The Case for Business Curiosity from Harvard, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The Business Case for Curiosity – Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business School Professor of Business Administration and Behavioral Scientist Francesca Gino recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review in which she elaborated on the “benefits of and common barriers to curiosity in the workplace.”
Professor Gino points to research, which offers “three important insights about curiosity as it relates to business”
- Curiosity is essential to the performance of an enterprise, leading to “fewer decision-making errors, more innovation, reduced group conflict, and more-open communication and better team performance.”
- By “making small changes” to organization and management, leaders can do more to encourage their employees’ curiosity
- Leaders fear curiosity “will increase risk and inefficiency.”
To address these three insights, Professor Gino offered “five strategies that can help leaders get high returns on investments in employees’ curiosity and in their own”:
- Hire for curiosity.
- Model inquisitiveness.
- Emphasize learning goals.
- Let employees explore and broaden their interests.
- Have “Why?” “What if…?” and “How might we…?” days.
She concludes, “Maintaining a sense of wonder is crucial to creativity and innovation. The most effective leaders look for ways to nurture their employees’ curiosity to fuel learning and discovery.”
You can read more about the business curiosity research here.
Occasional Breaks Can Make Groups Smarter – Questrom School of Business News
BU Questrom’s Jesse Shore recently co-authored new PNAS research, which finds that scientists who integrate “short breaks into problem-solving sessions improves both the average performance of the group and increases the likelihood of getting the best solution.”
The study, which was co-authored by Harvard’s Ethan Bernstein and David Lazer, has “implications for the way we use always-on collaboration software, such as Slack and Google Docs.”
Shore explains, “In many of these [collaborative software tools], the goal seems to be to keep people constantly aware of what others are doing. But the reality is that if you’re getting an alert every time something happens and you’re not taking the time to work separately and have your own independent thoughts, it may hurt the group’s overall ability to solve complex problems.”
You can find the full article here.
Sound Advice: Marketing Students Help Sonos Better Understand Its Customers – Suffolk Experience
The Suffolk Experience recently highlighted Sawyer Business School marketing research collaboration with Sonos, a “go-to source for high-quality home sound systems” that just so happens to be within walking distance of campus.
To accommodate the prediction that over “50 percent of all searches worldwide will be done by voice within four years,” Sonos had thrown its hat in the voice-assistance ring with Apple’s HomePad, Amazon Echo, and Google Home. The company reached out to Sawyer to better understand how late millennial 18-to-24-year-old consumers interact with voice-assistant speakers.
Sonos Consumer Insights Manager Dennis Brosnan writes, “Sonos likes working with Sawyer Business School students because the analysis and recommendations they present are often different than the approach we would take.”
You can read more about the Sonos research here.
MIT Announces 9 African Startup Challenge Finalists, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
These 9 African Startups are Working Toward a More Inclusive World – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan recently announced the nine African startup finalists of The Initiative on the Digital Economy’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge, all of which use technology to “reinvent the future of work.”
Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”
Here are the 9 African finalists:
- Wefarm provides a “mobile network accessed through SMS, where millions of small-scale farmers can share information.”
- PrepClass connects students and tutors.
- Wesabi connects “skilled laborers to individuals and businesses.”
- Lynk is an “online platform that operates as a hiring service and also a showcase for artisans.”
- Brave Venture Labs provides “talent sourcing software for growing companies.”
- Moringa School “teaches software development and offers professional skills training.”
- Safi Organics “provides small-scale farmers with affordable fertilizer for their crops.”
- Solar Freeze “offers mobile cold-storage units for small farmers to help reduce crop spoilage.”
- AgroCenta is a “digital platform for rural, small-scale farmers to connect with buyers and access financial services.”
The finalists, who will travel to Nairobi, Kenya in late August to “pitch their ideas at a regional competition,” were selected from almost 200 entrepreneurs from 16 countries.
You can read more about the African startup contenders here.
Collaborate, But Only Intermittently, According to New Study by Harvard Business School Professor and Colleagues – Harvard Business School News
HBS has published new PNAS research, which suggests that always-on technologies like Slack, email, and social media are less effective at complex problem solving than “intermittently on.”
