January 2017
Careers
Take 5: Lead Better Teams, Engage More Customers, and Find Your Next Market
Kellogg professors offer tips to grow your career and your organization.
Marketing
How to Ensure Your Great New Product Reaches the Right Customers
Don’t neglect distribution-channel strategy: “disaster lurks around the corner if you don’t pay attention.”
When Companies Tweet, Investors Listen
Posting negative news on corporate social media might make investors uneasy and lead to bad press.
Organizations
Businesses Born in a Recession Tend to Start Smaller and Stay Smaller
Yet there are ways business owners can counter these long-term effects.
Innovation
Need to Vent? Try Talking to a Robot.
Social robots can boost our self-esteem and offer a shoulder to cry on.
Healthcare
Under the ACA, the Cost of Caring for the Uninsured Decreased for Hospitals
The benefit has come only in states that expanded Medicaid.
Leadership
Podcast: Start the New Year Motivated for Success
Tips for achieving your personal and business goals.
Innovation
Four Ways Innovators Can Use Time to Their Advantage
For creative success, here’s when to hustle and when to reflect.
December 2016
Leadership
How Self-Reflection Can Make You a Better Leader
Setting aside 15 minutes a day can help you prioritize, prepare, and build a stronger team
Marketing
Take 5: Tips for Maintaining Your Self-Control During the Holidays
There’s a tendency to overdo it, but Kellogg researchers offer ways to stay disciplined.
How Transparent Accounting Leads to Smarter Decisions
For companies and governments alike, massaging the numbers is a losing long-term strategy.
Operations
From Long Checkout Lines to Departure Gate Chaos, Can Companies Reduce Holiday Hassles?
An operations professor explores better ways to form queues, ride escalators, and deliver packages.
Podcast: Will Machines Ever Truly Understand Us?
The relationship between humans and computers is deepening. What does the future hold?
Policy
How Drinking Beer Is Saving Russian Lives
Decades later, a Soviet public health initiative is still increasing male life expectancy.
Operations
Is There a Better Way to Allocate Organs to Transplant Patients?
Two ideas for changing a system where people linger on waitlists while kidneys spoil.
Marketing
People Are Tweeting about Your Products. Will It Boost Sales?
Soliciting user-generated content can be a powerful way to engage customers.
Healthcare
The Hidden Benefits of TV Drug Ads
Patients and taxpayers benefit from controversial direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising.
Social Impact
What Is the Future of Impact Investing?
“People are revisiting the relationship they want their capital to have with the world.”
Economics
Video: How to Establish Trust in Financial Transactions
Hard statistics and an understanding of culture keep the money flowing between lenders and borrowers.
November 2016
Innovation
Podcast: You Had Me at “Bleep Blorp”
How humans and robots are learning to trust each other.
Careers
Why a Scientist’s Big Break May Be Just Around the Corner
Researchers, have hope: your most successful paper can occur at any point in your career.
Marketing
Reviving a Brand That’s Lost Its Luster
Return to your roots, rally your team, and emerge a stronger brand.
Leadership
Three Ways Leaders Can Solve the “People Problems” That Hold Teams Back
Sometimes the conference room should be a boxing ring, other times a campfire.
Finance & Accounting
What Good Is a Financial Advisor?
They may have your best interests in mind, but that doesn’t mean their advice is sound.
Marketing
How Millennials Are Discovering Music
To woo listeners, music platforms should get personal.
Why Sending Your Kid to the Best Possible School May Backfire
Being surrounded by smarter peers can hurt test scores and incite disruptive behavior.
Policy
Higher Taxes Can Make Altruistic Jobs More Attractive
But subsidizing these careers may ultimately do more good.
Careers
Do Performance Incentives Make Us Greedy?
How we are rewarded shifts our values in surprising ways.
October 2016
Strategy
Finding the Right Performance Incentives to Motivate Employees
Some incentive schemes encourage hard work—others reward those who game the system.
Policy
Christine Lagarde on Income Inequality, Brexit, and the Power of M&Ms
A Q&A with the IMF managing director and Kellogg’s Sergio Rebelo.
Social Impact
When Companies Praise Good Behavior, They May Encourage the Exact Opposite
Why giving customers credit for altruistic purchases can backfire.
Marketing
Concerns about Scarcity Make Us Want to Be Better People
When we think we have too little, we will spend more on self-improvement.
