Chicago Booth Predicts The Workplace of the Future, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
What Will Your Workplace Look Like in 2028? – Chicago Booth Magazine
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business interviewed three of its own homegrown experts to help us understand the potential evolution of the office in the next 10 years. Booth assistant professor of economics Jonathan Dingel believes that place is key. He elaborates: “People are not moving to remote rural areas and using Skype to hold their office meetings. Technologies like this have been around for the last couple of decades, but in fact we are seeing people concentrating in particular cities.”
TandemSpring cofounder Tomer Yogev, ’10, writes that, “the traditional path to the top is changing” for the better.
“In the next decade, there’s going to be an even bigger shift into telecommuting and freelancing roles. Larger organizations will need to find new ways to retain talent who no longer want to have traditional desk jobs. There will be more turnover as people look for more appealing opportunities. And getting fired will not be the death sentence that it used to be,” Yogev says.
Cayse Llorens, Booth Evening MBA student and senior associate at Invest Detroit Ventures, thinks that tomorrow’s workers will grow more “adept at working with artificial intelligence–enabled tools and agents that will increase the value of human skills.”
Read more about Booth’s predictions here.
How Businesses Can Best Use Content Marketing to Generate Leads – Kellogg Insights
Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management professor of marketing Bobby Calder, along with researchers from Medill’s Spiegel Research Center, recently published new research that finds that among B2B companies, “digital offerings like webinars, white papers, and branded blogs are valuable tools that result in more leads and, ultimately, more sales than in-person content-marketing events, such as conferences, workshops, and roundtable discussions.” Calder explains:
“These kinds of digital offerings are really important, right up there with sales contacts. Not only does a digital-content-marketing effort really work in the B2B environment, it offers an opportunity for sales and marketing to come closer together and even integrate their approaches.”
Read more about their research here.
CEOs Gather at Loyola to Discuss Leading for Good – Quinlan School of Business
The Loyola University’s Quinlan School of Business Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility recently hosted the Leading for Good conference in which 45 CEOs and top executives from Colombia, UK, and the U.S. “discussed how to integrate business strategy and social purpose to advance the greater good.
According to the article, “three key themes dominated the conference’s three plenary panels and six breakout sessions.”
- The boundaries are blurring
- Cross-sectorial partnerships are vital to accomplishing large-scale goals; and
- “Social business” is on its way to becoming simply ‘business.’”
You can watch highlights and read more about the insights these business leaders shared here.
MIT Students Heading to the Vatican, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
MIT Students Heading to Rome for First Ever Vatican Hackathon – MIT Newsroom
The first of its kind VHacks will take place in Vatican City from March 8-11, bringing in 120 students from various universities around the world to the city-state of the Roman Catholic Church.
“This is not just for the church,” said Sophie Liao, MIT Sloan MBA ’18, in an interview with Meredith Somers from the MIT Newsroom. “This is more about breaking boundaries. Everyone is a migrant, everyone should be involved in this discussion no matter what country they come from.”
“While this is the first event of its kind at Vatican City, using technology to address more than just science isn’t a new thing for the sovereign state’s most famous resident. In a TED Talk last year, Pope Francis suggested how ‘wonderful it would be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion.'”
Pope Francis made a surprise Ted Talk in 2017, discussing the importance of humility / Photo via Ryan Lash, TED
You can read more about the upcoming VHacks event in Vatican City here.
Sawyer Introduces New Master’s in Marketing – Sawyer Business School
The Sawyer Business School at Suffolk University has announced its new Master of Science in Marketing degree, which prepares students to “approach complex marketing problems, analyze information, and develop high-quality strategic and tactical solutions.”
“Most master’s-level programs in marketing give the qualitative tools pretty short shrift,” says Professor Elizabeth Wilson, chair of the Department of Marketing. “But knowing how to do that kind of research and understanding the whole spectrum of social science research methods is something every employer will value.”
Product management is one of the three concentrations offered in the new Master’s of Marketing program at Suffolk / Photo via nbbj
Three concentrations will be offered as part of the new Master’s program, including: product management, global marketing, and market research and customer insights.
“’I’m excited to see the new MS in Marketing program. The marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and the way brands need to talk to their customers is evolving as well,’ says Victor Davidson, MBA ’12, senior vice president of analytics at SavingStar. ‘The new degree program will empower students to stay on the forefront of these changes and position themselves as top marketers.’”
You can read more about the MSM here.
How News Coverage is Impacting ExxonMobil’s Social Responsibility – Simmons School of Management
Simmons School of Management professor Edward Vieira recently co-authored a study that analyzed ExxonMobil’s corporate social responsibility messages over a 12-year period, from 2002-03, to “determine if there was a relationship between news coverage and subsequent CSR efforts.”
“Corporations that don’t live up to stakeholder expectations may experience a decrease in credibility, reputation, and legitimacy. It’s beneficial for an organization to consistently communicate its CSR actions as well as address culturally relevant events. Therefore, it’s logical that as the world’s fourth largest oil producer, ExxonMobil’s CEO’s letters delivered CSR messages that focused on major external events.”
