Knowledge at Wharton

Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is about to find out that being a CEO is a lot different than being the ceremonious Chief Yahoo as he was called until last month. Yang who became Yahoo’s new CEO on June 18 faces a daunting to-do list that includes reinvigorating the company closing a performance gap with Google thwarting challenges from social media sites such as Facebook delivering financial results that make Wall Street cheer and charting a course for the future. His first deadline comes in about 100 days. Knowledge at Wharton asked faculty members for advice on how Yang should handle this management challenge.

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Just a decade ago a company called Baby Einstein helped launch a new line of educational videos and toys that many parents believed would put their toddlers in the fast lane to success. The company was soon joined by others that promoted educational and entertainment products for babies and the under-three-year-old set including The Baby Prodigy Company and Brainy Baby. But recently some child advocacy groups -- and the author of a new book -- are warning parents to rethink the products and the messages behind these campaigns.

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For big-screen movie company IMAX the past several weeks must have seemed like the best of times and the worst of times. The recent opening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the largest and most successful in IMAX history. Yet despite the record box office the company’s stock price remained moribund as it delayed its financial filings to restate its revenue recognition for the years 2002-2005 and responded to an informal inquiry from the SEC. This was not the first challenge faced by Richard Gelfond and Bradley Wechsler who share the titles of chairman and CEO. Knowledge at Wharton recently spoke with Gelfond at IMAX’s corporate headquarters in New York about the company’s plans for the future.

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Wharton professor Serguei Netessine who recently had to spend the night in an airport hotel after being kicked off an overbooked evening flight is one of thousands of airline passengers this summer who have been stranded on runways or sleeping in airports. While airline service is no longer the white-glove experience it once was it has recently gone beyond bad food and snappish flight attendants. ”Previously airlines worried about dissatisfied customers. Now I don’t think they worry about it because the customer service at all airlines is so horrible ” says Netessine. Knowledge at Wharton looks at the current state of the airline industry.

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Following accounting and governance scandals at Enron and other U.S. companies policymakers in the United States and elsewhere responded by establishing new corporate governance rules including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Now after complaints from the business community that regulations are hurting profits some countries are taking a second look at post-Enron reforms. But according to research presented during a recent conference on international corporate governance -- sponsored by the Weiss Center for International Financial Research at Wharton -- countries should think twice about loosening governance regulations.

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Jon Spector a former Wharton vice dean and now CEO of the Conference Board spoke with participants at the Community 2.0 conference in Las Vegas earlier this year to explore how companies are trying to harness communities to reshape their businesses. In this podcast Spector speaks with Craig Newmark founder and ”customer service rep” of Craigslist.com. Spector is a co-author with Barry Libert of the forthcoming Wharton School Publishing book We Are Smarter Than Me: How to Unleash the Power of Crowds in Your Business.

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According to Daniel M. Cable what characterizes successful companies these days is ”a strikingly different obsessively focused” workforce one that -- compared to competitors’ workforces -- is ”downright strange.” Cable a management professor at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina makes his case in a new book titled Change to Strange: Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce (Wharton School Publishing). To get the best results Cable says companies have to build a workforce ”that is extraordinary in a way that customers care about.”

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In The Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies ... And How to Break Them (Wharton School Publishing) Jagdish N. Sheth a marketing professor at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University analyzes why companies that are at the top of their industry suddenly disappear from the landscape. He maintains that successful companies fall prey to complacency arrogance competency dependence competitive myopia territorial impulse volume obsession and denial and he then goes on to suggest ways companies can change course and avoid these traps. As Sheth notes in his introduction ”My view is that most companies can survive forever if they recognize and take steps to counter self-destructive habits or set up processes to keep them from arising in the first place.”

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In Marketing That Works: How Entrepreneurial Marketing Can Add Sustainable Value to Any Sized Company (Wharton School Publishing) the focus is on optimizing investments in every aspect of marketing whether it’s targeting the right customer delivering added value or generating better product ideas. Authors Leonard M. Lodish Howard L. Morgan and Shellye Archambeau offer tools tactics and strategies that companies can use to differentiate themselves in today’s marketplace. As the authors note ”Marketing more than technology is most often the reason for the success or failure of new ventures or new initiatives” in mature corporations.

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Marshall Goldsmith the founder of executive coaching firm Marshall Goldsmith Partners has worked closely with more than 70 CEOs during his career. Forbes has named him one of the five most respected executive coaches. The Wall Street Journal ranks him among the top 10 executive educators. Now Goldsmith has assembled a book that distills the wisdom he and his stable of coaches usually dispense in person. Listed at $23.95 What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful written with Mark Reiter is a bargain compared to the six-figure cost of receiving Goldsmith’s wisdom in person.

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