Data Analytics
How to Use Data Visualization to Improve Your Business
Understanding how our minds read visualizations can help answer your organization’s most important questions.
Organizations
Video: When Expectations Clash, Is the Problem Cultural?
You’ll do well to understand where others are coming from.
Careers
How to Nurture Your Superstar Employees
Focus on these three traits to help your top performers flourish—and stick around.
Finance & Accounting
Beefing Up Collateral Laws Could Encourage Banks to Lend
In many emerging economies, businesses without real estate struggle to access credit.
Data Analytics
Podcast: Think You Understand Why Ideas Go Viral? Big Data May Change Your Mind
From tweets to scientific discoveries, human behavior is surprisingly predictable.
September 2016
Marketing
Remaking Marketing Organizations for a Data-Driven World
A Q&A with United Airlines’ CMO on how to avoid becoming “an artifact of a prior era.”
Operations
How Offering a Ship-to-Store Option Comes at a Cost
It delights customers, but managing inventory becomes more complicated.
Leadership
Six Tools for Communicating Complex Ideas
Business leaders need to know how to make their information stick.
Policy
Does the H-1B Visa Program Hurt American Workers?
At least in one industry, these applicants appear to take jobs others do not want.
Video: It’s Okay to Be Vulnerable
From negotiations to PR crises, transparency may make you feel uncomfortable. But it can earn trust.
Leadership
How to Help Prevent the Powerful from Abusing Their Privilege
High expectations for ethical behavior can keep powerful people in line.
Leadership
How to Be a Good Boss: Start by Understanding Why You Want to Lead
Research explores the pros and cons of two distinct leadership styles.
August 2016
Economics
Disposable Income Is Rising in Africa. What Happens Next?
A Q&A about growth trends in African markets.
What Does It Take to Foster a “Culture of Responsibility” like the U.S. Army’s?
An inside look at why soldiers line up to take the blame.
Strategy
Video: Let Virtue Build Your Bottom Line
Trustworthiness pays off, especially in the midst of uncertainty.
Careers
4 Tips to Gain Influence in Your Organization
You have more power than you think—here’s how to harness it.
Marketing
Understanding Power Dynamics Will Make You More Persuasive
How powerful you feel affects the messages you convey—and the ones you want to hear.
Strategy
A Clever Strategy to Combat Free Riding
In any collaboration, the temptation to slack off is strong.
Innovation
Companies Brag about Being Innovative. Should They?
Certain circumstances make customers wary of innovative brands.
We Remember Our Coworkers’ Misdeeds, but What about Our Own?
“Unethical amnesia” helps preserve our positive self-image.
Policy
How Much Do Brokerage Firms Benefit from Political Connections?
Politicians can’t trade on insider information—but the firms they talk to can.
July 2016
Data Analytics
Podcast: Did That Online Sneaker Ad Entice You to Buy? It’s Hard for Marketers to Tell.
Many measurement techniques are flawed. Kellogg and Facebook researchers share what can be done.
Marketing
Can Neuroscience Make Your Message Stickier?
A cutting edge technique pinpoints how our brains react to fear appeals in marketing.
Entrepreneurship
How to Make Your Startup Tech-Savvy
No matter the industry, it is important for entrepreneurs to be able to talk tech.
Strategy
Why Income Inequality among White Collar Workers Is Growing
Top earners benefit most from “knowledge hierarchies” in organizations.
Finance & Accounting
Chapter 7 vs. Chapter 11: Which Bankruptcy System Is Better?
In certain markets, forcing companies to liquidate could cause offices and factories to sit empty.
Leadership
Podcast: Tips for Managing Conflict at Work
From cross-cultural conflict to annoying coworkers, there are ways to deftly diffuse tension on teams.
Operations
Can Going Big on Eco-friendly Practices Really Pay Off?
The case for doing even more than swapping out lightbulbs.
5 Strategies for Leading a High-Impact Team
Why “teams are not cocktail parties,” and other words of wisdom.
Marketing
Hate Commercial Breaks? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t
There’s a hidden value to ads during TV shows.
Organizations
Video: How We Signal Trust in the Workplace
From innovating Oreos to scaling Everest, communicating trust can build your business.
June 2016
Data Analytics
How Open Data Is Changing Chicago
A Q&A with Chicago’s chief data officer about the power of big data.
Careers
An Illustrated Guide to the Value of an MBA
A professor urges graduates to both celebrate their accomplishments and remember their good fortune.
