Stay ConnectedThe Knowledge at Wharton feed features standout episodes from across the Wharton Podcast Network. Discover timely conversations and expert insights on business, markets, leadership, innovation, and the forces shaping the global economy.
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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
These days almost every company worth its balance sheet insists that it invests in ”innovation.” But does it make or lose money on these investments? That is the question that James Andrew and Harold Sirkin tackle in their new book titled Payback: Reaping the Rewards of Innovation. According to the authors who are senior vice presidents and directors of The Boston Consulting Group a new idea is just an invention -- and not a true innovation -- unless it generates financial returns. In an interview with Knowledge at Wharton Sirkin discusses the challenges companies face as they seek to innovate and -- hopefully -- make a few bucks along the way.
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When Richard ”Dick” Fuld took charge of Lehman Brothers as CEO in 1994 the firm was famous on Wall Street for the bitter internal feud between traders and investment bankers that had cost Lehman its independence a decade earlier. Fuld who had sided with fellow traders in the battle knew he would have to make peace with the bankers and create a culture based on teamwork if the firm wanted to compete in a new era of integrated financial services. ”The early Lehman Brothers was a great example of how not to do it ” he said in a recent Wharton Leadership lecture.
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In her keynote address at the 28th Annual Wharton Women in Business Conference in Philadelphia Thia Breen president of Estee Lauder Americas and head of Global Business Development told the audience that she was nearly fired from her first job. ”That was the moment I started to understand: I am totally responsible for my own success ” said Breen whose first job out of college was unloading shipments of toys at Marshall Fields.
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After years of a declining stock price Home Depot announced the resignation of CEO Robert Nardelli on January 3. Wharton faculty members and other experts say Nardelli a talented former executive at General Electric who came within a hair’s breadth of replacing Jack Welch as head of the giant conglomerate brought the wrong toolbox to the job after he was recruited for Home Depot’s top spot in December 2000. With strategic missteps an outsized compensation contract and a knack for alienating employees and shareholders Nardelli turned out to be a star-crossed leader.
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Richard F. Syron chairman and CEO of mortgage-securities giant Freddie Mac says he remains ”bearish” on the housing market and sees a rising tide of mortgage defaults and foreclosures on the horizon. He doesn’t believe a rebound will happen until late summer 2007 when the nation’s housing inventory bloated from weak sales gets whittled down. Syron spoke with Knowledge at Wharton before delivering a Wharton leadership lecture.
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For Microsoft 2006 was a year of new product introductions: the Windows Vista operating system a new version of Office and the Zune music player to name a few. For Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer -- who spoke at Wharton recently as part of the school’s Leadership Lecture series -- these new products serve as a reminder of his goals: Convince customers that Microsoft’s latest products are ground-breaking transform a company with $44 billion in sales into an agile innovator compete against new business models and recruit enough talent to keep the software giant relevant 25 years from now.
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Rodrigo Jordan a management professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile is a world-class mountaineer. He has led written about and filmed Chilean expeditions to Mount Everest K2 and Antarctica and has drawn on these experiences to found Vertical S.A. a company that uses outdoor education to teach leadership and teamwork. Jordan was recently named chair of Chile’s National Poverty Foundation a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to social development. Knowledge at Wharton offers an edited version of an interview with Jordan on leadership tackling poverty and his recent climb up Lhotse the world’s fourth-highest summit.
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With private equity investors of all types flush with cash -- from venture capitalists and hedge funds to large leveraged buyout (LBO) firms such as The Blackstone Group and The Carlyle Group -- private financing hit record levels in 2006 and is likely to remain strong in the new year according to Wharton faculty and industry analysts. Nearly a third of the dollar value of all U.S. acquisitions last year involved private equity firms up from 3% five years ago. But just how long can this boom continue and what changes may be in store for private equity models?
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Alexandra Robbins’ study of contemporary American high school culture entitled The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids is based on a visit to the high school she attended more than a decade ago and which she says has now changed for the worse. These days Whitman High School in Bethesda Md. promotes a ”competitive frenzy” that the author argues has taken root in high schools across the country and has led to overstressed over-scheduled teenagers growing up in a culture that is excessively focused on achievement.
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Marketers have long used all sorts of demographic and geographic data to target potential customers -- age sex education level income zip code. But there’s another variable that companies may want to consider: Who is connected to whom? A study co-authored by Wharton professor of operations and information management Shawndra Hill found that consumers are far more apt to buy a company’s product if they are ”network neighbors” with existing customers.
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