HBS’s Ethan Bernstein, along with BU Questrom’s Jesse Shore, and Northeastern’s David Lazer believe their research could have widespread implications on the workplace, such as “alternating independent efforts with group work over a period of time to get optimal benefits.”
Bernstein writes, “As we replace those sorts of intermittent cycles with always-on technologies, we might be diminishing our capacity to solve problems well.”
You can read more about the research here.
Sizing up Markets, Peering into the Future – Carroll School News
BC Carroll recently hosted its annual Finance Conference in which financial experts delivered a surprisingly “upbeat forecast” on global investment, tech innovations, and cryptocurrencies.
Of the conference’s goals, John and Linda Powers Family Dean Andy Boynton ’78 writes, “We want our students to become lifelong learners, people who look for ideas in many different places. We want them to think both deeply and broadly, and to become great leaders for the future.”
Despite the relative stasis of the larger economy, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Professor Nicholas Burns ’78 described this particular moment in American history “consequential” and “chaotic” from a global economy standpoint.
Burns explains that “high on his list of global challenges for the United States is the rising dominance of nations to the East, especially China and India,” particular when the U.S. has not employed “skillful diplomacy and strategic thinking” to accommodate this “coming shift in global power.”
Nicholas Burns (’78), speaking recently at BC Carroll / Photo via bc.edu
He said, “There’s no question that by the next century, we’ll be a Pacific world,”
You can read more about the conference here.
Employee Surveillance, Startup Contests, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
The Surprising Effects of Employee Surveillance – Questrom School of Business Blog
BU Questrom School of Business professor Michel Anteby recently co-authored new research that explores the ways in which increased surveillance of employees can lead “to workers’ strikes and sometimes even quitting their jobs altogether.”
The article points to a 2011 experiment where TSA managers installed cameras to monitor officers “as an attempt to stop the disappearance of baggage in airports.” According to TSA officers, they felt they “as though their managers were merely looking for a reason to discipline them.”
New BU research finds that workplace scrutiny often leads to a worse work environment, even if it is inadvertently / Photo via bu.edu
According to Anteby’s research, “under such scrutiny, one tends to lose sight of the bigger picture, which ends up with employees feeling undervalued and over scrutinized.”
You can read the full article here.
These 12 European Startups Are Using Technology to Improve Opportunities For Low-And Middle-Income Workers – MIT Sloan Newsroom
The MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy’s Global Inclusive Innovation Challenge announced its 12 European finalists, all of which are working to improve economic opportunity for workers. According to the article, “the competitors are judged on vision, impact, participation, and scalability.”
Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”
According to the article, the European finalists will travel to “Darmstadt, Germany, in early September, where they will pitch their ideas at a regional competition. The winner of each category then goes on to compete in November during the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT. The gala includes four $250,000 prizes, one for each category.”
The 12 European finalists, organized by category, are as follows:
Skills Development and Opportunity Matching
- Data4You, an all-ages coding boot camp.
- Jobiri, which “assists people with finding jobs through an AI-driven career adviser.”
- micro:bit, which “provides tiny programmable computers for students and teachers.”
Income Growth and Job Creation
- ABURY’s “Design meets Craft” connects “designers and artisans through a digital platform to find creative project partners, and connect with the global market.”
- mecasa is an “online platform connecting caretakers with senior individuals who need daily support.”
- ProGlove is a “smart glove designed to scan and streamline manufacturing and logistics work.”
Financial Inclusion
- hiveonline is a “mobile platform offering small- and micro-businesses administrative help and access to financial services.”
- Trezeo, which “provides a mobile financial platform for independent workers.”
- Sherpa, which “offers insurance to people who are self-employed, freelancers, contractors, and other entrepreneurs.”
Technology Access
- BLITAB, a “tactile tablet designed for blind and visually-impaired users.”
- Pangea Electronics “builds sustainable and eco-friendly technology.”
- Teqmine Analytics uses “AI to help customers with their research and development questions.”
You can read more about the event here.
