Knowledge at Wharton

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has set an ambitious goal: He wants the country to become one of the world’s top 20 economies during the next two decades. To accomplish this he has mandated that all university students in Nigeria study entrepreneurship. That is one of the factors that brought Peter Bamkole General Manager Enterprise Development Services at Lagos Business School to Wharton where he recently spent time with The Wharton Small Business Development Center exploring how to set up an entrepreneurship program in Nigeria. Bamkole -- who often goes by the more informal ”Banky” -- spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about the challenges that entrepreneurs face in his home country.

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The issue of using hardware- or software-based digital rights management or ”DRM” to restrict how music and movies can be copied or shared has spurred fierce debate between those who think DRM is essential to protect content from unauthorized use and those who believe it undermines consumers’ rights to do whatever they want with the content they purchase. On February 6 Apple CEO Steve Jobs added to the controversy by posting an open letter on Apple’s web site in which he proposes that the recording industry simply do away with DRM all together. Knowledge at Wharton asked marketing professor Peter Fader and Don Huesman senior director of information technology for their views on the subject.

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On Monday the country’s two satellite radio services -- Sirius and XM -- announced that they had finally agreed to merge. The move raises a number of questions not the least of which is whether they can get this deal approved by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department. But regulatory issues aside what prompted these two archrivals to embrace each other what do they expect to get out of it and what does a combined company mean for consumers who currently pay a subscription fee of $12.95 a month? Knowledge at Wharton asked for comments from Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader whom we talked with first and business and public policy professor Gerald Faulhaber.

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Stephen A. Schwarzman CEO and co-founder of The Blackstone Group was doing sit-ups and watching CNBC when he suddenly heard his name mentioned on air. It was a signal to him that the private equity business had gone ”into a weird zone of visibility.” Schwarzman David A. Brandon chairman and CEO of Domino’s Pizza and Timothy Draper the Silicon Valley venture capitalist examined the recent explosion in private equity deals and discussed its impact on business and investors at the recent Wharton Private Equity and Venture Capital Conference.

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All companies from major multinationals to start-ups face a common challenge: how to keep growing. These firms find it difficult to sustain growth because they become risk averse opting for safer incremental product and service improvements instead of more rewarding but riskier major initiatives according to a study by Wharton marketing professor George S. Day. Companies Day says need to better understand the risks inherent in different levels of innovation and achieve a balance between BIG I innovation and small i innovation.

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It sounds like something from a futuristic TV thriller: American spies thwarting a terrorist plot through a shared online community modeled after Wikipedia the free user-created web-based encyclopedia. But Anthony D. Williams co-author of the new book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything recently told a conference at Wharton’s Mack Center for Technological Innovation that this online community of spies already exists -- along with a host of other activist-oriented web sites that are changing the rules of the global economy.

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For months the steady drip of news about troubles in the subprime mortgage market didn’t seem too bad and many economists started to feel reassured about the health of the general housing market. But now some experts wonder whether those feelings of reassurance came too soon. They suggest that the growing number of borrower defaults in the ”aggressive lending” market which includes various types of risky mortgages besides subprime loans could shock the broader housing market and economy after all.

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Imagine paying for your car only when it works. Or your television. Or even your high-end toaster. That might sound far-fetched but it could be the future model for purchases requiring service over time. According to research by two Wharton professors of operations and information management Morris Cohen and Serguei Netessine and doctoral student Sang-Hyun Kim this new approach to service supply chains is already reshaping customer-supplier relationships in defense and aerospace contracting under the name ”Performance-based Logistics” (PBL). It could have implications for certain retail sectors as well.

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Some media reports called it a Valentine’s Day gift to Wall Street. When Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke appeared before Congress on February 14 and 15 he gave an upbeat view of inflation and the economy setting off a strong rally in stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 87 points to 12 741.86. Bernanke told Congress that the economy seems to be moving to a slower but more sustainable rate of growth which suggests that the Fed will hold short-term interest rates steady at 5.25% where they have been since last summer. Will stocks continue to perform strongly? Knowledge at Wharton talked to Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel who predicted in his last podcast that the Fed was unlikely to raise interest rates anytime soon.

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It’s a common occurrence in Corporate America: An entrepreneurial founder starts a successful business builds it to a certain size and hands it over to a CEO to run. But then when things don’t go well the founder steps back in to take direct control of the organization. That essentially is what happened last week when Michael Dell returned to become the CEO of Dell replacing Kevin Rollins. What will it take to turn Dell around? Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli is the director of the school’s Center for Human Resources. He spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about these issues.

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