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Copyright: © 2013 The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Popular social network sites including MySpace and Facebook are changing the human fabric of the Internet and have the potential to pay off big for investors but -- given their youthful user base -- they are unusually vulnerable to the next new fad. As quickly as users flock to one trendy Internet site they can just as quickly move on to another with no advance warning according to Wharton faculty and Internet analysts who offer some ideas on how these new sites can both increase user loyalty and generate revenues.
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The 2006 Venture Finals of Wharton’s Business Plan Competition offered participants judges and the audience an opportunity to peer into the future by surveying potential startups. It was a chance to see what aspiring ambitious entrepreneurs believe will be the next hot discovery. At this year’s competition healthcare companies -- ranging from medical-device makers to a creator of artificial muscles -- grabbed five of the eight finalist slots. The other three finalists included a virtual call center an online mortgage broker and a company that would replace credit cards with fingerprints. Read on and see if you have a nose for the next ”new new thing.”
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When a well-known compensation consulting firm predicted in early April that new accounting rules wouldn’t have any impact on the use of options as compensation for corporate executives Wharton accounting professor Mary Ellen Carter was ready to disagree. ”That’s just not true ” she says. ”Options will be cut and directors will be switching to restricted stock for executive compensation.” Carter’s response is the result of her research into the role of accounting in the design of CEO equity compensation which is also the title of a new paper written by her Luann J. Lynch from Darden and Wharton accounting professor Irem Tuna. Their study coincides with a ruling implemented this year by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) that requires all firms to expense the value of employee stock options.
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The recent resignation of Scott McNealy as CEO of Sun Microsystems the company he founded 22 years ago is another milestone in the succession process of a large technology company. But tech companies often pose unique succession issues in part because of their unusually fast growth and young founders according to Wharton faculty and technology experts. The challenges are especially critical when the entrepreneurs are celebrities and when the company has grown large enough that broad-based management skills become as crucial as entrepreneurial passion.
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When companies talk about marketing these days they are talking about things like promotional strategy advertising and distribution; customer perception; market share; competitors’ power; margins and pricing; products and portfolios; customer profitability; and sales forces and channels. How does a company measure the effectiveness of the various components of its marketing strategy? What metrics are most effective and how can these help maximize profits? A new book out from Wharton School Publishing titled Marketing Metrics: 50 + Metrics Every Executive Should Master identifies the pros cons and tradeoffs associated with each metric. The book is by Paul Farris Neil Bendle Phillip Pfeifer and Dave Reibstein. Reibstein a marketing professor at Wharton agreed to talk with Mukul Pandya editor in chief of Knowledge at Wharton and Robbie Shell editorial director about this new book.
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Disney the media giant announced earlier this month that the company would provide several major shows -- Desperate Housewives Lost Commander-in-Chief and Alias -- as free streaming video through the ABC network’s website. Also this month the Wall Street Journal reported that the Fox network has signed agreements with 187 of its affiliated stations to share revenues from reruns of its programs on the web. What is behind these moves? Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader spoke with Mukul Pandya editor-in-chief of Knowledge at Wharton and Kendall Whitehouse Knowledge at Wharton’s contributing editor in technology about these developments and what they mean for the media industry.
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Interest rates are rising around the world. Last Thursday April 13 the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes closed at 5.05%. This was the first time in four years that the yield exceeded 5%. Moreover short-term interest rates in the U.S. are also going up: The federal funds rate (or the interest rate at which banks provide overnight loans to one another) has risen to 4.75% from some 1% a few years ago. In Europe and Japan stock prices have been falling last week and this week because of concerns that rising interest rates and higher oil prices will affect corporate earnings. What will this mean for the U.S. stock market and the economy? To answer this question Robbie Shell editorial director of Knowledge at Wharton and Mukul Pandya editor-in-chief talked with Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel author of the book The Future for Investors.
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Foreign stocks are soaring and Americans are pouring money into them. But although overseas equities have captured investors’ fancy before there’s a twist this time: More investors are embracing passive index-style investing ignoring the long-held belief that active managers can beat indexers by uncovering bargains in inefficient foreign markets. Have conditions really changed enough to make indexing pay off as well in foreign markets as it has in the U.S.? It may be too soon to know for sure. But international equity markets and American investor behavior are clearly evolving according to Wharton finance professors.
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When James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras wrote their hugely popular 1994 book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies they began by stating clearly that they did not mean to write about visionary leaders. Their goal was to find visionary companies -- the crown jewels of their industries -- and discover what made them extraordinary. Then questions arose about the extent to which the principles of Built to Last might apply to individuals. That sparked another investigation that has now led to a follow-up book Success Built to Last which will be published by Wharton School Publishing later this year. Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery co-authors with Porras of Success Built to Last spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about their book. In addition the authors are conducting a global survey on how people think about success; a link to the survey can be found at the end of this interview.
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In the second of a two-part interview Azim Premji who owns more than 80% of Bangalore-based Wipro India’s third largest software exporter discusses why that country’s IT companies have done a better job at delivering services than developing products. Speaking with Wharton professor Ravi Aron he points out that customers are beginning to unbundle prices with the result that established IT and consulting firms are starting to see premiums disappear. ”Customers are trying to optimize value ” Premji says. ”The old boys’ club of closed tennis court relationships is on the way out.”
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