The Twitter Echo Chamber (Sort Of), and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week.
Here’s Why Twitter Isn’t the Echo Chamber You Think It Is – Questrom School of Business News
In new research recently published in MIS Quarterly, Northeastern Questrom’s Jesse Shore and Chrysanthos Dellarocas with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Jiye Baek (Questrom, Ph.D. ’18) found that Twitter users tend to “post more moderate content” than the content to which they are exposed.
Shore explains that this finding stands in stark contrast to the theory that the platform “opens us up to a greater diversity of perspectives, nudges us to ever-more extreme positions,” and creates an echo chamber for opinions.
“I hope this study helps move the public conversation beyond the notion of echo chambers. In many ways Twitter users are the opposite of the way they are described in the press: they are exposed to diverse information, but post more moderately,” Shore says.
You can read more about the research here.
How ‘Credibility-Enhancing Displays’ Can Boost Sales and Drive People to Action – MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter
MIT Sloan Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences David Rand and Yale doctoral candidate Gordon Kraft-Todd pursued new research that suggests that businesses will inspire potential customers to engage their services if they “walk the walk” since “beliefs are spread more effectively by actions than by words because actions reveal information about the actor’s true beliefs.”
Kraft-Todd explains:
“This is true of solar panels, but it’s true of any campaign where the common denominator is some new or rare behavior. If practitioners organize a campaign around a novel technology or practice, then the first thing they should do is get spokespeople and advocates who themselves are adopters.”
You can read more from the full article here.
Dysfunctional Teams – Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson was a guest on a recent episode of HBR’s advice podcast “Dear HBR,” where she and co-hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn unpack listener questions about “what to do when your team isn’t communicating, doesn’t respect its leader, or has one employee who’s causing problems.”
When Professor Edmondson was studying medical errors as research for her new book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, she discovered that the better teams were “more able and willing to talk about the mistakes that occurred so that they could catch and prevent them from causing harm. People have to feel safe to bring their brains to work. And [that feeling of security] is not normal. Fear is really quite widespread.”
In the episode, Edmondson fields questions that touch on office dynamics between junior employees and senior management, sudden shifts in decision-making processes, as well as the surprising drawbacks of more transparent cultures.
You can listen to the entire HBR episode and read more about Professor Edmondson’s research here.
Hot MBA Jobs: Computer and Information Systems Manager
For those looking to pursue a management career at the tech end of the business world, Computer and Information Systems Manager may be a promising career to pursue.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the growth rate for this job at 12 percent over the next eight years. But, are you not sure where to begin? Below, we’ve put together a guide to help you determine if this is the career for you.
What is a Computer and Information Systems Manager?
The Computer and Information Systems Manager (or IT Manager) runs the company activities related to computers and tech. They must assess the needs of an organization to determine the appropriate hardware and software to both meet demands of and enhance the efficiency of company business. In addition to installing and maintaining hardware and software, IT Managers must stay abreast of new tech developments so that they can pitch ideas to upper-management should they identify an opportunity to implement technology that would advance the company’s mission. The IT Manager also directs and organizes the efforts of the lower-level positions in the IT department.
There are different types of Computer and Information System Managers, so duties may be more specifically tailored depending on the specific title. For example, an IT Security Manager would work with the tech as it pertains to protecting an organization’s security interests.
Am I A Good Fit?
IT Managers possess solid analytical skills. People in this role need to be able accurately evaluate a company’s needs and determine which products would enhance productivity. They must also be able to analyze any tech and management issues to ensure that their department runs smoothly. They are solid, decisive leaders and creative thinkers. Communication skills are essential, as IT Managers must communicate directions to those working under them, as well as deliver presentations to higher-level execs.
In 2017, the average base pay for a Computer and Information Systems Manager, according to Glassdoor, was $106,092 in the United States.
Education and Where to Begin
The minimum degree requirement for a Computer and Information Systems Manager is generally a bachelor’s with a tech-related major. However, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies often require graduate degrees, and earning an MBA could prove to be a huge asset. If you are looking to pursue this title, it may be beneficial to start with entry-level tech positions in your field to gain a few years of experience before applying to a manager position.
An MBA program with a top-notch tech education may be a good place to start if you’re hoping to become an IT Manager. In 2018, U.S. News made a list of the best MBA Information Systems programs. Below, we’ve pulled some of our favorite MBAs from the list:
Sloan School of Management – MIT
It should come as no surprise that MIT Sloan tops the list of best Information Systems programs. MIT has long been hallowed ground for the technologically-inclined, so it makes sense that the school’s MBA program also caters to those with a bent toward tech, with 26.2 percent of the 2017 graduating class pursuing careers in the software and internet industries.
McCombs School of Business – University of Texas at Austin
McCombs, which has a nationally-ranked MBA in Information Systems program, is a desirable choice for the STEM-savvy. According to the McCombs employment report, 30 percent of the class of 2016 pursued jobs in the tech industry.
