Consider a few types of furniture companies: There’s the small artisan firm, where a carpenter builds one-of-a-kind armoires and cabinets. There’s the medium-sized chain like Crate & Barrel, with about 100 stores in North America and a sprinkling of international locations. And then there’s IKEA. Since its founding in 1943, the Swedish furniture behemoth has…
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Colin McPherson/Corbis Premium historical via Getty Images When Jane Goodall died in October, the world lost more than a scientist. It lost a moral compass: a woman whose quiet persistence taught humanity to see connection where it once saw hierarchy. Her decades of observing chimpanzees in Tanzania reframed our understanding of…
We tend to free-associate the word “negotiate” with salary and home buying, but for Kellogg’s Leigh Thompson, the list should be much longer. “If you can’t achieve your goals without the cooperation of somebody else, you’re negotiating,” says Thompson, a professor of management and organizations. All relationships involve this push and pull, she says, and…
Neil Webb/theispot.com Not long ago, business leaders were under constant pressure to speak up on climate, diversity, or social justice. Making bold commitments and pledges was not only encouraged but demanded and, for a time, seen as a hallmark of good leadership. Today, the mood has shifted dramatically. In the United States, a wave of…
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images For much of the 20th century, speaking on the phone across state lines was a luxury good — a conversation that ran a tab by the minute, all controlled by the Bell System in its private fiefdom. Decades later, policy rewired the economics of the communications infrastructure. The AT&T…
Alex Nabaum/theispot.com For decades, hotels, airlines, casinos, and other companies have used revenue management systems to help them set prices, maximize revenues, and gain competitive advantage. Now, in a series of legal cases, plaintiffs have argued that some of those systems’ pricing algorithms could be used to facilitate illegal price-fixing in violation of federal antitrust…
When you think of a rational person, what comes to mind? Do you picture a person who is logical or one who is trustworthy? Is the person a woman or a man? A scientist, an investor, or an artist? “If I were to ask people for the definition of ‘rational,’ most might say it’s someone…
Alice Mollon / Ikon Images “My CEO just came back from another CEO event, and he’s on a rampage about return-to-office.” The three of us coauthors hear a variation of this every week. The pattern is familiar: CEOs return from a peer gathering convinced that really getting everyone back to the office will solve productivity…
When Sébastien Martin used ChatGPT to create an AI teaching assistant for his operations management course, the initial reviews were good. Students used the chatbot, named “Kai,” to review lectures and slides, create practice quizzes, and take pre-class assessments. But soon, Martin started to wonder if he wasn’t being ambitious enough about how AI could…
Anyone with a mailbox knows it’s election season when the flood of campaign materials appears. Brochures, postcards, leaflets, and other print mailers praise some candidates and denounce others—all in the hope of swaying voters’ opinions. Campaigns and advocacy groups spend millions of dollars on these direct-mail efforts every election cycle, believing that, with the right…