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April 2017

Marketing

How to Make Ads That Even Savvy Customers Trust

People are more skeptical than ever about marketing—but that doesn’t mean they distrust all of it.

Policy

We Are Influenced by Racial Information Even When We Are Not Aware of Its Presence

Many of us acknowledge that implicit racial bias exists, but the problem goes deeper than we think.

Careers

Video: High Performers “Seek to Understand Before Being Understood”

How fostering trust can further your career and make your job easier.

Leadership

Why Warmth Is the Underappreciated Skill Leaders Need

The case for demonstrating more than just competence.

Innovation

Take 5: How to Encourage Innovative Thinking

Kellogg faculty on what it takes to ensure your new product or great idea takes off.

Social media echo chambers form surprisingly fast.
Organizations

The Surprising Speed with Which We Become Polarized Online

Users isolate themselves in social media echo chambers, even when they start out looking at a variety of posts.

Navigating regulatory challenges helped Uber in New York.
Policy

How Uber Took Manhattan

A Q&A on how startups can anticipate and navigate regulatory challenges.

Researchers find that the permanent income hypothesis does not hold up, and a loss of income does affect household spending.
Finance & Accounting

How the 2013 Government Shutdown Affected Workers’ Household Spending

Even temporary income dips lead to a surprising degree of belt-tightening.

Healthcare

What Happens to Patient Care When There Are Not Enough Nurses?

The impact can be significant, especially in nursing homes.

March 2017

Healthcare

A Healthcare Policy Expert on Four Key Differences Between the ACA and the AHCA

Craig Garthwaite explains how the GOP proposal could impact patients, insurers, and hospitals.

Operations

How to Predict Demand for Your New Product

Relying on manager expertise and market research may not be enough.

Leadership

Getting More Women into the C-Suite Means Keeping Them in the Talent Pipeline

How to support women through three “pivot points” in their careers.

Strategy

How Bell’s Became So Many People’s Local Beer

A Q&A with CEO Laura Bell on preserving company culture while growing aggressively.

A CEO's risk aversion encourages underperformance.
Finance & Accounting

How Risk Aversion Motivates Executives

Incentivizing leaders with too much stock promotes caution—and encourages underperformance.

Social Impact

To Stop ISIS Recruitment in Western Countries, Promote Assimilation

An outsized number of radicalized recruits come from prosperous, egalitarian nations where Muslims feel isolated.

Even YouTube Stars Need the Traditional Media Spotlight

Sure Netflix and e-readers have upended distribution, but creative industries still rely on legacy media.

Leadership

Take 5: How Leaders Can Stamp Out Bad Behavior and Create a Culture of Integrity

Practical tips to reign in an unethical boss and encourage employees to do the right thing.

Marketing

The Secret to Ulta Beauty’s Success: Joy

A Q&A with Ulta’s marketing head on how consumer insights helped a brick-and-mortar chain thrive in the age of Amazon.

School gun violence is linked to the unemployment rate, and can be seen as a symptom to a struggling economy.
Economics

School Shootings Rise and Fall with the Unemployment Rate

Researchers set out to quantify gun violence at U.S. schools and made a surprising discovery.

Organizations

The Psychology Behind Fake News

Cognitive biases help explain our polarized media climate.

February 2017

Marketing

Podcast: How to Steer Your Company Through a Twitter Firestorm

Plus, engage your customers by establishing your company’s audio brand.

Take 5: How to Nurture Your Work Relationships

Ways to improve negotiations and better manage conflict at the office.

Policy

Companies Want to Hire the Best Employees. Can Changes to the H-1B Visa Program Help?

The current lottery is not optimal for top foreign applicants or the companies that want to hire them.

Leadership

Are Your Employees Putting the Company's Interests First?

A new tool measures a firm’s “stewardship climate.”

Organizations

Should You Hire Someone with a Criminal Record?

Companies that give ex-offenders a fresh start may be rewarded with employees who stick around.

Entrepreneurship

Finding the Right Partner Can Make or Break Your Startup

A Q&A on why you should “date before you marry” with an entrepreneur who took the plunge.

Using the psychology of persuasion to sell a new idea.
Innovation

Four Tips to Persuade Others Your Idea Is a Winner

Want to shake up the status quo? Use psychology to your advantage.

Policy

What Volkswagen's Emissions Scandal Can Teach Us about Why Companies Cheat

Tighter standards may backfire in industries with fierce competition.

January 2017

Policy

Why Are We So Quick to Excuse Drunken Behavior?

From criminal sentencing to corporate indiscretions, we hold people less accountable when alcohol is involved.

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.

Countering the effects of launching a startup in a recession.
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.

A man bonds with his robot companion.
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.

People take a photo to post as user-generated-content.
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.

Financial advisors give financial advice to clients.
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.

A fisherman reels in a pair of stereo headphones.
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.

An employee is motivated by a performance incentive.
Careers

Do Performance Incentives Make Us Greedy?

How we are rewarded shifts our values in surprising ways.

October 2016

Using the right reward system can incentivize car dealership employees and lead to stronger work performance.
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.

If you were trapped in a desert, resource scarcity would cause you to exercise willpower and become your best self to surviveIf you were trapped in a desert, resource scarcity would cause you to exercise willpower and become your best self to survive
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.

Banks dislike using movable assets as collateral
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

Airline passengers have individualized flying experiences.
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.

Careers

Don’t Wait to Be Asked: Lead

A roadmap for increasing your influence at work.

Leadership

Six Tools for Communicating Complex Ideas

Business leaders need to know how to make their information stick.

An H1-B Visa holder applies for a job
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.

A boss decides which leadership style to use.
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.

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.

A businessman with unethical amnesia stomps through a city.

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.

Neuroscience reveals how to make fear appeals more effective.
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.

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