Think You’re Having a Heart Attack? If You’re a Woman, Insist on a Female Physician – Harvard Business School News
New PNAS research co-authored by HBS Associate Professor Laura Huang, along with the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities’ Brad Greenwood and Washington University in St. Louis’ Seth Carnahan finds that of “more than 500,000 heart attack patients admitted to hospital emergency departments in Florida between 1991 and 2010, female patients treated by male physicians were less likely to survive than patients of either gender treated by female physicians or male patients treated by male physicians.”
Moreover, “survival rates among female patients treated by male physicians improved with an increase in the percentage of female physicians in the emergency department and an increase in the number of female patients previously treated by the physician.”
In “Patient-Physician Gender Concordance and Increased Mortality Among Female Heart Attack Patients,” the researchers write:
“These results suggest a reason why gender inequality in heart attack mortality persists: Most physicians are male, and male physicians appear to have trouble treating female patients. If female patients tend to be more challenging for male and female doctors to diagnose and treat, the patterns we document may reflect the fact that the most skillful physicians (i.e., female physicians) provide the highest return to their skills when treating the most challenging patients (i.e., female patients).”
You can read more about the research here.
Where Have All the New Ideas Gone? – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
New Ideas are Getting Harder to Find—and More Expensive – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan recently examined just how difficult is it to come up with new ideas in an age of seemingly infinite access.
A new National Bureau of Economic Research study published by MIT Sloan Professor of Applied Economics John Van Reenen, Stanford University professors Nicholas Bloom and Charles I. Jones, and Stanford Doctoral candidate Michael Webb finds that “the productivity of scientific research is falling sharply across the board” due in large part because “researchers are putting in more and more effort to sustain the same—or even a slightly lower—pace of idea generation as we experienced half a century ago.”
Van Reenen writes, “As the total amount of knowledge becomes larger and larger and larger, it becomes increasingly difficult to get to its frontier of that knowledge. It was much easier a couple thousand years ago.”
Two workarounds are to narrow the “focus of one’s studies to specialize in a very particular domain” and expand investment into research. However, both solutions arrive with their own sets of challenges, according to Van Reenan.
“In order to carry on innovating, you’re constantly working together, and it’s very complicated to get all of these people and ideas together.”
Van Reenan is concerned that government investment into scientific research is simply not enough of a high priority.
“I think a lot of the time you hear we’ll just cut the top tax rates to generate lots of innovation — I’m pretty skeptical about that in terms of the incentives you’re going to give. Both have positive effects on growth and equality. Instead of giving away $5 trillion in tax cuts, use that to invest in growth opportunities for the future.”
You can read the full article from MIT Sloan here.
No More General Tso’s? A Threat to ‘Knowledge Recombination’ – Harvard Business Week
HBS Technology and Operations Management Unit Assistant Professor Prithwiraj “Raj” Choudhury is set to publish a new Strategic Management Journal paper that explores the “role ethnic migrants play within the work force,” as well as the “new technologies in countries where they’ve migrated.”
Choudhury points to examples throughout history like Soviet mathematicians who “came to the United States in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union; far ahead in fields like partial differential equations and symplectic topology, they helped their American counterparts solve otherwise intractable problems,” American Chinese cuisine staples like General Tso’s chicken and chop suey, and Indian immigrants who brought double-entry bookkeeping to South Africa in the late 19th century.
Choudhury uses ‘The Ethnic Migrant Inventor Effect: Codification and Recombination of Knowledge Across Borders,’ written with HBS doctoral student Do Yoon Kim, as a launch pad to discuss immigration through the lens of knowledge production rather than job creation—or absorption.
“Instead of seeing migrants through the lens of whether they create jobs or not, we should view migrants as carriers of knowledge—knowledge that could be further recombined by locals. If H1-B was scrapped, or Europe stopped admitting skilled migrants, the knowledge production of the global economy would suffer.”
Choudhury adds, “It’s not only a loss to the firms, it’s also a loss to local workers, who will lose out if they do not imbibe this knowledge from migrants. I would turn the debate on its head and say, it’s not about destroying or creating jobs, it’s about participating in or losing out on creating knowledge.”
You can read the full article here.
