Kellogg On Pharma’s Lack of Innovation, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
Everyone Wants Pharmaceutical Breakthroughs. What Drives Drug Companies to Pursue Them? – Kellogg Insights
Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Professor of Finance Dimitris Papanikolaou recently co-authored new research that illuminates why “pharmaceutical firms these days often make minor changes to existing medications instead of delivering innovative drugs.”
The study, which was co-authored with HBS’s Joshua Krieger and MIT Sloan’s Danielle Li, found that “financial frictions may be limiting innovation.”
According to the article, “The researchers found that firms were eager to work on novel drugs—under the right financial circumstances. When pharmaceutical companies got a windfall, such as a sudden increase in profits, they were more likely to spend it on developing novel drugs than on incremental improvements.”
You can read more about the trio’s research here.
Kadiani Finds Passion for Social Entrepreneurship at Gies Business – Gies College of Business News
The University of Illinois Gies College of Business recently profiled current Master of Accountancy Science student Hamed Kadiani whose social entrepreneurship journey began as part of student organization Illinois Enactus, which helped him understand his desire to see “what the root of the problem is, and then develop a solution that fixes the cause, not the symptom.”
Kadiani later served as project manager for Project Oasis, an “online center that connects immigrants to resources in Champaign-Urbana, provides access to 75 resources in six main focus areas such as healthcare and education, [and] teaches immigrants financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills.”
According to the interview, Kadiani plans to become a CPA but shared his ambitions to some day run for political office.
“I hope I made an impact on campus, but I truly believe this work made more of an impact on me. I am who I am today because of this university and Gies College of Business.”
You can read more from the Gies College of Business News profile here.
Mendoza’s Marketing Major Puts a Strong Emphasis on Digital Skills – Mendoza Ideas & News
Notre Dame Mendoza’s Marketing Department recently recruited Professor Timothy Bohling, who will teaching Digital Marketing to both undergraduate and graduates in spring 2019.
Having previously held senior executive leadership positions at Stratasys, HCL Technologies, and IBM, Bohling’s research and teaching interests are “centered both on scholarly rigor and practitioner relevance in areas of digital marketing, customer relationship management, decision modeling, customer lifetime value and innovation adoption.”
The Mendoza Marketing Department has introduced four specialized tracks that emphasize data-based strategies: marketing decision analytics, brandscaping; consulting and market development; and digital marketing.
You can read more about Bohling, his research, and the 2019 courses here.
New MBA Jobs: JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and More
It’s always good to see when MBA jobs flourish, with lots of MBA employment opportunities around the United States. Check out just a few of these exciting new MBA jobs at firms like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, General Mills, and more below. Continue reading…
Gies Caterpillar Partnership Announced, and More – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
Government Got You Worried? It May Be Affecting Your Shopping Habits – Kellogg Insights
Northwestern Kellogg School of Management doctoral candidate Jessica Gamlin, along with professors of marketing Ping Dong and Aparna Labroo, found that “when consumers are thinking about politics, they are drawn to products they view as utilitarian rather than pleasurable.” In other words: “the more you fret about the state of the government, the more spartan your shopping cart might be.”
Speaking with Kellogg Insights, Gamlin explains her fascination with the dissonance between a seemingly banal meal-kit ad placed amidst a divisive political debate, “I was curious about why advertisers were choosing these different podcasts to advertise on in different quantities.”
Labroo also adds, “A desire for the government to do things in a more responsible manner translates into higher-order goals for the consumer, herself, to be responsible in her actions.”
Dong adds, “The reason is the more people think the political system is irresponsible, the more the desire to see the government be responsible is activated, and therefore, the more the consumer’s own goal is also activated.”
You can read more about the research here.
Caterpillar Invests in Students’ Futures with Illinois Business-Engineering Program – Gies College of Business News
As part of a decades-long relationship between the University of Illinois and the Peoria-based construction equipment manufacturer, Caterpillar has recently invested in the Gies College of Business and the College of Engineering’s new collaborative Hoeft Technology & Management undergraduate minor, in which “teams of business and engineering students learn and work together to develop comprehensive solutions to real-world problems.”
