In this one-minute read for Fast Company, Michael Grothaus quips that “40 is the new 20,” based on a new working paper by Sloan Prof. Pierre Azoulay and graduate student Daniel Kim. They found that “when it comes to entrepreneurship, the average successful business founder is 42 years old,” reports Grothaus.
Bloomberg View’s Barry Ritholtz interviews MIT Innovation Teams Program (i-Teams) Director Luis Perez-Breva about his love for projects that “look impossible,” ideas that are “born bad,” and what the word “innovation” really means.
MIT startup Ministry of Supply has launched an intelligent heated jacket that can operate manually or respond to smart assistants. As Richard Priday of Wired explains, the “optimum temperature of the garment” is calculated using sensors that detect the outside temperature as well as the user’s body movement and temperature.
Ministry of Supply, which was founded out of MIT, is launching a new line of “intelligent outerwear” that will feature a jacket that can be warmed from your smartphone. "We think technology should just blend into the background and be simple to use,” cofounder and president Gihan Amarasiriwardena ’11 told Janelle Nanos of the Boston Globe.
Research by Associate Prof. Jared Curhan in Sloan found that back-to-back negotiations can be challenging, particularly if a person has recently been successful. “Hubristic pride may give you a false sense of confidence, and you may underestimate your next counterpart,” Curhan tells Aisha Al-Muslim at The Wall Street Journal. “That may make you not prepare adequately for the next negotiation.”
Speaking to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang and Selina Wang, Lecturer Luis Perez-Breva suggests that fear of AI stems from confusing it with automation. Perez-Breva explains that in his view, “we need to make better businesses that actually use this technology and AI to take advantage of the automation and create new jobs.”
With additional cash expected as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, public companies should make capital investments in sustainable project and programs, suggests Senior Lecturer Robert Pozen in a piece for Fortune. “Now is the time for public company executives to invest for the future—to create jobs and expand local facilities,” writes Pozen.
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Greg Ip highlights a new study by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and graduate student Daniel Rock that examines why advances in technology have not yet led to increases in productivity. Ip writes that, “the authors blame these lags on the cost and time it takes for businesses to adapt to new technologies.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Visiting Lecturer Irving Wladawsky-Berger spotlights MIT’s AI and the Future of Work Conference. Wladawsky-Berger writes that participants, “generally agreed that AI will have a major impact on jobs and the very nature of work. But, for the most part, they viewed AI as mostly augmenting rather than replacing human capabilities.”
Pamela Danziger of Forbes highlights research by Visiting Prof. Rogelio Oliva in an article about recent declines in retail staff and the resulting drop in retail sales. Retailers “could generate more sales if they staff at the correct level. Stores should staff to maximize sales and profits, not to minimize costs,” explains Oliva.
In an article for Fortune, Senior Lecturer Sharmila C. Chatterjee writes that brick-and-mortar stores can compete with online retailers by focusing on designing an attractive shopping experience for customers. “By focusing on their core competencies—one-on-one, human-to-human customer service, sensory-stimulating in-store experiences, and promise of instant gratification—traditional stores have an opportunity to excel where websites falter.”
Prof. Deborah Ancona and Senior Lecturer Hal Gregersen write for the Financial Times about the importance of collaborative leadership, highlighting how the development of the memorial to honor Officer Sean Collier was a collective effort. “To ‘step up’ and to ‘step aside’ — as needed — is the new way to lead in a world of distributed information and talent,” they note.
Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab, speaks with Today Show reporter A. Pawlowski about his new book and why females are uniquely positioned to handle life after middle age. “One of the greatest under-appreciated sources of innovation and new business may in fact be women over 50,” says Coughlin.
In an article for the Financial Times about the best economics books of 2017, Martin Wolf highlights new works by Prof. Andrew Lo and Prof. Peter Temin. Wolf writes that in Temin’s “important and provocative book, [he] argues that the US is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with ever fewer households in the middle.”
The MIT Sloan School of Management is ranked third in Bloomberg Businessweek’s list of the Best Graduate Business Schools of 2017, reports Shahien Nasiripour. “Surveys of recruiters, alumni, and students, as well as recent graduates’ success at landing jobs and securing high starting wages” are used to determine the rank of the schools listed, Nasiripour explains.