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June 2016

Your Investment Tool Is Failing You

A new tool offers smart investors an improvement over the CAPM.

Ownership of a professor's intellectual property shifts to the university.
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.

Use your competitive advantage to grow your business.
Strategy

Four Steps to Strategically Grow Your Business

Look beyond the usual suspects to identify your company’s next market.

A customer weighs the environmental benefit of a green product.
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?

An entrepreneur decides whether to pick an angel investor.
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.

A man is in the wrong frame of mind to make a risk-related decision.

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.

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.

Scientist losing patents to compulsory licensing innovates.
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.

Leadership

5 Tips to Become an Authentic Leader

Sincerity can go a long way when stepping into a new role.

A customer tweets about a company's products.
Marketing

How Important Is User-Generated Content?

An episode of censorship in China sheds light on the power of customers talking about brands on social media.

Pin down the components of trust.

Cultivating Trust Is Critical—and Surprisingly Complex

Don’t rely on intuition for something this important.

February 2016

Economics

Podcast: What Happens When Employees Are Poached?

How poaching benefits companies and industries, and how you can make yourself more poachable.

The final stretch of a job can prompt unethical behavior.

Employees Are More Likely to Cheat on Their Way out the Door

The temptation to act unethically is plentiful in the gig economy.

Strategy

Let Business Be Your Muse: Turn Your Workplace Wisdom into Haiku

Join Kellogg’s strategy faculty in putting your favorite lessons into verse.

Policy

There Is a Downside to Increased Enrollment in Higher Ed

How opening the floodgates can hurt the classroom experience.

A vampire unethical boss tries to request unethical behavior from an employee.

How to Protect Yourself from an Unethical Boss

To ward off immoral requests, take a lesson from vampire lore.

Entrepreneurship

Discovering the Value of the “Corporate” Entrepreneur

How one established company benefited from a dogged intrapreneur.

Marketing

Marketing Goes Off-Script

Behind the scenes with three organizations that are successfully engaging customers.

Healthcare

Why Healthcare Spending Has Slowed

Is the Affordable Care Act getting too much credit?

Policy

Does Democracy Curb Corruption?

A clever study investigates the link between where roads are built and who is in power.

January 2016

Leadership

Podcast: Executives, Put On Your Dancing Shoes

How lessons from the arts can help you become a more effective leader.

Marketing

"Nobody Asked for Uber"

Tim Calkins on profitable growth, strong brands, and delighting your customers.

Leadership

How Today’s Clergy Are Putting Their Faith in Management Training

Like CEOs, faith leaders face challenges running large organizations in a rapidly changing landscape.

Marketing

Why No One Boasts About Being in the Top 9

Find the right way to tout your ranking.

Entrepreneurship

Should You Skip the Startup?

The case for entrepreneurship through acquisition.

Leadership

5 Ways to Motivate Employees

Beyond raises and reviews: Everyday ways to energize your team.

Policy

Can the Private Sector Solve the U.S. Infrastructure Crisis?

Why it may take public-private partnerships to keep our bridges from crumbling.

Operations

Going Green Can Be Good for the Bottom Line

Sustainable operations and greater growth can go hand in hand.

Political ads on TV attempt to influence a viewer.
Politics & Elections

To Rally Your Base, Buy Air Time

How political advertising is a zero-sum game.

Marketing

How Much Do You Trust a Talking Raisin?

For some audiences, a “spokesthing” is more persuasive than a spokesperson.

Social Impact

How Hateful Rhetoric Can Create a Vicious Cycle of Dehumanization

The way we feel perceived can have dangerous consequences.

December 2015

Leadership

Podcast: Get the Most from Your Newest Team Members

Onboarding advice for organizations big and small.

Social Impact

The Danger of Dehumanizing Others

People who think other groups are less evolved are more likely to support retaliation against them.

Data Analytics

Blinded by Statistical Significance

Putting too much stock in an arbitrary threshold may lead to bad decisions.

Who Else Is Affected by Activist Investors?

Debtholders are bystanders with a lot on the line.

Operations

A Gentle Nudge Can Increase Participation in MOOCs

Reminders to collaborate benefit students in massive open online courses.

Our mobile consumer behavior determines how we shop on phones.
Marketing

How We Shop Differently on Our Phones

What’s in your cart? Depends on the device you are using.

People enjoying social responsible wine.
Marketing

You Can Taste the Benevolence

If your customers know you donate to charity, will they like your products more?

Social Impact

Design Thinking Isn’t Always the Answer

The most durable solutions for social change come from within communities.

