Taking Action on Climate Change, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
This Tool is Pushing People to Take Action on Climate Change – MIT Sloan Newsroom
New research from MIT Sloan Professor and Sustainability Initiative Director John Sterman finds that the role-play simulation World Climate, in which “participants take on the role of delegates to the UN climate change summits, and negotiate face-to-face with other participants to reach a climate change agreement,” might assist the powers that be understand and inspire environmental change.
Sterman and his co-authors write, “The results indicate that World Climate offers a climate change communication tool that enables people to learn and feel for themselves, which together have the potential to motivate action informed by science.”
“Research shows that showing people research doesn’t work. World Climate not only boosts people’s knowledge of climate change and increases the urgency they feel, but also generates gains in hope.”
You can read the full article here.
The Legacy of Boaty McBoatface: Beware of Customers Who Vote – HBS Working Knowledge
Harvard Business School Professors Michael Norton and Leslie John recently co-authored a new working paper about the pitfalls of crowdsourced naming competitions. Case in point: Boaty McBoatface, the winning entry for the National Environmental Research Council’s online voting poll to name the agency’s new research vessel.
When NERC overruled ‘Boaty McBoatface,’ there was massive public backlash. Professor Norton explains, “When firms conduct online polls, people frequently submit ridiculous entries; and with social media, those entries will go viral. But even when firms never guarantee that consumers will choose the winner, consumers infer an implicit contract and are upset when that contract is violated.”
The researchers incorporated the NERC case study into its research as a compelling example of how companies can potentially violate consumer trust in crowdsourced polls, according to John. “It’s offensive because consumers feel as though the firm broke the contract.”
In 2016, the National Environmental Research Council conducted a public poll to name its vessel. The winner, infamously, was Boaty McBoatface, but the council renamed it to the RRS Sir David Attenborough.
Norton and John offer a number of options that allow companies to safeguard against potential fallout from “off-the-wall choices” by being “very explicit about how they will consider the voice of consumers before the vote begins.”
The researchers also advise “pre-selecting acceptable outcomes on which consumers can vote, culling options from consumer suggestions without publicizing the actual number of votes for each, [or] setting up some kind of screening process, by which only actual customers can vote, but giving out a voting code attached to products.”
You can read more from Norton and John here.
From Building on Bones to Building on Blockchains: D’Amore-McKim Students Experience Russia – DMSB Blog
Marina Hess DMSB21 and Anya Losik COS21 pose at the border between Europe and Asia
The D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University recently profiled 16 students who took part in a month-long Russian study abroad trip entitled “Driving Growth in Russia: From Building on Bones to Building on Blockchains.”
Yuan Vu Dinh Van (DMSB ’21) broke down the major takeaways from the cross-country excursion.
“By visiting Russia, I was able to see a different way of doing business compared to the model used in the U.S. Business in Russia seems to be conducted similarly to that of Ecuador, as only the people with the contacts and the money succeed in business, while in the U.S. it is easier for anyone to do that.”
Van adds, “I also learned about different ways to manage people, as Russian employees often prefer to be given orders and don’t have as much freedom as U.S. employees typically have in regards to the decision making. It really opened my mind to how important the role culture plays in doing business in different countries.”
You can read more from the interview here.
MIT Sloan Debunks Entrepreneur Myths, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The 20-Year-Old Entrepreneur is a Lie – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan School of Business professor Pierre Azoulay and Ph.D. student Daniel Kim used a new working paper as an opportunity to debunk the myth of the 20-year-old Silicon Valley tech-prodigy entrepreneur. The reality is that the average age of successful entrepreneurs veers closer to 42. Azoulay elaborates:
“If you knew nothing else, and you had two identical ideas, one proposed by a very young person, one proposed by a middle-aged person, and that’s the only thing you have to go on, you would be better off—if you wanted to predict success—betting on a middle-aged person.”
Kim adds: “In theory, we know that with age a lot of benefits accumulate. For instance, you get a lot of human capital from experience, you also get more financial resources as you age, as well as social connections, all of which will likely boost your odds of success as an entrepreneur.”
Read more about the duo’s research here.
Case Study: Can This Japanese Snack Food Company Break into the U.S. Market? – Harvard Business Review
As part of a fictionalized case study, HBR recently published a profile on Kenko USA, the American subsidiary of Japan’s largest rice cracker producer, about its ongoing plans to enter the American market. Kenko USA hopes to become synonymous with rice crackers much in the same way that Kikkoman became inextricably linked with soy sauce.
In 2012, Riku Nakamura relocated from Tokyo to San Mateo, California to oversee the launch of Kenko’s first foreign subsidiary. According to the article, “Riku knew that the key was to expand beyond Asian supermarkets and grocery stores’ “international” sections and get Kenko crackers into the snack aisles of mainstream U.S. food outlets, but his team’s efforts had yet to bear fruit.”
You can read the entire case study here.
Hybrid Strategy Leaves Auto Industry Leaders Playing Catch-up, Professor Says – D’Amore McKim News & Research
There’s quite a bit of chatter within the auto industry about the so-called “hybrid trap” in which established industry leaders have been forced to catch up to the hybrid strategies of more aggressive startups to varying degrees of success.
Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business‘ Jean C. Tempel professor of entrepreneurship and innovation Fernando Suarez explored this phenomenon in detail as part of an MIT Sloan Management Review article. He elaborates:
“Most established corporations follow the hybrid approach because it gives them peace of mind. It allows incumbents to convince themselves that they’re responding to technology-driven transformation in their industry when, in fact, they’re losing ground. They fall back on learned patterns, which slows development. When you are serious about going the route of new technology, you have to rethink all of your designs and processes.”
Read more about Suarez’s research here.
