Lion's Share: The Research Cast

ENTR 810 | Session 11 | AI: Von Neumann to Altman Hardware Evolution

Introduction:

The history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ranges from its foundational theories to its present role as a transformative technology, illustrating the close connection between software models and the hardware that supports them. Early pioneers like Alan Turing, who helped crack the Enigma code and introduced the Turing Test for machine intelligence, and John McCarthy, who coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" at the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop, laid the groundwork for the field. John von Neumann also made significant contributions by imagining adaptive systems and defining the "von Neumann Architecture" for computer design, which remained the standard into the 21st century. After challenging periods such as the "AI Winter," the field saw a resurgence fueled by deep learning—a method that uses deep neural networks and improves predictably as more compute power and data become available. Today's AI boom relies heavily on massive computational infrastructure, with GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) serving as the "heartbeat of AI." Nvidia capitalized on this shift, transitioning from a gaming company to the key provider of AI acceleration hardware, offering GPUs and CUDA libraries. Breakthroughs in software, especially the 2017 introduction of Transformers by Google Brain, enabled models to learn context and track relationships in sequential data, leading to the development of the Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) and the landmark release of ChatGPT in 2022. Although this progress is expected to usher in an "Age of Intelligence" characterized by widespread prosperity, personalized assistants, and solutions to complex problems, experts also raise serious concerns about ethics, potential disruptions to labor markets, and the fundamental risk that AI goals could diverge from human values, or that humans might weaponize the technology.

MBADM 850 | Session 10 | Innovation, Organization, and Culture: Building Creative Workplaces

Introduction:

A thriving culture of innovation is vital for any business to survive, driving results like increased revenue and higher employee engagement. This culture promotes questions, conversations, and new ideas from everyone, greatly benefiting from diverse perspectives—a philosophy called "Innovation By All." Building this environment involves specific practices such as fostering psychological safety where failure is seen as a learning opportunity, recognizing employees' efforts, investing in everyone's growth, democratizing idea generation, and dedicating time for experimentation. Innovative cultures are naturally paradoxical, requiring a balance between "soft" values like creativity and freedom, and "hard" elements like discipline, accountability, and high standards. Changing organizational culture is challenging because it is implicit, but leaders can facilitate this transformation by applying the Attraction, Selection, and Attrition (ASA) framework to align personnel with desired values and by targeting change initiatives at early adopters to reach the 15 to 18 percent market penetration necessary for a new idea or culture to become established.

ENTR 810 | Session 10 | Manufacturing, 3D Printing, and Genomics

Introduction

This compilation offers a comprehensive overview of breakthroughs in advanced manufacturing, 3D printing, and personalized medicine, emphasizing a global technological shift toward precision, customization, and efficiency. In the industrial sector, companies are adopting Industry 4.0 digital technologies, such as flexible automation and AI-powered inspections, to enhance agility, sustainability, and productivity. A significant advance in additive manufacturing is the development of Laser-Assisted Cold Spray (LACS), a technique that uses localized laser heating to repair and construct high-strength components with less thermal impact and without the high cost of helium, providing notable benefits for the aerospace and energy sectors. Simultaneously, 3D printing is being applied in biofabrication for healthcare, especially through the successful creation of functional human pancreatic islets using a novel bioink, which could potentially enable personalized, implantable therapies to eliminate insulin injections for Type 1 diabetes patients. The use of specialized bioinks also extends into food technology, where hydrophobic sorghum protein has been developed as a stable material for 3D-printed food and pharmaceutical delivery systems. These manufacturing innovations are matched by the genomics revolution and the rise of precision medicine, which leverages genetic and biological traits to customize treatments in areas such as oncology and pharmacology, moving beyond the traditional one-size-fits-all model. Central to this medical advancement is the gene-editing technology CRISPR-Cas9, which has led to the first FDA-approved gene therapies for severe blood disorders, with ongoing efforts to expand applications into fields like diabetes and autoimmune diseases. The foundation of these breakthroughs in precision medicine is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is vital for swiftly analyzing large datasets, speeding up drug discovery, and detecting patterns, though ongoing challenges related to equitable access and the lack of diversity in genetic research still need to be addressed.

ACCTG 502 | Session 8 | The Information Content of Business Combination Disclosure Level - 2009

Ron Shalev

Introduction:

This study examines how the level of disclosures in business combinations relates to the acquirers' subsequent performance. It finds that acquirers with higher-than-expected disclosure levels tend to perform better in the future, as measured by return on assets (ROA) and abnormal stock returns. Conversely, firms that allocate unusually large portions of the purchase price to goodwill tend to disclose less information. These findings support disclosure theory, suggesting that managers selectively withhold unfavorable ("bad news") information. The study also shows that investors do not fully incorporate disclosure-level information immediately, especially reacting faster to negative abnormal disclosures. For both scholars and practitioners, the results highlight how strategic disclosure choices send hidden signals about acquisition quality and managerial confidence.

ACCTG 502 | Session 8 | Audited financial reporting and voluntary disclosure as complements: A test of the Confirmation Hypothesis - 2012

Ray Ball, Sudarshan Jayaraman, Lakshmanan Shivakumar

Introduction:

The article examines the Confirmation Hypothesis, which suggests that audited financial reporting and voluntary disclosure serve as complements rather than substitutes in providing information to investors. The authors contend that independent verification of financial results promotes managerial honesty and accuracy in voluntary disclosures, thereby boosting their credibility. Through empirical analysis, they discover that firms that invest more in audit verification also produce more informative and frequent management forecasts, and that markets respond more strongly to these forecasts, indicating a complementary relationship between the two information channels.