Coffee Break – Sawyer Business School
MassChallenge, the self-described “most friendly start-up accelerator on the planet” recently selected WarmUp Protein Coffee, a “coffee-cum-protein beverage” developed by Sawyer Business School alum James Testa (BSBA ’17) as part of Sawyer’s “Crowdfunding the Venture” class.
Testa writes about how getting rejected from last year’s competition sent him back to the drawing board and enabled WarmUp to stand out among the other 1,600 applications. In a recent interview with his alma mater, Testa says:
“I spent all year getting the product out there, building the business, and getting some sales. So when I went back to MassChallenge this year, I feel like I had a much better grasp of my business and who my customers were. And because I had real sales, I was a lot more confident about it. The proof of concept was already there.”
MassChallenge start-ups “get free office space, connections to industry-specific mentors, advice from venture capitalists, and the chance to win up to $1.5 million to help launch a business.”
You can read the full article here.
Religious Spending, Taking Risks, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Shoppers with Strong Religious Beliefs Spend Less and Make Fewer Impulse Purchases – Harvard Business Review
The Harvard Business School recently published an article in the Harvard Business Review that illuminates a fascinating correlation between grocery spending and religiosity—as the latter rises, the former falls.
The researchers write, “We found that for each 20 percent increase in the number of religious adherents in a county, annual grocery sales per store decreases, on average, by about $125,000. [Our] results showed that shoppers living in more religious U.S. counties spent less money on groceries and also made fewer impulse purchases than those living in less religious U.S. counties.”
The implications of the research are vast and wide reaching, particularly for retailers. They explain further:
“Because being reminded about God increases shoppers’ frugality, they may be more sensitive to price discounts and promotions (such as “buy one, get one free”) around the time of religious holidays and observances. Getting a good deal, particularly on an impulse buy, is likely to alleviate shoppers’ heightened frugality.”
The researchers also speculate that “retailers may also allay religious shoppers’ concerns about being frugal by offering deals that demonstrate respect for their values, such as promising to donate a percentage of revenue from a particular product to a local charity.”
You can check out the full article here.
When Regulation Doesn’t Throttle Risk-Taking – Questrom School of Business Blog
New Management Science research from Questrom School of Business Accounting Professor Ana Albuquerque and Fudan University’s Julie Lei Zhu finds the positive impacts of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), which required companies to implement internal controls on financial reporting.
According to the article, “not only did filing firms not decrease their investment activities, some measures suggested that firms actually increased their investments after the reporting requirements were put into place. Filing firms also appeared to benefit in other ways. Banks typically offered filing firms larger loans with lower collateral requirements compared to non-filing firms.”
Albuquerque writes, “Credit terms improved [for filing firms], because they were disclosing more information. The benefit was higher than the cost of compliance.”
You can read more here.
These 12 startups are Re-Imagining the Latin American Workplace and Workforce – MIT Sloan Newsroom
MIT Sloan recently announced the 12 Latin American finalists of the its global Inclusive Innovation Challenge, all of which will travel to São Paulo, Brazil in just a few weeks “where they will pitch their ideas at the IIC Latin America Celebration.”
According to the article, “the winner of each category then goes on to compete in November during the Global Grand Prize Gala at MIT. The gala includes four $250,000 prizes, one for each category.”
Initiative Director Erik Brynjolfsson writes, “If we employ inclusive innovation globally, it could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We can have more wealth, better health, and widely held prosperity.”
Here’s a quick overview of each of the 12 Latin American finalists:
- Interacpedia “connects university student teams with organizations to generate the development of new skills/jobs and opportunities.”
- Signa is a “platform that provides deaf people with online digital economy courses.”
- Sumá is a “fair marketing platform that connects family farmers with food buyers.”
- Alò Bodega is a “mobile app for Latin American and Asian corner stores.”
- Apli is an “artificial intelligence-enabled jobs marketplace.”
- Incluyeme is an “online job portal for people in Latin America with disabilities.”
- Grupo Nueva Economía is “developing new digital channels for small businesses and entrepreneurs.”
- Outbound Initiative “connects innovators from underrepresented regions — in this case Brazil — with business opportunities using data-combing artificial intelligence.”
- RedeDots is a “social network of more than 220,000 people engaged in the fair trade and sustainable business market.”
