All Features
Erika James
Patagonia, the sportswear brand, made headlines this summer when its founder and CEO, Yvon Chouinard, announced his intention to effectively give away the multibillion dollar business instead of selling it.
Chouinard, a famously “reluctant” entrepreneur, detailed his decision to an astonished…
Bryan Christiansen
Assets are resources owned and used by a company to generate a positive economic benefit. Assets can be physical items, like equipment or furniture, or they can be intangibles like software, patents, or documents.
As a business owner, it’s important to know which assets you own, their location,…
Leeza Garber, Allison Jegla
In late spring 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged an elite investment adviser for “misstatements and omissions” about environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations related to its managed mutual funds. This same financial firm has also faced myriad…
S. Heather Duncan
A new deep-learning framework developed at the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is speeding up the process of inspecting additively manufactured metal parts using X-ray computed tomography, or CT, while increasing the accuracy of the results. The reduced costs for time, labor,…
Gleb Tsipursky
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claimed in a recent interview with Fox that “we have to get our employees back in the office.” According to him, doing so would result in “rising productivity that will offset some of the inflationary pressures.”
Fink didn’t provide any data in the form of statistics,…
Kerry Stevenson
Operating a desktop FFF 3D printer can be a ton of fun, except when you make mistakes. Mistakes can cause print failures, and also embarrassment when they are so obvious you really should not have made them.
Let’s take a look at my list of the eight dumbest FFF 3D printing mistakes you can make.…
Matt Fieldman
Customer experience, or “CX,” is all the rage in marketing circles nationally. Customer experience refers to how a customer experiences your company at every point of their buying journey—from marketing to sales to customer service, and everywhere in between. It can be tangible actions, such as…
Gleb Tsipursky
Do bosses trust employees to be productive when working out of the office? Microsoft released a new study in which it found that 85 percent of leaders say the “shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence that employees are being productive.” More concretely, 49 percent of…
Shelly Fan
I admit, if I see a beehive, I back away. But part of me is also fascinated. Beehives are a remarkable feat of engineering. Swarms of bees deposit materials ranging from tree buds to chewed-up wax into densely packed honeycombs—each a geometric masterpiece—while flying in the air.
In stark…
Ben P. Stein
Right after the pandemic hit, I bought a new vacuum cleaner. I wanted to step up my housecleaning skills since I knew I’d be home a lot more. I was able to buy mine right away, but friends who wanted new appliances weren’t so lucky. My relatives had to wait months for their new refrigerator to…
Michael Okrent
Want a new car? You may have to wait as long as six months, depending on the model you order. Looking for a spicy condiment? Supplies of sriracha hot sauce have been running dangerously low. And if you feed your cat or dog dry pet food, expect empty shelves or elevated prices.
These aren’t…
Isaac Maw
Automation provides opportunities for new, more efficient workflows and better resource use in manufacturing. Despite a long history of fears concerning job losses brought on by automation, these anxieties aren’t typically reflected in reality.
To learn more about the best ways to upskill workers…
Tom Taormina
It’s a conundrum that faces everyone who operates a manufacturing or service business: Most are unaware of the dire consequences of a defect reaching a customer until a process server hands them a lawsuit. By then it’s too late. Regardless of the outcome, the people and businesses will be…
Pat Toth
In an earlier article in this series, “Cybersecurity and Industry 4.0: What You Need to Know,” we discussed the four aspects of Industry 4.0: cyber-physical systems (CPS)/cobots, internet of things (IoT), cloud manufacturing, and automation, as well as how they are interconnected. Strong…
Patrick Hardy
Responding to disasters is one of the most important activities that employees can be asked to grapple with. From natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes to technological situations such as power outages, chemical spills, and transportation accidents, as well as security emergencies like…
Morris Cohen
Billions in federal spending to boost production of computer chips is an important step toward making the U.S. more competitive in the global marketplace. But it doesn’t guarantee that a manufacturing boom will follow, says Wharton expert Michael Cohen.
“I think it will have an incremental effect…
Harry Hertz
In a recent blog of mine about CEO challenges and opportunities in 2022, the first opportunity listed was to determine how to make a difference.
As stated, employees, customers, and investors want to associate with organizations that serve a larger purpose (emphasis added) than may be expressed in…
Matthias Gouthier
The ISO Foresight Trend Report highlights global trends across multiple industries that will shape strategic decision making for a better future. Drawing upon these insights, ISO reflects on some of the potential areas for standardization work. In a series of feature articles, we unpack some of the…
Angie Basiouny
When Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell first came to the U.S. from England in the 1990s, he was struck by the dogged American work ethic.
“It was a culture that was much more organized around work than in the UK,” he recalls. “When I was growing up, there wasn’t quite the same heroism…
Claire Zulkey
A boss who overloads you with information may be frustrating, but one who leaves you in the dark may come off as uncaring.
That’s the key finding from a new study that examines how employees perceive managers who assume that less is more when it comes to communicating at work.
After reviewing…
John Logan
Labor Day 2022 came smack-bang in the middle of what is increasingly looking like a pivotal year in the history of American unions.
The summer saw a steady stream of workforce mobilizations. Employees at Trader Joe’s locations in Massachusetts and Minneapolis both voted to unionize. Meanwhile,…
Libby Sander
Telstra and Westpac are the latest companies to encourage staff to work from home, just a few months after some of them returned to the office. However, working from home for extended periods can leave employees feeling socially and professionally isolated. When people work from home, they have…
Matt Fieldman
You’ve heard the questions from your manufacturing colleagues: “Where are all the good people these days?” “Why don’t people want to work anymore?” and, “Why can’t people show up on time and ready to work?”
During a recent seminar at the City Club of Cleveland, I learned that there are eight…
Lisa Wong Macabasco
The underrepresentation of women at the top of corporate America is a persistent and exasperating problem. Women currently hold 32 CEO positions in S&P 500 companies—slightly more than 6 percent of the total.
“We have all this knowledge on stereotypes and the biases and challenges people face…
Lite Nartey
George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that “the single biggest problem in communications is the illusion that it has taken place.” This is often the case when it comes to interactions between firms and stakeholders. Organizations need to improve communication with key actors to foster trust, enhance…
