Knowledge at Wharton

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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From Reading Lolita in Tehran an award-winning account of an underground Iranian women’s book group to The Kite Runner a best-selling novel about modern Afghanistan tales of Islamic culture have entranced Western readers eager for a glimpse into a world that is at once far removed from theirs and yet fundamentally intertwined with it. A recent book adds to this genre. In Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil author Deborah Rodriguez opens a window onto the private lives of Afghan women by explaining what it’s like to try and launch a business -- in this case a beauty school -- in a remote unfamiliar area. The tale according to our reviewer is heartwarming eye-opening and ultimately chilling.

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A mathematical parrot. A Dutch-speaking orangutan. A chimp that can pass for a boy. These are the otherworldly characters -- and provocative thought experiments -- that anchor best-selling author Michael Crichton’s most recent novel Next. The book weaves together several storylines in order to trace the complex interplay of scientific innovation legal loopholes and economic opportunity. Along the way Crichton creates a troubling portrait of a biotech industry marred by corporate greed and moral uncertainty. Both thriller and policy piece the book is also a compelling contribution to the debate over genetic research according to our reviewer.

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