Knowledge at Wharton

Five years ago this winter California’s wholesale power market imploded. Power prices soared. California residents endured weeks of rolling blackouts. Two California utilities were forced into bankruptcy even as their suppliers -- independent power companies -- reaped huge windfalls. Five years later the tables have turned. Formerly bankrupt California utilities are profitable while formerly robust power generators scramble to survive. What happened? Wharton faculty and others look at the industry’s unique challenges and suggest structural and management strategies that could improve its chances for sustainable growth.

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Different points on the research spectrum were under the microscope at the Wharton Health Care Business Conference last month as two panels of biotech pharmaceutical and investment leaders discussed the state of R&D among big pharmaceuticals and the progress of stem cell research. While disappointing results in both sectors have dominated the news lately panelists at each session also noted some promising developments -- and causes for optimism -- in their respective fields.

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Springtime in addition to bringing back flowers and birds also brings forth many companies’ proxy statements including information on CEO compensation. It’s a signal for the business press to get to work reporting the details of what appear to be the highest executive pay packages. Wharton accounting professors Wayne Guay and John Core and Stanford accounting professor David Larcker also study executive compensation. What they conclude from their most recent research is that the most relevant information doesn’t necessarily make headlines. They also find that in general the media’s focus on excessive compensation does not substantively change corporate behavior with regards to pay packages.

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Much to the surprise of several venture capitalists who turned her down Helen Greiner co-founder of iRobot has built a thriving business making domestic robots like Roomba which sweeps floors and industrial robots that defuse bombs in Iraq. She was on campus this week at the invitation of the Wharton technology and entrepreneurship clubs and spoke with Knowledge at Wharton about the impact that robots have and will have on everyday life.

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Online communities have become not just a major social force but a significant driver of business activity both online and offline. Facilitating nurturing and benefiting from those communities however is not a simple task. To explore what makes these communities tick Kevin Werbach a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton spoke with Craig Newmark founder of Craigslist.com Julie Herendeen vice president of Network Products at Yahoo and William Flitter CMO of Pheedo.

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At a time when global business rivalries are intensifying competition often resembles combat. Keeping this connection between business and the armed forces in mind three Wharton undergraduate students -- Rana Yared Naomi Adaniya and Mark Green -- recently participated in officer leadership training at the U.S. Naval Academy. Among the lessons they learned: Leadership isn’t always glamorous; it often starts with the mundane.

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On Friday February 24 the long-running patent dispute between Research In Motion which makes the popular BlackBerry wireless email and communications device and NTP a holding company that claims RIM technology infringes on its patents will finally have its day in court. That’s when a federal judge will consider a possible injunction that would effectively shut down BlackBerry service in the U.S. But perhaps just as important as the specific facts of this case are the broader questions it raises: For example could RIM be shut down even as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is re-evaluating several of the disputed patents? Is the patent office bogged down with so many patent applications that it can no longer function effectively? Are companies abusing the original intent of patent law? And can a system that in 1977 permitted a patent for a ”comb over” -- technically a ”method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person’s head” -- keep up with technological innovation?

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They were unusual tax shelters that went by incomprehensible names like BLIPS OPIS BOSS and FLIP -- and they boomeranged on the companies that sold them. In February German bank HVB Group agreed to pay $29.6 million in fines to avoid indictment for defrauding the Internal Revenue Service with abusive tax shelters that gave rich clients phony losses to reduce taxes. The settlement was part of a broadening investigation into shelters that wealthy individuals used to escape about $2.5 billion in taxes from the mid-1990s through 2003 according to the government. What is a tax shelter and more importantly what is an illegal one?

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With its acquisition of Macromedia on December 3 2005 Adobe Systems has become the fifth largest software company in the world. It currently controls two of the dominant formats for electronic content -- the Adobe Acrobat PDF format for electronic documents and the Flash SWF format for interactive web content. Looking ahead CEO Bruce Chizen’s goal is to have Adobe provide the interface for any device with a screen -- ”from a refrigerator to an automobile to a video game to a computer to a mobile phone.” Such ambitions put Adobe squarely in the sites of Microsoft which currently dominates desktop software development. In a recent interview with Knowledge at Wharton Chizen spoke about the Macromedia acquisition his plans for developing the next-generation application platform and his views on the challenges presented by Microsoft.

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Last fall Spain’s Banco Santander Central Hispano announced that it would pay $2.4 billion for a 20% stake in Philadelphia-based Sovereign Bank. It was a deal that didn’t surprise Wharton management professor Mauro Guillén who has been watching the strategic moves of the bank since the late 1980s. But Guillen’s interest goes beyond Banco Santander. In a recently published book titled The Rise of Spanish Multinationals: European Business in the Global Economy Guillén explores why and how Spanish companies in a variety of industries have acquired a prominent presence in the global economy and what this expansion means -- economically financially politically and socially -- for Spain and the rest of Europe.

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