Data Analytics

Tips for Building an Analytics Team

How to hire and keep data analytics superstars.

Leadership

How to Master Situational Leadership

A military perspective on building trust up and down the ladder.

Innovation

Does Your Company Need a “MacGyver”?

A scrappy insider might be the best innovator for your business.

November 2015

Careers

A DIY Guide to Career Growth

Eight ways to develop your potential—instead of waiting for your manager to take the lead.

Strategy

To Grow Your Company, Create Products from Services

For service-based businesses, scaling requires a strategy shift.

Marketing

When Retail Prices Cross the Line

Manufacturers should be strategic in enforcing minimum advertised price policies.

Strategy

Scaling Tips for Business Growth

A focus on your company’s unique capabilities can lead to sustainable growth.

Social Impact

Communities Are Partners, Not Beneficiaries

Advice for getting global health projects off the ground.

High frequency traders affect the markets in many ways - in most cases, positively.
Finance & Accounting

Do High-Frequency Traders Deserve Their Bad Rap?

Though suspicions abound, HFTs generally help markets function and grow.

Leadership

How to Succeed as a Chief Growth Officer

Five ways leaders can challenge the status quo to encourage growth.

Workplace entitlement demonstrated by an opera diva.

Does Creativity Breed Entitlement?

Companies that put creative employees on a pedestal encourage bad behavior.

Entrepreneurship

Growing a Company from Startup to Sale

A three-part podcast details how Enjoy Life Foods thrives in a market it helped create.

October 2015

Data Analytics

5 Ways to Attract and Retain Data Scientists

How directly contributing to the business can help analytics talent thrive.

Leadership

Podcast: The Power of Persuasive Storytelling

Stories hook your business audience and get them to take action.

The rotating door of poaching employees can have its benefits
Organizations

Poach Our Employees, Please

How hiring an employee from a related company can directly benefit both the poacher and the poached.

Leadership

A Smarter Way to Schedule

What multitaskers can learn from how judges schedule hearings

Marketing

What Do Customers Pay When Wholesale Prices Change?

Increases and decreases are not passed through the same way.

Entrepreneurship

When to Pass the Hat

Strategic timing can help startups get the most from their fundraising.

An employee struggles to show empathy in the workplace.

I (Don’t) Feel Your Pain

Having been there does not always increase empathy.

Social Impact

When Higher Pay Attracts the Wrong Job Candidates

Labeling jobs as lucrative can backfire for socially minded organizations.

September 2015

What Chinese Consumers Want

Western Companies doing business in China need to ask the right questions.

Maintaining business relationships can be invaluable.

No Contract? No Problem

How the Kenyan flower industry thrives in the absence of formal contracts.

Companies, Choose Your Name Wisely

The right name can signal that you are a safe bet.

Operations

Why Power Companies Love Smart Meters

Smart meters provide richer data, enabling smarter pricing strategies and a smoother electricity supply chain.

Entrepreneurship

A Crowdfunding App that Pays the Bills

A startup in Kenya captures an underserved market.

Leadership

Podcast: How to Rid Your Company of Toxic Employees

Tips for how to avoid hiring them, manage their improvement, or decide when to let them go.

Four Ways Cuba Can Become More Business-Friendly

What will it take to make the country attractive to investors?

A toxic worker can cost a firm money, low quality work, and legal issues.
Organizations

Hire a Superstar or Dump a Toxic Worker?

Difficult employees are a bigger drag on your company than you think.

Finance & Accounting

Credit Where Credit Is Due

New ways of assessing credit worthiness could open up access to the global banking system.

August 2015

Leadership

Podcast: How to Handle a Bad Boss

Insecure leaders can sabotage productivity.

Marketing

Philip Kotler on Marketing’s Higher Purpose

How social marketing can be a force for good.

Innovation

Creating Urgency around Corporate Innovation

What intrapreneurs in established firms must do to succeed.

Economics

Two Distinct Motivations Drive Violence against Americans in the Middle East

Lessons about cultural dominance have implications for the business world.

Operations

Who Benefits from Airline Baggage Fees?

Customers hate them, but maybe they shouldn’t.

Organizations

How a Restaurant Chain Keeps Its Independent Spirit

At Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, growth begins with a learning mindset.

What went wrong during the AIG financial crisis?
Finance & Accounting

What Went Wrong at AIG?

Unpacking the insurance giant’s collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.

July 2015

Innovation

How to Tango With Startups

Kellogg’s BrandVoice partnership with Forbes looks at how venture thinking can spur innovation in corporate settings

Leadership

Is Your Negotiation Strategy Wrong?

Six ways to get more of what you want.

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