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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Now that the FCC has approved a merger of the two satellite radio companies Sirius XM’s big challenges are to stop the flow of red ink and settle on a strategy to compete with the myriad of other portable music providers. Says one Wharton professor: ”They may have one more shot at a Hail Mary pass.”
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New York-based teen apparel retailer Aéropostale has had a bullish summer with second-quarter net income rising 43% over the previous year. Meanwhile other teen-focused retailers including The Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch have suffered losses. Experts from Wharton and elsewhere suggest that teen retailers are competing intensely for attention in hard economic times even as these new conditions are giving rise to a changing landscape of winners and losers.
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In a year when airlines all over the world are reeling from the double whammy of high oil prices and a faltering economy Embraer -- the Brazil based aircraft maker -- doubled its net income in the second quarter. The company’s growth during difficult economic times offers an example of the way that companies from rapidly developing economies are reshaping global business say Harold L. Sirkin James W. Hemerling and Arindam K. Bhattacharya in their new book Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything. Sirkin and his co-authors identify 100 such ”challenger” firms that are expanding rapidly spell out the reasons why and analyze the implications for the way business will be done in the future.
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While many companies are scrambling to gain competitive advantage by finding ways to innovate using technology the film industry -- as characterized in Scott Kirsner’s book Inventing the Movies -- has had a century-long history of shunning innovation and eschewing technological progress. Subtitled Hollywood’s Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs the book is a case study in the difficulties of introducing technological change in an industry that carefully guards its well-entrenched business models.
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Sandeep Jauhar’s book Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation is the unsettling account of his medical residency at a New York hospital largely focused on his first year. It represents his take on his internship interweaving that experience with something of his childhood family history previous studies and work experiences. In the process Jauhar tells us about himself medical education and health care.
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Does reforming institutions always result in benefits to the system regardless of when and how they take place? Are some institutions more important than others? Elena Panaritis’s debut work Prosperity Unbound not only answers these questions but targets what the writer believes to be the most valuable institution necessary for growth -- the property system and its underpinning laws and regulations. Panaritis who heads Panel Group a Washington D.C. based organization that works with governments to unlock illiquid markets also offers a diagnostic tool to give policy makers guidelines in reforming a property system.
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Why don’t we see the truck racing toward us or the treasure of gold beneath our feet? Are these just invisible events? In this excerpt from the book It Starts with One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations authors J. Stewart Black and Hal B. Gregersen offer examples from the mobile phone industry and from the Spanish exploration of America in the 16th century to explain why organizations and individuals fail to see the need for change. ”Why do we fail to see the need for change?” the authors ask. Their answer: ”Fundamentally we fail to see because we are blinded by the light of what we already see.”
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How can a company deliver continuous exceptional growth year after year? J. C. Larreche a professor of marketing at INSEAD answers that question in his book The Momentum Effect: How to Ignite Exceptional Growth. According to the author’s research momentum-powered firms delivered 80% more shareholder value than their slower rivals. ”Momentum leaders are not lucky -- they are smart ” he writes in this excerpt. ”They have discovered the source of momentum and with it the beginnings of a smarter way to exceptional growth. Managers often talk about ’riding the wave.’ Momentum leaders aren’t that passive. They live by this motto: First build your wave then ride it.”
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In their book Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track authors Russell L. Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg point out that today’s education system is seriously flawed -- it focuses on teaching rather than learning. ”Why should children -- or adults -- be asked to do something computers and related equipment can do much better than they can?” the authors ask in an excerpt from the book. ”Why doesn’t education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?”
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Scrabble -- the board game in which you compete with other players in making words -- has become a familiar household name since it was introduced in 1948. Its unofficial online double Scrabulous has become one of the most popular applications on Facebook since it was launched in July 2007. Now both games are making waves as Hasbro the copyright holder for Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada has filed a lawsuit against the creators of Scrabulous -- following which Scrabulous was yanked off Facebook in late July. But in today’s fast-changing social networking environment Hasbro’s lawsuit and its attempt to control its online image may not be the right move Wharton faculty say.
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