Knowledge at Wharton

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With $2.5 trillion invested in 401(k) retirement accounts 60 million Americans control a powerful chunk of cash. So how much attention do investors pay to this vast pool of savings? Not much. According to a new Wharton analysis of retirement accounts managed by The Vanguard Group in 2003 and 2004 participants in 401(k) plans made little effort to tend their defined-contribution plans once they were set up. Even among those who did trade regularly turnover rates were one-third those of professional money managers. Olivia S. Mitchell executive director of Wharton’s Pension Research Council Stephen P. Utkus principal Vanguard Center for Retirement Research and researchers Gary Mottola and Takeshi Yamaguchi present their findings in a paper entitled ”The Inattentive Participant: Portfolio Trading Behavior in 401(k) Plans.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The avian flu that is steadily making its way around the globe represents a huge challenge for governments corporations and citizens worldwide. No one knows what will happen to the avian influenza virus in the coming months and years. Will it mutate into a strain that will allow people to readily infect others? Or will it fizzle out? Despite the uncertainty many people are taking into account scenarios ranging from mild to severe in order to plan for what could turn out to be a calamity. Faculty members at Wharton health care professionals and risk consultants say it is important that companies assess how their organizations could be harmed by a pandemic and take preventive measures to mitigate the damage and keep their enterprises operating. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Merrill Lynch decided this month to sell its asset-management operation to BlackRock -- a money manager serving wealthy investors and institutions and best known for its conservative focus on bonds and risk-management products -- analysts and investors cheered bidding up the shares of both companies. By acquiring Merrill’s $539 billion mutual fund family BlackRock will quickly broaden its stock-fund offerings and its appeal to retail customers. Merrill by acquiring just under 50% of BlackRock will do well if BlackRock can strengthen the performance and appeal of Merrill’s disappointing fund operation. But the cheering involves some wishful thinking as well. Merrill hopes to finesse its way out of its disappointing decision to embrace one of the late-1990s hottest fads: the financial supermarket. And BlackRock has to hope that investors don’t come to see it as a de-facto Merrill subsidiary inheriting Merrill’s problems without adding value of its own to the asset-management business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Numerous American industries are being battered by lower-cost competition from abroad. But the U.S. entertainment sector is poised to profit amid the onslaught say Hollywood executive Jeff Berg and Wall Street investor Suhail Rizvi. Berg chairman of International Creative Management talent agency has made his career in Hollywood; Rizvi head of a private equity firm recently invested (along with Merrill Lynch) about $100 million in ICM. But Berg and Rizvi’s partnership rests on clear-eyed strategic reasoning not a shared fascination with the glitter. ”The production of media may go to other places but the content will still be owned by U.S. companies and that’s where the value lies ” Rizvi says. He and Berg spoke last month at the inaugural meeting of the Wharton undergraduate media and entertainment club. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When Rebecca Rimel president and CEO of the Philadelphia-based Pew Charitable Trusts describes the challenges she faces running a $4.6 billion organization she uses the same words one hears from leaders in the for-profit world: ”highly strategic ” ”politically aware ” ”leveraged” and ”accountable.” But her bottom line is impact not profits. ”We are highly driven to make a difference in the key issues that matter to the health and happiness of our stakeholders -- the public ” she said during a recent leadership talk at Wharton. Running an effective organization Rimel told her audience requires hard-nosed decisions about which projects to fund which people to hire and what battles to walk away from. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Oracle the past few months have been one big shopping spree. On January 31 the enterprise software giant purchased longtime rival Siebel Systems the leading provider of customer relationship management software. On February 14 it acquired Sleepycat an ”open source” database maker; two days later it bought HotSip AB a Swedish telecommunications software provider. For many companies Oracle’s month would have been a year’s worth of merger and acquisition activity but for the Redwood Shores Calif.-based firm it’s the norm. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made a big splash in 2004 by announcing he would consolidate the software industry starting with archrival PeopleSoft and he has been true to his word. The real test however lies ahead: Can Oracle attract new customers? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

During her first few months in office German Chancellor Angela Merkel has attained the kind of approval rating that politicians the world over dream about largely due to the way she has handled herself on international matters in visits to Washington Moscow and Brussels. But her main challenge is Germany’s economy Europe’s largest and the world’s third biggest. It is a challenge that has been staring German leaders in the face for a long time for a number of reasons: lackluster GDP growth over the last five years; a vast overburdened welfare state; an anemic service sector; stubborn protectionist sentiment and an aging population that will place greater strain on the nation’s budget in years to come. In whatever policies she proposes Merkel will have to tread softly to avoid alarming citizens and trade unions wary of change say scholars at Wharton and business schools in Europe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do images of a crew team geese flying in formation trees silly putty and a steering wheel have in common? They all are part of how undergraduate business students at Wharton depict and describe the essence of leadership. Since 2000 Wharton freshmen have been required to participate in Images of Leadership a project sponsored by Wharton’s undergraduate leadership program led by director Anne M. Greenhalgh and associate director Christopher I. Maxwell. In a recent report called Images of Leadership: The Story Emerging Leaders Tell Greenhalgh and Maxwell discuss the students’ responses -- and biases -- as expressed in both pictures and words. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.