Scheller College of Business – Georgia Tech
Georgia Tech’ Scheller College of Business is an excellent choice for aspiring IT Managers. Forbes states, “Because many students are interested in more quantitative and technical areas, such as operations management and information technology management, Scheller is often viewed as a heavily quantitatively based program.” Roughly 21 percent of the Scheller class of 2017 landed tech-related jobs.
Leavey School of Business – Santa Clara University
For Silicon Valley hopefuls, the Leavey School of Business may be a wise school to consider. With flexible options like the Online and Evening MBA’s, Leavey allows students to tailor the program to their schedule. This may be desirable for those trying to balance internships or work and family life.
Which Business School Students Have the Top GMAT Scores?
A strong GMAT score is essential to a stellar business school application. Though the score is universally important to admission, certain schools emphasize a high score on the test more than others. Below, we’ve laid out a list of the 10 business schools with the top GMAT scores for incoming students.
Improv, Luxuries, and Napoleon: Check out These 10 Unique MBA Courses
Business can often be unfairly characterized as a dry field. But not every business school course fits the stereotype. Check out these 10 unique and interesting MBA electives.
Napoleon’s Glance
Columbia Business School offers this fascinating course in strategic intuition. The curriculum uses the teachings of early strategy literature as its foundation, though the bulk of readings and lectures are based on the content of two contemporary books on the subject: Napoleon’s Glance and The Art of What Works. William Duggan, the author of both books, leads the course. Duggan is a strategy expert and won the Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2014.
Food and Agribusiness
This Harvard Business School course allows MBA’s to delve into the study of the global food industry. This course is helpful for B-schoolers specifically seeking a career in agriculture, or simply those pursuing consulting or investment banking, since the food industry is so expansive. The course explores the nuances of agribusiness, including how the once strictly local industry has become increasingly globalized.
Luxury Marketing
Another eyebrow-raising Harvard Business School course, Luxury Marketing helps students understand the nuances of luxury brand management. Specifically, the class will be structured in terms of three larger topics: The art of creating luxury brand equity, understanding the luxury sector, and the future of luxury. The course has seen lecturers like world-famous fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni.
HBS doesn’t just offer traditional MBA courses. Students interested in the finer things can also study Luxury Marketing.
Improvisational Leadership: In the Moment Leadership Skills
Improv as a means of facilitating team building and creative thinking is a growing trend in business. That’s why MIT’s Sloan School of Management offers an entire course on improv in business. The first two weeks essentially function like an Improv 101 course, with students learning the fundamental principles of improvisational performance. The subsequent four weeks focus on application, allowing students to practice applying improv principles to real-world business decisions.
Sure, it’s not Second City, so don’t expect students to make a Comedy Bang! Bang! appearance any time soon, but the course can help one develop skills not actively taught at most other business schools.
Leveraging Neuroscience for Business Impact
At University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the faculty understands the value of understanding the human brain in honing business acumen. This course demonstrates just that, as it educates MBA’s in the most recent neuroscience breakthroughs and how this information can be used to predict consumer behavior, manage employees, build teams, and enhance workplace productivity, as well as honing leadership skills.
Next Gen Fashion Retail
Though clothing fads aren’t the first thing people usually associate with MBA education, fashion is its own industry, and a cutthroat one at that. As part of its Luxury and Fashion MBA, New York University’s Stern School of Business offers a course on the future of fashion retail. In this course, students learn about the ever changing fashion landscape and the challenges that lie ahead as the internet cuts out the middleman between brand and customer.
Creativity
Though analytical thinking is important for many aspects of business, creativity is the driving force behind most innovation and problem-solving. NYU Stern’s Creativity class nurtures students’ potential for true out-of-the-box thinking in both work and life. MBA’s learn about the science of creativity and experiment with different creative approaches to problems.
Nobel Thinking
In the Nobel Thinking course at London Business School, students use actual Nobel Prize-winning topics to explore what makes a groundbreaking idea and how to emulate the type of thinking that leads to real breakthroughs. Each session chooses a topic, led by a faculty member, and explores the idea, motivations, and contributions that led to the Nobel award. The elective makes full use of LBS’s notable faculty as well as a number of guest lecturers.
The Nobel Thinking course at LBS utilizes the school’s vast array of celebrated guest lecturers.
Self Awareness
London Business School also offers a Self Awareness course that helps B-schoolers learn about themselves, and their own needs and motivations. Though studying self awareness may seem more like therapy than school, more and more MBA programs are emphasizing the value of authenticity in business. Relationships are essential in business, and the Self Awareness elective trains students to understand how they are perceived by others, so they can build connections and trust as they navigate their industry.
