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.
Writing for The Boston Globe, President L. Rafael Reif issues a call for allies to help address the changing nature of work in the age of automation. “Automation will transform our work, our lives, our society," writes Reif. "Whether the outcome is inclusive or exclusive, fair or laissez-faire, is up to us.”
Prof. Yossi Sheffi writes for The Wall Street Journal that students should be learning soft skills such as communications, leadership and teamwork, tools that are necessary for managing organizations and supply-chains successfully. Sheffi writes that, “professionals need to hone their ability to communicate with people working across a wide range of disciplines and a variety of geographies.”
Ike Brannon writes for Forbes about a survey he conducted with Prof. Michelle Hanlon asking equipment manufacturing companies what they want from tax reform. The majority of respondents in this diverse industry were in favor of removing all business tax breaks to “achieve a corporate income tax in the vicinity of 20 percent that is fully ‘paid for’,” writes Brannon.
Writing for HuffPost, Laura Emily Dunn highlights the career of MIT alumna Diane Hoskins, one of two Co-CEOs of Gensler. “I’ve learned that the best way to lead is to identify great people and then trust them to do the job. No matter what business you are in, it’s always about the people,” says Hoskins.
In an article for HuffPost, Erandi Palihakkara highlights MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge, which aims to recognize “organizations (both for profit and non-profit) that are committed to inclusion of technological innovations for economic prosperity of base and middle income earners.”
Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Arianne Cohen spotlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s research examining adaptive markets. Cohen explains that, “Lo’s hypothesis says people act in their own self-interest but frequently make mistakes, figure out where they’ve erred, and change their behaviors. The broader system also adapts.”
Prof. Pierre Azoulay discusses with Bloomberg reporter Peter Coy his research on how new ideas gain traction in science. “Azoulay found that the death of a star scientist is like the fall of a huge tree. It lets sunshine reach the forest floor through a hole in the leaf canopy, enabling new kinds of vegetation to flourish,” explains Coy.
Miro Kazakoff and Kara Blackburn, lecturers in the Sloan School of Management, have surveyed incoming MBA students for a glimpse at future workplace communication trends, reports Sophia Eppolito for The Boston Globe. “What we wanted to do in creating the survey was to get a sense of people who are just coming out of the workplace right now and seeking further training,” Kazakoff explains.
In this Wall Street Journal article, senior MIT Sloan lecturer Robert Pozen and Prof. S.P. Kothari explain the causes of inflated executive pay. As a solution, Pozen and Kothari write that compensation committees should, “be required to disclose the revenues and market capitalizations of the peers they select.”
Renée Richardson Gosline, a senior lecturer in the Sloan School of Management, writes for WBUR’s Cognoscenti about whether it is a good idea to integrate artificial intelligence in all aspects of the online shopping experience. People often “outsource decisions and tasks to technology based on the assumption that it will improve your performance,” explains Gosline.
New Scientist reporter Aylin Woodward writes MIT researchers used the MIT Bitcoin Project, which provided freshman access to bitcoin, as an opportunity to examine early-adoption behaviors. The study shows that if you make “early adopters feel special…their resulting enthusiasm seems to help technology go viral.”
The Economist reviews Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s latest book, which examines how new digital technologies will impact businesses. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “believe that the latest phase of computers and the internet have created three shifts in how work happens.”