Knowledge at Wharton

In today’s economy retailers are hard pressed to increase revenues. Among the biggest challenges they face is matching supply with demand. In The New Science of Retailing: How Analytics Are Transforming the Supply Chain and Improving Performance Wharton professor Marshall Fisher and co-author Ananth Raman argue that retailers have the data they need to manage supply chains more efficiently and increase sales and profits. Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Fisher about what types of data are most important for retailers to collect how they can use this information to identify home-run products and why the retailing industry might be missing as much as one-third of potential sales.

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Gamification may be a new term to most people but for many members of the business community it means a new way to create value for their companies customers and employees among others. What exactly is gamification what is it not and how will it change the way we do business in the next few years? Knowledge at Wharton discussed these issues with professor Kevin Werbach; Rajat Paharia founder of Bunchball a tech company that enables businesses to implement gamification and Daniel Debow co-founder of Rypple a social performance management company. Werbach and colleague Dan Hunter recently organized a two-day conference on gamification titled ”For the Win: Serious Gamification.”

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Women have been in the workforce for decades but many will acknowledge that it is still a man’s world and that the unwritten rules of the workplace continue to favor men. So how would they structure a professional environment that would help more women reach the corner office?

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In a last-minute attempt to stop the U.S. from defaulting on its loan obligations Congress voted this week to increase the country’s debt ceiling by at least $2.1 trillion. The deal includes $917 billion in spending cuts over the next 10 years and the establishment of a congressional committee to reduce the deficit further by $1.5 trillion. Questions remain however: Where will these cuts come from? How will social safety nets such as Medicare be affected? And can the country continue to recover from the recession with government spending drastically reduced? Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Wharton professors Olivia S. Mitchell and Kent Smetters.

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The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister David Cameron plans to create a national well-being index. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has formed a team that includes two Nobel Prize-winning economists to come up with a system for measuring the nation’s well-being. In China happiness indexes have become so popular that cities there compete for the title of China’s happiest city. Many now argue that purely economic measures of a country’s progress -- such as gross national product (GDP) -- fail to count many things people value highly such as personal and community relationships or a healthy environment. To learn more about measuring happiness Knowledge at Wharton spoke with Nic Marks author of the e-book The Happiness Manifesto: How Nations and People Can Nurture Well-Being.

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The ”phenomenon of free” has hit many businesses hard particularly media businesses argues Saul J. Berman Global & Americas Leader for the IBM Strategy & Change Consulting Group. In Not for Free: Revenue Strategies for a New World Berman offers lessons from businesses that have integrated successful business model innovations as well as from businesses that have failed to do so. Recently Knowledge at Wharton and Jerry (Yoram) Wind sat down with Berman to discuss his thoughts on who pays for free content and why new models are essential.

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Given two gold mines with the same amount of gold in the ground the same cost of extraction and the same worldwide demand why is one mine valued 10 times more than the other? Because one has local support and the other doesn’t argues Wharton professor Witold Henisz. In a new research paper Henisz and his colleagues show how cooperating with rather than antagonizing external stakeholders generates sustainable shareholder value for companies around the world.

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Rupert Murdoch chairman and CEO of New York-based News Corp. has built a fortune on the scandals of others. Now at age 80 Murdoch finds himself at the center of his own ever-widening scandal one that threatens his hold on a $40 billion global media empire. According to Wharton faculty and other experts News Corp. needs to address its ethical issues at all levels of the organization -- not just the top rungs. Others note that no matter what happens to Murdoch or his business the scandal itself will cause a thorough reassessment of the boundaries of a free and fair press.

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Parag Khanna is a leading geo-strategist world traveler and author of the international bestseller The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order. Stephen J. Kobrin Wharton management professor and publisher of Wharton Digital Press recently spoke with Khanna about his latest book How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.

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Recent hackings at Fox News Apple Citibank and even the CIA have drawn renewed attention to cyber security and accelerated the policy debate on how to protect critical information. The opportunity for cyber attacks grows daily as corporations and governments continue to amass information about individuals in complex networks across the Internet according to Wharton faculty and security analysts. Indeed notes one expert ”hacktivists” -- including those who break into networks not necessarily to steal money but for ideological reasons -- appear to be ramping up activity.

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