship.”
MIT Sloan Experts Talk Business in 2019
What can you expect from the business world in 2019? Professors and lecturers from MIT Sloan discuss seven businesses to keep an eye on in the New Year. Here’s what they had to say.
Northeastern’s New MBA Offering, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
When Your Moon Shots Don’t Take Off – Harvard Business Review
Many scholars seek to understand how we can move away from incremental thinking to what Google calls “10x thinking”—ideas that lead to “10-fold improvements rather than the more typical 10 percent ones.”
In a recent edition of Harvard Business Review, INSEAD Assistant Professor of Strategy Nathan Furr and Brigham Young’s Jeffrey H. Dyer say the real limit to “10x” ideas are biases that distort our perceptions and prevent us from seeing possibilities.
The duo present tactics and tools to challenge our instincts to avoid risk and choose the path of least resistance with the ultimate goal of breaking through to the realm of innovative possibilities.
Furr and Beesley describe how cell phones, earbuds, credit cards, self-driving cars, and atomic power were all inspired by science fiction. “Science fiction can provide a kind of rigorous optimism. There’s no magic; science fiction just provides the inspiration and then you make a rigorous plan and go for it.”
You can read more about the research over at HBR.
New MBA x Computer Science Degree Addresses Market Demand for Tech-Savvy Leaders – D’Amore-McKim School of Business News
“Breakthrough technologies, robotics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain promise higher productivity, enhanced efficiencies, and economic growth,” says Raj Echambadi, Dunton Family Dean at Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business.
Future business leaders need leadership frameworks but also hard technical skills to have a deeper understanding of how technology will impact the future of business. To meet this growing demand, D’Amore-McKim now offers a new full-time MBA degree concept: MBA x Computer Science.
On the new concentration at Northeastern/D’Amore-McKim, the school writes, “Students in the MBA x Computer Science track will choose one concentration in business and one concentration in computer science thanks to a partnership with Northeastern’s Khoury College of Computer and Information Sciences, and they will also complete a corporate residency–a distinctive component of the Northeastern MBA program that is the hallmark of graduate experiential learning.”
“Business and technology are now intertwined, and to master a skill set in both areas will set our students apart and set them up for success,” says D’Amore-McKim Associate Dean of Graduate Programs Kate Klepper.
Dean Echambadi explains:
“These technologies are changing the way we live, learn, produce, and consume content, as well as how employees and enterprises work across all industries. Advanced business education is a critical component in helping people and industries navigate challenges with digital convergence and turn them into opportunities.”
Read the full D’Amore-McKim School of Business News article here.
Social Media Advertising Can Boost Fake News—Or Beat It – MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter
According to new research from MIT Sloan Economist Catherine Tucker and Occidental College’s Lesley Chiou, Ph.D. ’05, restricting or redirecting advertising on social media could be part of a solution to the problem of fake news.
After Facebook released a new advertising system that blocks ads from pages that repeatedly share fake news, researchers found a 75 percent reduction in the amount of fake news being shared on the platform.
Tucker and Chiou caution that the solution is far more complex than just advertising, however.
“The actions of platforms such as Facebook in regulating advertising do seem to have had an effect on the volume of fake news. However, our paper also emphasizes that in just focusing on ads and fake news, we are missing the bigger picture, which is the organic spread of misinformation by users themselves,” Tucker says in a recent interview wit MIT.
“The popularity of fake news may occur in the absence of advertising, as users share articles with others in their social network, but working to stamp out misinformation in those posts runs into its own set of problems,” Tucker adds.
“Trying to regulate that seems to get us into very problematic First Amendment territory.”
You can read more about Tucker and Chiou’s research here.