- LEVEE “uses machine learning, geolocation, and mobile messages to connect people with job opportunities.”
- Trocafone “aims to reduce e-waste by creating a marketplace for used electronics.”
- UnDosTres “offers Mexico residents mobile payment for services like prepaid cellphone recharging, movie ticket purchases, electricity, and phone bills.”
You can read more about the startups here.
Forbes, Statista Analyze The Best U.S. Employers for Women
Forbes, in partnership with German data company Statista, surveyed over 40,000 U.S. employees (including 25,000 women) that worked for companies that had at least 1,000 total employees in an effort to find which companies were the best US employers for women. While several big-name companies earned high marks, one particular Iowa-based company managed to stand out among the competition.
The first set of criteria Forbes and Statista analyzed to calculate its best US employers for women ranking centered around factors such as working conditions, diversity, and “how likely they’d be to recommend their employer to others.” When accounting for the men in the survey, in contrast to the women that were asked the same set of questions, scores were adjusted if the differences if answers became apparent. For example, Statista would adjust scores if men in the survey said a company had a lot of diversity, but women said that the same company did not.
The following set of criteria used in the survey, specifically for the female respondents, focused on “on factors such as parental leave, discrimination, and pay equity,” as well as nominated companies outside of the one they happen to work for. “The final list ranks the 300 employers that both received the most recommendations and boast the most gender diverse boards and executive ranks,” Forbes says.
Des Moines, Iowa company Principal Financial Group was the best U.S. company for women, according to Statista data.
Principal Financial Group, based out of Des Moines, Iowa, earned the highest honors for the 2018 ranking, with an official score of 91.4. The company, ranked 210th overall on the Fortune 500 list, employs 9,978 U.S. workers, nearly 60 percent of which are women. Speaking with Forbes, Kerry Gumm, the Principal Capital Director of Human Resources Strategy, says, “It really does start with the culture of the organization.”
“You can have a holistic life if you’re part of this organization,” she adds. “I’ve not felt the need to compromise in any way.”
Principal Financial Group earned high recommendations because of its benefits, which include “flexible work schedules, prenatal care programs, and an onsite childcare center.” The company also manages an annual review of all of its pay practices to better combat any potential biases, alongside an anonymous call center to help discuss compensation disputes. Not to be outdone, the company also implements rigorous standards in helping its own employees earn promotions, of which include “three women’s networks for those in leadership, technology, and sales roles.” In contrast to many of the companies listed in the aforementioned Fortune 500 listing, 42 percent of executive roles and 45 percent of the boards seats are held by women Principal Capital Group.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System, more commonly referred to as Penn Medicine, earned the number two spot on the ranking. The organization has over 35,000 U.S. employees; the third highest among the top ten ranked companies. With a significantly larger employee base than Principal Financial, Penn Medicine also has one of the largest percentages of female employees in the country at 77 percent. This also includes 55 percent women in the organization’s executive roles, as well as five out of its seven CEOs.
Card manufacturer Hallmark, based in Kansas City, Missouri, rounded out the top three. The company sports the smallest employee base out of any company in the top 10, with 2,500 U.S. employees. However, Hallmark featured an even larger portion of U.S. female employees than Penn Medicine, with a figure of 83 percent overall. About 70 percent of the Hallmark board is also held by women.
Several of the nation’s most prominent universities also managed to land in the top 50 of the new ranking, the highest of which was Harvard University at 9th overall. New York University, UVA, Stanford, and Emory University also earned high honors in the 2018 best US employers for women ranking.
2018 Best US Employers for Women
| Ranking | Company | # of U.S. Employees |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Principal Financial Group | 9,978 |
| 2 | Penn Medicine | 35,273 |
| 3 | Hallmark | 2,500 |
| 4 | BayCare | 25,600 |
| 5 | Oregon Health & Science University | 15,642 |
| 6 | Keller Williams Realty | 154,000 |
| 7 | Boston Children's Hospital | 5,001 |
| 8 | Providence Health & Services | 82,000 |
| 9 | Harvard University | 18,724 |
| 10 | Gwinnett County Public Schools | 23,300 |