Entrepreneurship
Three Tips for Designing a Startup’s Marketing Plan
Even in R&D-focused industries, you don’t need to rely on a heavyweight to swoop in and buy your innovation.
Why Do You See the World as More Fair Than I Do?
The amount of racism or classism you perceive likely depends on how much you favor social hierarchies.
Marketing
Does Opening an Outlet Store Hurt Existing Sales?
New research challenges the notion that lower quality product lines dilute your brand.
Organizations
Appointing a Female CEO? Beware of Media Attention
Investors are skittish when new CEOs get lots of press, but only when those leaders are women.
Your Investment Tool Is Failing You
A new tool offers smart investors an improvement over the CAPM.
Innovation
What Happens to Innovation When the Financial Incentives Change?
There are ways to split the pie that encourage innovation.
Entrepreneurship
Can Your Invention Take the Heat?
An infant HIV test offers lessons for entrepreneurs designing for tough conditions.
Entrepreneurship
Podcast: What Does It Take to Bring an Ambitious Product to Market?
Tips for entrepreneurs on when to shift the finish line.
May 2016
Innovation
What It Takes for a Family Business to Innovate
The key is balancing a C-Suite skill set with an “F-Suite” mindset.
Strategy
Video: Are You Making the Wrong First Impression?
When building trust, it is not enough to demonstrate competence.
Strategy
Four Steps to Strategically Grow Your Business
Look beyond the usual suspects to identify your company’s next market.
Marketing
Shh! Don’t Tell the Customers that Their Solar Panels Will Save Them Money
Green marketers should stick to a single message. But which one?
Entrepreneurship
Keeping the Angels at Bay
Startups should be wary of accepting too much money from angel investors.
Politics & Elections
Abandoning the Electoral College Would Remake Campaign Spending
A direct-vote system could have a sizeable impact on the behaviors of voters and candidates.
Is Reading Someone’s Emails Like Entering Their Home?
How conceptions of privacy change over time and how analogies pave the way.
Policy
Can Raising the Capital Gains Tax Rate Ever Attract Investors?
The traditional view that raising rates hurts firms deserves a closer look.
Ready to Make a Risky Decision? Your Words Suggest Otherwise
Mining digital communications for emotions can lead to better decisions.
April 2016
Strategy
Video: To Build Trust with Customers, Show That You Are in It for the Long Haul
A researcher and a trusted CEO share tips to boost loyalty.
Economics
How the Wormhole Decade (2000–2010) Changed the World
Five implications no one can afford to ignore.
Marketing
5 Ways to Authentically Engage Your Customers
To improve your customer engagement strategies, “Ask not how you can sell, but how you can help.”
Policy
How Much Will You Pay Today for a Better Tomorrow?
How we answer that question has the power to shape climate-change policy.
Finance & Accounting
Why Did Car Sales Drop So Dramatically During the Financial Crisis?
Even willing buyers were affected by a credit freeze.
Wear Your Auditor on Your Sleeve
If a top-notch person conducts your audit, it pays to let investors know.
Marketing
A 10:30 Cupcake? Don’t Mind If I Do
Both consumers and marketers can benefit from knowing when self-control is lowest.
Leadership
Why Leaders Should Nurture Their Social–Emotional Intelligence
These four skills can diffuse conflict, particularly within family businesses.
Leadership
Is It Really Lonely at the Top?
The surprising links between feeling powerful and feeling connected.
March 2016
Entrepreneurship
How to Foster Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets
A Q&A with four entrepreneurs about the global startup landscape—and what governments can do to help.
Politics & Elections
Podcast: Does What Candidates Say Matter?
Understanding political rhetoric in this heated presidential race.
Finance & Accounting
Video: How to Play the Lottery Without Losing
Can we fight the poverty trap with new savings accounts that offer raffle tickets instead of interest?
Data Analytics
Is Your Digital-Advertising Campaign Working?
If you are not running a randomized controlled experiment, you probably don’t know.
Strategy
You Sent Us Business Haiku, Here Are Our Favorites
Kellogg Insight readers joined faculty in turning business wisdom into poetry.
Strategy
What Happens When a Company Loses a Patent?
A look at whether compulsory licensing can increase innovation.
How a Family Business Can Capitalize on Its Unique Culture
You need a different playbook when the CEO is your sister.
Innovation
Think You’re Out of Creative Ideas? Think Again.
We downplay the importance of persistence in creative success.