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
After 17 consecutive interest rate hikes during the past two years the Federal Reserve’s open market committee decided on August 8 to leave the federal funds rate unchanged at 5.25%. While stocks immediately rallied in response they fell back as it became clear that inflationary pressures persist and they could prompt more rate hikes in the future. What does this mean for markets and investors? Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel told Knowledge at Wharton that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke met expectations and ”meeting expectations is very positive for stocks.”
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In their book Idealized Design: How to Solve Tomorrow’s Crisis...Today (Wharton School Publishing) authors Russell L. Ackoff Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison build upon a simple notion. They argue that ”the way to get to the best outcome is to imagine what the ideal solution would be and then work backward to where you are today.” An excerpt based on Ackoff’s experience shows how the process worked at Bell Labs in the 1950s.
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Lars Kolind is the former CEO of Oticon a leading Denmark-based maker of hearing aids. In his book The Second Cycle: Winning the War Against Bureaucracy published by Wharton School Publishing he argues that size age and success can make mature companies deaf to signals that portend future decline. He summarizes his views in an excerpt from the book.
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The tired old adage ”You are what you eat ” acquires new life in Michael Pollan’s compelling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (The Penguin Press). Tracing our food back to its sources in feedlots and fields Pollan convincingly argues that modern Americans are made of corn -- and that this is a very bad thing for our health our economy and our environment. According to Pollan corn underwrites a national eating disorder even as Americans’ lack of a centuries’ old cuisine makes us exceptionally vulnerable to fad diets trendy nutritional advice and fast food.
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Canadian writer Giles Slade was checking out a touring exhibit called ”Eternal Egypt” with his 10-year-old son a few years ago when he had an epiphany. The Egyptians he realized designed great monuments to endure for countless generations while here in North America nearly everything produced is made to break. And that’s no accident. Slade’s Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America (Harvard University Press) looks at 20th century technology through the lens of disposability a concept born bred and nurtured in America. Made to Break traces the history of an industrial strategy that has come to define this country -- a strategy that has taught us to buy throw away and buy again and that now must change because we have run out of room to safely dump all our unwanted used-up or obsolete possessions.
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Body parts are big business in the United States. Tissue organs tendons bones joints limbs hands feet torsos and heads culled from the dead are the cornerstones of the lucrative and important business of advancing scientific knowledge and improving medical technique. Few people however think to ask where the material that sustains this enormous industry comes from. Journalist Annie Cheney is a timely exception. In Body Brokers: Inside America’s Underground Trade in Human Remains (Broadway) Cheney chronicles her quest to find out how human remains are procured processed marketed and used. It’s a complicated detailed and disturbing tale.
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Peter Killing and Thomas Malnight are professors of business strategy at IMD the Switzerland-based business school and Tracey Keys is a consultant. In their book Must-Win Battles: How to Win Them Again and Again published by Wharton School Publishing they argue that rather than spreading their resources too thin companies must focus on three to five key challenges -- must-win battles (MWBs) that are crucial to achieving their business goals. A well-chosen MWB the authors say must make a real difference be market focused create excitement be specific and tangible and be winnable. An excerpt from the book’s conclusion highlights what can be learned from successful and failed MWB journeys.
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EMI Music backs a label that turns the traditional economics of the recording industry on its head. Vivendi’s Universal Music Group creates multiple pricing schemes for CDs. Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Yahoo decide to sell a single without digital rights restrictions. These moves typify a flurry of experimentation by major record labels in recent weeks and stand in stark contrast to earlier behavior by an industry that six years ago was best known for launching anti-piracy lawsuits against Napster -- a network that originally swapped music files for free -- and individual users. Today according to experts at Wharton the recording industry is actively trying to create new business models as it navigates the emerging Internet-enabled landscape.
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In the workplace trust is essential to day-to-day business whether it’s one colleague trusting that another will do her share of a project an employee trusting that his boss will reward him for working long hours to meet a deadline or a customer trusting that a company will fill an order correctly and deliver it on time. The intertwining issues of trust deception apologies and promises are explored in a new research paper titled ”Promises and Lies: Restoring Violated Trust ” by three Wharton professors who came up with a unique laboratory experiment to see what happens when trust breaks down. ”While deception may be tempting because it can be used to increase short-term profits for the deceiver ” the researchers note ”we find that the long-term costs of deception are very high.”
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In the United States alone an unprecedented 77 million baby-boomers will be living the next 20 to 30 years in retirement. With long lives ahead of them -- and without adequate planning -- what are the risks they are facing? According to Olivia Mitchell Wharton professor of insurance and risk management and Christopher ”Kip” Condron president and CEO of AXA Financial the world’s largest financial services firm the rising tide of boomers in the U.S. and around the world needs to meet challenges that previous generations never faced including changes to key retirement institutions as well as medical-care cost inflation and the ”lump-sum illusion.” Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Mitchell and Condron about how the financial services industry is working to meet the needs of this next wave of retirees.
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