In the announcement, Caterpillar CTO and VP Tom Bluth says, “Becoming an affiliate of the program is a natural fit for us, because the intersection of business and engineering is at the core of how we develop the products and solutions that benefit our customers.
“We’re also proud to have been connected to the T&M Program since its start: A member of our Caterpillar family had the vision to create the program and the passion to make it possible.”
You can find out more about the Gies Caterpillar partnership here.
Six Marketing Fundamentals Founders Need to Succeed – Chicago Booth Magazine
Catherine Littell ’08
Chicago Booth Magazine recently profiled Catherine Littell (’08), whose Care Concierge LLC has taken an innovative approach to senior-care consulting. Littell, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the James M. Kilts Center for Marketing, discussed her “multipoint approach to launching a business in the digital age.”
- Know your customer. “There are a lot of great ideas out there. But can you take that idea and create a product for the right customer at the right time?”
- Hone your message. “It’s really about understanding your customer and creating an authentic experience.”
- Let the data speak. “Data will tell you whatever you want it to, good or bad, so make sure you use it to inform rather than just to affirm your decisions.”
- Run the numbers. “Starting a business is about gut feelings, but knowing the numbers can help you figure out whether or not a business is profitable or can be profitable.”
- Be comfortable with change. “You’ve got to be able to trust your gut and say, ‘If it works, great, and if it doesn’t, let’s change tactics and move forward.’”
- Hire the right team. “If you find people who have drive and passion, plus they love your product and can define what you do and stand for, that’s really powerful.”
You can read the full article here.
Political Turnover, Gaming, and Venture Acceleration – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
Why Economic Crises Trigger Political Turnover in Some Countries but Not Others – Kellogg Insight
New research from Northwestern Kellogg Professor of Managerial Economics and Decisions Nancy Qian explores “how much the people of a country typically trust other people” in an attempt to understand why recessions are catalysts for political turmoil in certain countries, like Greece, and not others, like Norway.
Qian explains that trust plays a key role.
“If I’m a less trusting person, I might say something like, ‘I don’t understand the details of what our leader is doing, but most politicians are bad and they’re lazy, so it is probably his fault. It’s about how likely I am to attribute the economic problems to circumstance or luck versus to the political leadership.”
The researchers found that “economic downturns were less likely to cause political turnover in high-trust countries, like Sweden (63 percent) than in low-trust ones, like Italy (29 percent).”
Qian explains that their findings “have direct implications for how nations approach economic interactions.”
“If we think our trade decisions are going to have economic effects in those nations, we need to also consider the potential political consequences,” Qian says. You can read the rest of the research here.
Keep Them Guessing, Keep Them Gaming – Chicago Booth Blog
In a new Journal of Consumer Research study from Chicago Booth Professor Christopher Hsee and the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Luxi Shen, it was found that “people repeat a task more for an uncertain incentive than for a certain incentive, even when the uncertain incentive is financially worse.”
According to the Chicago Booth Blog entry, “one reason uncertain incentives motivate behavior is the psychological boost consumers get in moving from the unpleasantness of uncertainty to the satisfaction of certainty resolution.”
Hsee and Shen’s research suggests that efforts to entice consumers to repeat behaviors “may be even more successful if consumers don’t know the amount of the reward in advance.”
You can read the full article here and find “The Fun and Function of Uncertainty: Uncertain Incentives Reinforce Repetition Decisions” here.
Spine Injury Inspires Mark Van den Avont to Create Better Sports Mats – Gies College of Business Blog
Following a high school spine injury that broke the T11 and T12 vertebrae during a backflip dismount, current University of Illinois mechanical engineering sophomore Mark Van den Avont founded HexNest with the goal to create safer and more cost-effective mats.
HexNest is an outgrowth of Gies’ iVenture Accelerator through which he received a $2,500 summer housing stipend and a $10,000 grant to fund “product development, buying competitors’ mats and purchasing equipment to make his mats.”