ACCTG 502 | Session 8 | Do Managers Issue More Voluntary Disclosure When GAAP Limits Their Reporting Discretion in Financial Statements? - 2022

PAUL HRIBAR, RICHARD MERGENTHALER , AARON ROESCHLEY , SPENCER YOUNG , AND CHRIS X. ZHAO

Introduction:

The study examines whether managers make up for restrictions in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) by providing more voluntary disclosures. Through textual analysis of GAAP standards, the authors develop a new measure of how much each standard limits managerial discretion and look at various disclosure channels such as management forecasts, non-GAAP earnings, and Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) narratives. They find that when GAAP creates tighter limits, managers increase voluntary disclosures to fill information gaps for investors.

ENTR 810 | Session 9 | Modular Systems and the Amazon Paradigm

Introduciton

Modularity, often called the Theory of Interdependence and Modularity, is a strong framework that involves splitting a system into smaller, independent parts called modules that work together as a unified whole. This design approach standardizes components, ensuring they fit together consistently and allowing each part to be developed, modified, tested, or replaced independently. Modularity is highly relevant across many industries, including automotives, construction, electronics, and increasingly in areas like healthcare and software architecture, where Amazon has used it strategically through microservices and AWS. A major benefit is greater flexibility, scalability, and faster time to market, helping companies introduce new technology quickly while also providing the variety customers want. This approach solves the dilemma of choosing between customizing products and achieving operational efficiency with fewer variations. Modularity also reduces costs—for example, in modular housing or by enabling MedTech manufacturers to reuse approved components—and improves risk management by isolating problems within specific modules, as seen in the Spotify platform. Additionally, it is embraced in fashion as a smart design tool for sustainability, cutting waste and overconsumption by focusing on versatile, fewer key pieces. Despite these important advantages, challenges remain, mainly related to the complexity of integrating many modules, managing their interactions without performance issues, and the critical need to establish and enforce common standards and standardized interfaces across all teams or partners.

MBADM 850 | Session 9 | Human Capital, Innovation Teams, and Management Strategy

Introduction

The foundation of organizational success lies in adopting a philosophical mindset that rejects the idea of a fixed world, encouraging individuals to embrace change and influence life, driven by the realization that current systems were created by people no smarter than themselves. Effective leadership supports this by providing a clear common vision, recruiting self-managing individuals who are passionately excited about the mission, and prioritizing the hiring of great individual contributors over typical professional management. Innovative teams must be structured intentionally: they should be small (six to eight people, referred to as "two American pizza teams"), collocated or collaborating synchronously, fully dedicated, and self-sufficient, possessing all necessary competencies internally to minimize external dependencies. Strategic direction should prioritize an emerging strategy based on constant experimentation, shifting the focus from delivering fixed features (output) to achieving measurable business outcomes (changes in customer behavior) by treating roadmaps as critical questions and hypotheses to answer, and maximizing the number of experiments per unit of time. Crucially, innovation is profoundly enhanced by diversity in background, experience, and perspective, which creates a larger knowledge base—or "bigger box"—leading to better problem-solving and decision-making, provided teams harness constructive conflict (debate over the work) while eliminating interpersonal conflict. The day-to-day creative environment is dynamic and can manifest in five profiles, ranging from the highly productive Ideal Day (high stimulants like freedom and support) to the detrimental Toxic Day (low stimulants, high obstacles like political contention), demonstrating that maximizing positive daily experiences and minimizing obstacles are essential for continuous creative performance.

MKTG 556 | Session 8 | Platform Exploitation: When Service Agents Defect with Customers from Online Service Platforms - 2022

Qiang (Kris) Zhou, B.J. Allen, Richard T. Gretz, and Mark B. Houston

Introduciton:

This research investigates "platform exploitation," a phenomenon where service agents on purely labor-based online platforms (e.g., Zeel, Freelancer, Rover) defect with customers to transact off-platform, thereby avoiding commission fees. Through multiple methods—a qualitative theories-in-use study, a large-scale hazard-model analysis, and two experiments—the authors identify antecedents, mechanisms, and managerial countermeasures. They discover that high-quality and long-tenured agents are more likely to defect, that interaction frequency and service repetitiveness increase off-platform behavior, and that interventions such as sliding-scale fees or community-building efforts can reduce exploitation.

MKTG 556 | Session 7 | Guardians of Trust: How Review Platforms Can Fight Fakery and Build Consumer Trust - 2024

Ben B. Beck, Stefan Wuyts, and Sandy Jap

Introduction:

This research investigates how online review platforms can serve as "guardians of trust" in an era of widespread misinformation and fake reviews. Drawing on governance and identity-disclosure literature, it proposes five mechanisms—monitoring, exposure, community building, status endowment, and identity disclosure—that help reduce fakery and foster consumer trust in these platforms. Through five complementary studies, it demonstrates how these practices both individually and collectively enhance trust, identify mediating processes (such as reducing perceived firm opportunism and increasing reviewer credibility), and confirm ecological and managerial relevance. Importantly, the authors find that certain governance mechanisms (e.g., exposure, community building, status endowment) can substitute for identity disclosure, providing privacy-preserving options for trust building.