Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Arrives at MIT, and More – Boston News
What’s happening at the best Boston business schools this week?
Asia Is Ripe For Investments. Here’s How U.S. Companies Can Capitalize – D’Amore-McKim Blog
The Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business recently published an overview of the recent Emerging Markets’ Symposium, in which Ravi Ramamurti, University Distinguished Professor of international business and strategy brought together seven CEOs and corporate executives to unpack the discussion topic, “On the Rise of Asia: How Should U.S. Companies Respond.”
Jimmy Weng, DMSB’07, and Credit Suisse’s current head of offshore investment strategies, told the audience via conference call that he believed “Asia’s economy is entering a “supercycle” of market boom.”
Symposium organizer Ramamurti said, “China is leading the way to a new era in globalization. The headroom for growth in Asia is very significant.”
You can read more about the symposium here.
Sheryl Sandberg On Facebook’s Missteps and What Comes Next – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered MIT’s 2018 commencement address last week and used her speech as an opportunity to come clean and share the lessons learned from her company’s recent Cambridge Analytica data mining imbroglio.
She told the audience, “It’s painful when you miss something — when you make the mistake of believing so much in the good you are seeing that you don’t see the bad. It’s hard when you know that you let people down.”
Sandberg speaking at the 2018 MIT commencement / Photo via Dominick Reuter
“The larger challenge is one all of us here today must face. The role of technology in our lives is growing — and that means our relationship with technology is changing. We have to change, too. We have to recognize the full weight of our responsibilities.”
You can read more Sandberg’s commencement speech and check out footage of the event here.
A Big Problem with Big Problems – Questrom Blog
Boston University Questrom School of Business associate professors Stine Grodal and Siobhan O’Mahony recently published a new study that explores how “competing and misaligned goals—combined with a lack of oversight—can derail an ambitious vision.”
In their paper “How does a Grand Challenge Become Displaced? Explaining the Duality of Field Mobilization,” Grodal explains how common “interest misalignment” can be when it comes to tackling big problems.
“The academic community might agree to focus on a grand challenge, but [individual] professors are also interested in publishing in top journals and funding graduate students, which can create misalignment between a grand challenge and a community’s existing goals.”
It’s also much easier to “develop advances in existing areas” rather than explore uncharted terrain. “People graft on to the grand challenge but are rewarded by the status quo, and end up pursuing goals that are closer to their existing work.”
Oversight is key to keeping researchers on track. Grodal notes, “With little overarching supervision, it shouldn’t be a surprise that communities found plenty of reasons to support their own missions more robustly than the mission of the grand challenge.”
Read the complete article and study here.
MIT Breaks Down Starbucks Response to Recent PR Nightmare, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
What Starbucks Got Wrong—and Right—After Philadelphia Arrests – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Following Starbucks’ PR nightmare this past April in which an employee at a Philadelphia Starbucks had two African American patrons arrested after while they waited to conduct a business meeting, Starbucks announced it will host an afternoon of racial bias training for 175,000 employees across 8,000 of its locations.
MIT Sloan senior lecturer Roberta Pittore commended the coffee giant on the sincere response it made following the initial clumsy attempt to address the controversy in a generalized statement.
Regardless of the potential impacts a single afternoon of racial bias training might have on its employees, Pittore believes that “something is better than nothing, more is better than less, and sooner is better than later. I think what it does achieve from Starbucks’ point of view is that it changes the discussion from ‘What did our employee do that was offensive,’ to ‘How can we learn and how can we change?’”
You can read professor Pittore’s entire take on the incident and the Starbucks response here.
Two Northeastern Students Created an App to Revolutionize the School Bus Industry – D’Amore-McKim Blog
The Best Buy-sponsored E-Fest recently awarded $40,000 to BusRight, an app current D’Amore-McKim School of Business students Keith Corso, ’21, and Evan Eddleston, ’22, co-founded to “revolutionize the school bus industry.”
BusRight is designed to “track school bus passengers, current location, calculate optimal travel routes, curb carbon emissions, reduce transportation costs for bus companies, and improve quality of life for passengers, parents, and bus drivers.” According to the article, many school administrators and bus company officials have expressed interest in using the app.
Eddleston writes, “Bus drivers are home earlier, students are home earlier, and parents know where their kids are. It’s a much more efficient system than the one in place today.”
You can read more about BusRight here.
“Be Unreasonable” – Sawyer Business Blog
The keynote speaker at the Sawyer Business School 2018 commencement was Boston Foundation president and CEO Paul S. Grogan who received an honorary doctorate and shared some refreshing words of wisdom drawn from a lifetime of devotion to the betterment of communities.