Van den Avont writes:
“iVenture has been extremely important because I was able to work on HexNest full-time over the summer and devote all my energy to it. It’s great being around other entrepreneurs as well. I’ll be at the iVenture Accelerator at 10 pm on a Tuesday night or early Sunday morning, and I’ll look to my left and right, and everybody’s here.”
You can read more about HexNest and Van den Avont’s journey here.
The Tech Giant Investment in Renewable Energy – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
The New Boom – Mendoza Business Magazine
The Notre Dame University Mendoza College of Business recently discussed why tech behemoths like Google and Amazon have begun to invest heavily in renewable energy technologies—and why this largely U.S. phenomenon is about to go global.
The Mendoza Business Magazine article notes that the reason underlying this new trend is due to the fact that clean energy became cheap energy.
“Once the favorable trajectory of renewable energy economics became apparent, it didn’t take long for some of the world’s largest companies to act. Google and Apple signed trailblazing renewable energy deals in 2012.”
It’s likely that these deals helped generate a domino effect where American and Mexican companies “signed deals for just over 10 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity between 2012 and 2017.”
According to the International Energy Agency, “renewables accounted for nearly two-thirds of new power capacity installed globally in 2016.”
The International Renewable Energy Agency reports that the cost of “generating power from onshore wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels fell by 25 percent and 73 percent, respectively, since 2010, and predicted that all renewable energy technologies would be economically competitive by 2020.”
According to the school, “The market is ready to ramp up outside the United States, too, in part because U.S.-based multinationals are now looking to buy clean energy overseas.”
You can read the full piece here.
Sarah Siderius Gets the Job Done at Google – UIC Business
The Liautaud Graduate School of Business recently profiled current MBA student Sarah Siderius (’19) whose educational experience at UIC laid the groundwork for her stint as a contractor with Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the tech powerhouse.
Siderius explains how her LinkedIn profile helped her land the position. “As a part of my previous role, I helped my employer establish their philanthropic program. Having this experience on my resume caught this recruiter’s eye, which ultimately led to this amazing opportunity.”
Siderius most recently played an integral role in the Google.org Impact Challenge, Illinois, which awards “$1 million in grants to Illinois nonprofits who are creating economic opportunity in the state.”
She explained that she “enjoyed the fact that she was not only able to work for such an amazing company, but that she was able to give back through her work.”
Find out more about Siderius and her new role here.
How the Coffee Industry Is Building a Sustainable Supply Chain in an Unstable Region – Kellogg Insights
The Northwestern University Kellogg School of Business recently profiled the political and ethical hurdles associated with the newfound excitement surrounding the “quality of Robusta and Arabica” grown in the Democratic Republic of Congo right now. According to the article, “Harvesting, washing, and transporting Congolese coffee beans from the area is fraught with peril, from the dozens of militia groups operating in the east of the country to decades of political instability.”
Assistant Professor of Managerial Sciences and Decisions Sciences Ameet Morjaria, whose research focuses on the East African coffee supply chain, explains, “Development dollars have arrived at the shores of the eastern Congo. For those top dollars to have a lasting impact is not straightforward: farmers are poor, lack support, and struggle to get access to finance.”
“Their trees are old, badly maintained, and low-yielding. On top of that, investors worry about the expense and logistics of getting produce out of the country at volume. And lastly there are issues of insecurity and poor governance.”
Morjaria spoke to two experts on the Congolese coffee industry: SHIFT Social Impact Solutions founder Sara Mason and DRC Producer Group Development Platform Head Angel Mario Martinez Garcia.
Mason explains why it’s essential for companies to continue working in DRC.
“We really hope that in a few years, with positive support from the government, there might be a chance to transform the sector into an agricultural growth opportunity that will fully realize its potential.”
She adds that the actual growers are often vulnerable to exploitation due to extreme poverty, lack of education, and limited ability to communicate with the outside world. “Helping to support strong, transparent producer organizations was one of the drivers for creating the SHIFT DRC Producer Group Development Platform.”
