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The digital revolution has transformed healthcare along with virtually every other industry. From telemedicine to digital health data, providers now have access to innovative solutions that have the potential to make healthcare more accessible and effective for all.
In some instances, this is done…
Angie Basiouny
A new study from Wharton management professor Tiantian Yang finds that when women are rejected for contract jobs in male-dominated fields, specifically IT and computer programming, they are far less likely than men to continue looking for work in those industries. Post-rejection, women are also far…
Mike Figliuolo
D uring the 14 years I’ve run my firm, I’ve heard a polite “No, thank you” more times than I can count. That’s fine. Rejection, especially when it’s quick, enables me and my team to spend our time on more fruitful conversations.
It’s the silence that kills me. I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve…
Hexagon Manufacturing Intelligence
Did you know that shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages (STOs) can consume up to 50% of a plant’s annual maintenance budget? That’s according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.
STOs are among the most complex and high-stakes events in industrial operations. They’re costly, especially when…
Patrick Willemson
The European Union has taken a leading role in shaping a variety of data and AI regulations. One of its most recent initiatives, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), extends this regulatory momentum into the manufacturing sector. Under this new regulation, manufacturers and…
George Thuo
These are new times for manufacturers. Global pandemics. Worldwide supply-chain disruptions. Steep price increases for parts and materials. Increasingly competitive global markets.
Manufacturers are can-do people, but doing becomes harder in today’s “do more with less” manufacturing environment.…
Bryan Christiansen
Facility teams are constantly balancing urgent repairs, preventive tasks, asset tracking, and compliance, all while ensuring smooth day-to-day operations. But when processes are manual, fragmented, or unclear, even simple tasks can spiral into delays, miscommunication, and wasted time.
The…
Knowledge at Wharton
Many countries face the reality of demographic aging: Fertility is plummeting and people are living longer. This raises critical challenges for the labor market, healthcare, and long-term care markets, as well as retirement systems and financial planning. A Wharton symposium on the implications of…
Harish Jose
Readers of my blog might be aware that I appreciate the nuances of cybernetic constructivism. Cybernetic constructivism rejects the idea that we have access to an objective reality. It doesn’t deny that there’s an external reality independent of an observer. However, we don’t have direct access to…
Cornelia C. Walther
When artificial intelligence burst into mainstream business consciousness, the narrative was compelling: Intelligent machines would handle routine tasks, freeing humans for higher-level creative and strategic work. McKinsey research sized the long-term AI opportunity at $4.4 trillion in added…
Donald J. Wheeler
In statistics class we learn that we can reduce the uncertainty in our estimates by using more and more data. This effect has been called the “law of large numbers” and is one of the primary ideas behind the various big data techniques that are becoming popular today. Here we’ll look at how the law…
Amy Knue
Health systems across the country are unknowingly paying multiple times for the same medical equipment—once to own it, and again to rent it. The issue isn’t always an increase in clinical demand; it’s often availability and visibility to medical device inventory. The cost of these unnecessary…
Michael McDowell
As artificial intelligence takes off, how do we efficiently integrate it into our lives and our work? Bridging the gap between promise and practice, Jann Spiess, an associate professor of operations, information, and technology at Stanford Graduate School of Business, explores how algorithms can be…
Stephanie Ojeda
Spreadsheets are usually the first tool used to manage suppliers, and the first to become a liability. Important updates get buried. Repeat supplier problems start popping up. Along the way, you start to wonder whether that cheaper vendor is really saving you money in the long run.
The core…
Annie Wilson
More than half of the nation’s 623,218 bridges are showing significant deterioration. Through an in-field case study conducted in western Massachusetts, a team led by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst—in collaboration with researchers from the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (…
Etienne Nichols
The corrective and preventive action (CAPA) process is one of the most important elements within a medtech company’s quality management system (QMS). The goal of the CAPA system is to identify, address, and prevent systemic issues that could compromise product safety, regulatory compliance, and the…
Kate Zabriskie
Ever had that moment when a project seemed crystal clear during a meeting, only to find out weeks later that everyone had completely different interpretations? It’s like playing a grown-up version of the “telephone” game where what starts as “We need this done by the end of the week” ends up being…
Mike Figliuolo
Most days we walk through life unaware of the conversations occurring around us. And then there are those times you overhear a conversation that stops you dead in your tracks. You have to hit rewind in your brain and ask, “Did they actually just say that?”
Ever have one of those moments? Clearly,…
Adam Galinsky, Maurice Schweitzer
Nano Tools for Leaders—a collaboration between Wharton Executive Education and Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management—are fast, effective tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes, with the potential to significantly affect your success and the engagement and…
Stephanie Ojeda
Many companies are still clinging to paper-based and unconnected electronic processes, despite the clear disadvantages. Without modern tools like QMS software, these organizations risk compromising product quality, falling behind in compliance, and ultimately losing competitive ground.
In contrast…
Harish Jose
In this article I’m exploring the need for ethics in systems thinking using the ideas of Heinz von Foerster and Russell Ackoff. The two come from different traditions within systems thinking. Von Foerster comes from physics and second-order cybernetics, and Ackoff from operations research and…
Gleb Tsipursky
As companies and government agencies push forward with return-to-office (RTO) mandates, they risk exacerbating a workplace problem that many have failed to address adequately: gender discrimination.
New research from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management highlights how in-person…
Mike Figliuolo
I love passionate people—people who throw themselves into their work with every last bit of energy they have. To them, everything about their work is important. It’s serious business, and they drive hard to form the world in an image they’re proud of.
However, with passion comes peril. If…
Maartje van Krieken
The storm isn’t coming: It’s already here, and many leaders are realizing they’re sailing without instruments. The current business climate is a storm of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Strategic plans become outdated overnight. Decision-making feels like a risk. And yet…
Audrey Kim
As if occupational hazards like “mansplaining” and “he-peating” weren’t bad enough, women in leadership positions often find it hard to get respect. “Women play an unfair game,” says Alison Fragale, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “But that doesn’t…