“Powerful interests conspire to keep things the way they are. They’re fiercely resistant to change because they benefit from the status quo. [There is a] need for courageous public servants who can stand up to pressure and citizen activists who can reshape public opinion in their communities.”
Boston Foundation president and CEO Paul S. Grogan, speaking at this month’s Sawyer Business School commencement / Photo via suffolk.edu
Grogan advised graduates to think beyond the material success their prestigious degree will help them attain. “I implore you to volunteer, to vote, to donate to charity … but moreover to be an active citizen and fight for your fellow neighbors who don’t enjoy the full promise of an American life.”
You can read more highlights from Grogan’s lecture here and watch his speech in its entirety below.
Where Toys R Us Went Wrong, Sawyer International Business Etiquette, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Here’s What Sunk Toys R Us – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Experts from MIT Sloan offered a few choice insights into what Toys “R” Us, whose future currently remains in flux, could learn from the hiccups along its 70 year-long history.
Senior lecturer in work and organization studies Peter Kurzina writes that Toys “R” Us “ignored Amazon eating their lunch, thus failed to prepare and meet the challenge of competition.”
Associate professor of finance Andrey Malenko, a fellow MIT Sloan colleague, also critiqued the toy giant’s enormous debt burden. “If you’re running a business that might be sensitive to e-commerce, to the recession, then loading up on debt as much as [Toys “R” Us] did, it’s very risky and you probably shouldn’t do it.”
In March 2018, Toys “R” Us announced it would be closing all US and UK locations.
Read more of the duo’s analysis here.
International Business Basics – Sawyer Business Blog
The act of doing business across cultures often entails unexpected byproducts that Sawyer addressed in its recent “Business Protocol Across the Globe” forum, organized by Colombian native Laura Reales, BSBA ‘18.
“What if I wanted to move to another part of the world, like Saudi Arabia or France or China? How could I make connections with people so that I don’t look ignorant of their culture? So I decided to create a space where it was ok to talk about those differences.”
Read here to learn the answers to questions like, “What’s the proper way to present a business card in China?” and “What’s a good way to begin a negotiation in Turkey?”
Alumnus’ Company serves the Housing Needs of a Vulnerable Community – D’Amore-McKim Blog
The Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business profiled alum Andy Rosenthal, a 2007 alum who abandoned a lucrative career in hedge fund software to co-found the Terenbinth Group, which has become the “largest, family-owned provider of housing to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.” Rosenthal explains his company’s model.
“We’re a real estate company focused on providing quality, safe, affordable housing to a vulnerable community,” Rosethal said in the interview. “In short, we find homes, fix them up, customize them to suit the tenants—think wheelchair accessibility, replacing door knobs with door levers, waterproof flooring, installing roll-in showers, etc.—and then rent them directly to the individuals.”
The company’s 68 homes currently accommodate more than 225 people across the state of Indiana and it’s looking to expand. You can learn more about the Terebinth Group’s plans here.
What are the Best Real Estate MBAs in Boston? – MetroMBA
Earlier this week we highlighted the three strongest Boston metro schools that can help you earn your way into the real estate industry: Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, and the Babson College F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.
Regarding Babson, writer Jillan Markowitz writes:
“At Babson College’s F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, MBA students can pursue the finance concentration, which offers several courses in real estate. Students can rake courses like Real Estate Financial Modeling, Real Estate Fundamentals, or Real Estate Development. According to recent Olin graduate employment statistics, 10 percent of the 2017 MBA class landed jobs in real estate. This number may not seem overwhelming, but it dwarfs the percentage seen in many MBA programs (usually about two to three percent).”
Learn more about the best real estate programs in Boston here.
D’Amore-McKim Study Abroad Explores Israel As Innovation Hub
The D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University unveiled a new study abroad pilot program that hosted five MBA students on a two-week guided tour of Israel’s past, present, and future this summer. The new International New Venture program, a joint venture between D’Amore-McKim and Ben Gurion University of the Negev, combines “historic and cultural experiences with big business and young start-up visits.”
Getting Paid: Highest MBA Salaries in Boston
“Step up to get your rep up,” goes the old saying. Reputation is important in the business world and that extends to where you matriculate. Perhaps the most pressing question on the minds of the b-school-bound is: “What does the paycheck look like after graduation?” Got another plan in mind for paying off those loans?
D’Amore-McKim Student Biz Pitches Japanese Organic Green Tea
Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business recently published an article on Velvetea, a student-owned and operated organic Japanese green tea trader. Velvetea focuses on “importing and selling matcha green tea, a powdered green tea that can be stirred into hot water to drink or added to recipes for additional flavor.”
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