Read more about Professor Vieira’s research here.
Boston News: Northeastern Explores Trump Tweets, MIT Offers FinTech Advice and More
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston metro business schools this week.
Can A Trump Tweet Dramatically Sway A Company’s Value? – Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim Blog
Will Clark, DMSB ’17, along with Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business finance professors David Myers and Jeffery Born, sought to understand the impact that President Trump’s tweets—which often directly address publicly traded companies like Ford, Toyota, Walmart, GM, and Boeing—had on their stock market value.
“Past presidents communicated through the media. This was the first time that a president was communicating directly with the public—with investors—about companies. We really weren’t sure what to expect from the data,” says Clark, who is now a credit analyst with Morgan Stanley.
The trio’s research found that Trump’s tweets, in fact, did have some impact on companies, often increasing trade volume within the first few hours and days after he references them on the social media platform. The research was revealed in the academic journal Algorithmic Finance.
“The team found that Trump’s tweets dramatically increased trading volume for the companies’ stocks in the first few days following a tweet. They also found that positive (or negative) tweets about companies increased (or decreased) the firms’ stock prices by a modest amount—just 1 percent. But the changes were only temporary: Within a few days, the firms’ trading volumes and stock prices returned to pre-tweet levels.”
The lasting effect, however, was found to be longing. The trio notes that the most active traders, which they refer to as “noise traders,” were very reactive to Trump’s words, with trading tapering off after only a few days.
“They’re regular people and under-informed investors who want to get in and out and make a buck without thinking too long and hard about it,” Born notes about the financial impact of Trump tweets.
You can read more about the financial research on the Trump tweets from D’Amore-McKim here.
3 Lessons To Keep In Mind When Starting A FinTech Venture – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan School of Management MBA alum Sophia Lin, ’12, and her partner Andrew Kelley of the FinTech startup Keel, which connects “rookie investors with more seasoned ones,” shares some hard-won lessons in an op-ed for the Sloan blog. First of all: beware of hidden costs specific to FinTech. “
“Starting costs are higher than other industries because of data, infrastructure, and security requirements,” Lin said. “Data is expensive, which stops a lot of early stage startups from entering this field. But you need data to build your product.”
Read all of Lin’s words of wisdom here.
More CEOs Have Begun To Take Social Responsibility Seriously – HBR
CEOs from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to Blackrock’s Larry Fink have begun to take very public stands to address the long-term impacts their products have had and continue to have on communities and the environment.
“We are witnessing a big, transitional moment—akin to the transition from analog to digital, or the realization that globalization is a really big deal. Companies are beginning to realize that paying attention to the longer term, to the perceptions of their company, and to the social consequences of their products is good business.”
Harvard Business School John and Natty McArthur University Professor Rebecca M. Henderson also explains that there are distinct differences between the size of a company, which often contrasts with the social goals of the company. The larger the company, the more long-term the outlook, she explains. Unlike small companies, larger firms worry about quarter-to-quarter results less.
“Big firms can also internalize certain externalities. An externality is a cost from a transaction that doesn’t fall on the buyer or the seller. If I pollute the air to make a product I sell to you, the cost of that pollution is spread out across society, and isn’t incorporated in the price I charge you for the product. Externalities pose problems for markets, since neither buyer nor seller have any incentive to deal with the costs. But sometimes, for really large firms, things work differently.”
The unfortunate causality, she notes, is that we are often reliant on the largest companies to take the initiative for causes that may be considered part of the global good. If some companies among the Fortune 500 elect to, say, go carbon neutral within the next decade, that can have a profound impact on other competing companies. And if those initiatives are not as profitable, there is an even greater risk of other companies being reluctant to attempt similar efforts.
Read more about the growing CSR trend among CEOs here.
Biz Degree Faceoff: MBA vs MIB
For all you future financial movers and shakers, choosing the right program is more than just a simple matter of preference—it’s about maximizing the journey so you’re ready to hit the ground running once you reach your final destination.
Oxford Saïd Hosts Lively Debate On Corporate Responsibility
As part of its annual MBA Launch program, Oxford University’s Saïd Business School recently hosted a debate between faculty members that addressed whether corporations are responsible for practicing social responsibility as part of their business models.
Oxford alumni accompanied debaters Oren Sussman, Reader in Finance, and Richard Barker, Professor of Accounting in the discussion. Sussman’s assertion was that corporations should use their resources to focus on making money rather than filter them into working toward change in areas such as the climate crisis and social inequality. Barker’s team held the opposing opinion that while corporations should obviously function for profit, responsibility toward such societal issues can and should be integrated into their practices to achieve a greater goal.
Haas Names New Exec. Director for Responsible Business
Robert Strand, an international expert in sustainability and corporate social responsibility, has been appointed new executive director of the Center for Responsible Business at Haas School of Business. Strand started in his position August 18, 2014. He succeeds Jo Mackness, who was named COO of Haas in March 2014.
In this role, Strand will oversee the 12-year-old center, which has grown from an educational startup into a mature organization focused on establishing corporate social responsibility with five associated faculty, 10 classes each year, and more than 1,200 alumni.