Martinez Garcia says, “A quick fix is never going to work in the Congo. And sometimes it’s a challenge to find someone who’s able to provide resources and time and energy for people to work there in the long run.”
“It is really important to continue supporting producers, to continue increasing skills and knowledge. Because they are the ones, even after we end any activity or any project we have there—in a year or 10 years or 20 years—who will still be there working and living and discussing any future of the coffee sector in the Congo.”
You can read more from Northwestern Kellogg here.
Happiness, Net Worth, and Materialism – Chicago News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Chicago business schools this week.
How To Be Happy Without Earning More – Booth Business Blog
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business recently published a lengthy profile that explores “hedonomics,” a term that professor Christopher K. Hsee appropriated to use as a “counterpart” to traditional economics, which studies how “to extract more happiness from the existing stuff.”
Hsee explains, “Our ancestors had to work to accumulate enough to survive. But now productivity is so high, we don’t need to work so hard for survival.”
In 2008, Hsee and his Booth compatriot Reid Hastie “redefined” the term from its original meaning as the “study of ways to interact with machines.” The article explains that “their version of hedonomics is premised on the idea that people don’t need more resources to be happier; they need to use existing resources differently,” such as a child who grows weary of wooden blocks they initially enjoyed. “Hedonomics suggests the child doesn’t need more blocks to be happy; she needs to change how she plays with those blocks.”
One component of hedonomics is the “hedonic treadmill,” coined by Northwestern’s Philip Brickman and Lehigh’s Donald T. Campbell, which refers to the psychoeconomic effect of what happens when it “takes more and more things to make people happy.”
According to the article, “The hedonic treadmill fires up because people misunderstand what will actually make them happy. [In fact], people gain more happiness when they satisfy their inherent rather than learned preferences—needs rather than wants.”
Hsee’s research could be useful in developing countries where the middle class continues to grow and more developed countries where the middle class has begun to diminish, particularly with the prospect of millions of people becoming idle due to automation looming in the background.
“You can make idle people happy by giving them a reason to ‘play with the existing blocks’ without accumulating more blocks.”
You can read more about hedonomics here.
Aric Rindfleisch’s Research Delves Into Reducing Materialism in Younger Consumers – Gies School of Business Blog
University of Illinois Gies College of Business Professor of Business Administration and Marketing Aric Rindfleisch, who researches consumer values, recently published a paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology, which presents “strategies for reducing materialism in younger consumers.”
According to the Gies School of Business Blog, “The impact of gratitude on adolescent materialism and generosity” has led to two studies that offered “fostering gratitude” as an effective strategy to combat materialism in adolescents.
Aric Rindfleisch, Gies College of Business Professor of Business Administration and Marketing
“In the first study, children and adolescents with a grateful disposition were less materialistic.” The second study found that ‘gratitude journals’ “significantly reduced materialism and also attenuated materialism’s negative effect on generosity.”
You can read more about Rindfleisch’s research here.
New Study Contradicts Notion That Electronic Health Records are Driving Doctors to Quit – Mendoza Ideas & News
Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations Corey Angst has coauthored a new study due for publication in Information Systems Research, which finds that electronic health records (EHRs) have “increased doctors’ tenure at hospitals.” This discovery stands in direct opposition to certain prominent articles, which assert that EHRs have caused doctors to retire.
“The Mobility of High Status Professionals after the Implementation of Enterprise Information Systems, which was coauthored with the University of Minnesota’s Brad Greenwood and McGill’s Kartik Ganju, examines how EHRs affect the “decision of physicians to continue practicing at their current hospital.”
Angst says, “Results suggest that when EHRs create benefits for doctors, such as reducing their workloads or preventing costly errors, their duration of practice increases significantly.”
“However, when technologies force doctors to change their routines, there is an obvious exodus, though it’s more pronounced with older doctors, especially specialists, and those who have been disrupted in the past by IT implementations,” he adds.
Angst notes that “doctors won’t be scared off as hospitals continue adopting new technologies — as long as they’re not too disruptive to routines.”
You can read more about the research here.