Cleantech to Market
At UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, MBA’s who take the Cleantech to Market course get to team up with scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to work on marketing advances in in solar, biofuel, battery, and smart grid/energy management tech. Business students help scientists commercialize the latest advances in sustainability.
The UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Cleantech to Market bridges the talent’s of the schools MBA candidates and scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
MIT Talks to Costco CEO About Success, and More – Boston News
Let’s explore some of the most interesting stories that have emerged from Boston business schools this week, including a visit from the Costco CEO at MIT.
How Costco’s Obsession with Culture Drove Success – MIT Sloan Newsroom
Costco CEO James Sinegal, along with renowned Costco butcher Todd Miner, stopped by professor MIT Sloan Zeynep Ton’s “Management of Services: Concepts, Design, and Delivery” class earlier this month to discuss how Costco’s employee-focused culture was “critical to its success.”
In Ton’s 2014 book, “The Good Jobs Strategy,” she analyzed four “operational choices” that she believes Costco’s culture encapsulates—and are responsible for its status as a “wholesale giant.
- Offer less
- Standardize and empower
- Cross-train
- Operate with slack.
Sinegal explained that the key to Costco’s success is a culture that promotes “passion, integrity, ownership, and motivation in his employees and [ensures] that the customer can trust that they are always getting the best deal by shopping with Costco.”
He also highlighted the company’s well-known high-pay for its employees; among the best in the U.S. for retail workers.
“No one was going to be able to say we’re making money off the backs of our employees, because we were going to pay the highest wages in all of retail,” Costco CEO James Sinegal said.
Click here to get more insights from the Costco CEO.
The Evolution of Conflict Resolution – D’Amore-McKim Blog
Northeastern University D’Amore-McKim School of Business assistant professor Christoph Riedel recently published new research that offers insights into the social and biological evolution of how humans resolve conflict.
In “Conflict and Convention in Dynamic Networks,” Riedel researched how “dynamic networks allow individuals to resolve conflicts by managing their network connections rather than changing their strategy.”
His team applied computer simulations to common situations like when a single appetizer remains between a host and a guest. Riedel writes:
“Host-guest norms or ‘paradoxical behavior’ account for the vast majority of our simulated final state solutions—in other words, the host gives the guest the last appetizer. The opposite solution where the host takes the appetizer for himself, called ownership norms or ‘bourgeois behavior,’ is quite rare. This is especially interesting in the context of human biological behavior because in the animal kingdom, territoriality or ownership norms are ubiquitous.”
You can read more about Professor Riedel’s research here.
How Companies Can Use the Data They Collect to Further the Public Good – Harvard Business Review
HBS professors Edward L. Glaeser, Hyunjin Kim, and Michael Luca published a marketing piece in which they implored companies that collect data to recognize the possibility of “re-purposing their data for the public good,” which can allow companies to “do well by doing good.”
“[There is] broader potential for data from online platforms to improve our understanding of all of America. Just as Yelp can shed light on local economic changes, Zillow could inform our understanding of housing markets, LinkedIn could provide insight about labor markets, and Glassdoor could teach us about the quality of employment options in an area.”
You can check out the full article here.
What are the Best Real Estate MBAs in Boston?
Despite episodic waves of unrest, real estate is a worthy investment. More importantly, real estate is a cornerstone of the world economy. The importance of understanding the intricacies and nuances of this complex field cannot be overstated.
In Forbes, Yolanda Barnes, who runs Savills World Research, said, “real estate is the pre-eminent asset class which will be most impacted by global monetary conditions and investment activity and which, in turn, has the power to most impact national and international economies.” For the B-school-bound, becoming fluent in real estate’s many facets can provide a valuable edge in nearly every area of business.
Below, we’ve laid out the best Boston real estate MBA options for those looking for careers in the industry.
Harvard Business School
It would be remiss to talk about business education in Boston without mentioning Harvard Business School. HBS is easily one of the most reputable business schools in the world. Forbes places the university in its top three “Best Business Schools.” For those pursuing real estate, Harvard MBA’s have access to the Harvard Business School Real Estate Club, which provides its members with opportunities for supplemental real estate education, training, and extensive networking. Harvard also hosts an annual Real Estate Weekend, wherein students can buy tickets to attend development workshops and fireside chats with industry experts.
F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business – Babson College
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).
Sloan School of Management – MIT
MIT’s Sloan School of Management offers an MBA that incorporates real estate education. Though the school also offers an MS in real estate development (MSRED) for those more focused on earning a degree in real estate than an MBA, the MBA finance track offers a different set of advantages. This track zooms in on the finance-related areas of real estate, such as investment, urban economics, and housing economics. The MBA real estate courses zero in on the financial component of the industry and the core MBA courses also help students build a broad foundation in business. MBA students pursuing a certificate in finance can take courses like Real Estate Finance and Investment and Real Estate Capital Markets.
