“What is the place of economics in the curriculum of business?” That was the opening sentence and principal question of an article by Roswell C. McCrea in the Journal of Political Economy nearly 100 years ago. Keep in mind, it was early in the development of collegiate schools of business in the US, and schools… Read more >
In the late 1950’s, MIT professor Robert Solow published a series of influential articles describing a new framework for understanding economic growth. He showed that increasing labor and capital investment explained very little of the growth in the US between 1909 and 1949. Nearly all the growth was, instead, attributed to a broad set of… Read more >
What if we were to take the popular adage “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime” and modify it slightly. Let’s make it: Give a village fish, and you feed its people for a day. Teach its people… Read more >
About this time three years ago, the two of us were interviewing deans and business leaders, trying to make sense of the future. Covid-19 was breaking our normal, magnifying long-standing injustices, and pulling the future forward. We wanted to see the world beyond what was happening at the time. What we discovered, however, was that… Read more >
The 2023 version of the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report was released this week. I’ve been especially anxious for this (fourth) edition, because it is the first since we started moving beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ve been concerned about the world’s most vulnerable populations and interested in the impact of technology and other… Read more >
Lately I’ve been starting my presentations by asking participants, “In what ways do the interests of business and business schools intersect?” The most common initial reaction has been silence, accompanied by a familiar facial expression, the one that says, “Isn’t it obvious?”. Still, I press them on the question until someone speaks up. The first… Read more >
Twitter has a lot of uses. It helps people connect with others who have similar interests by sharing research and resources. Users can track and contribute in areas of interest, increase the visibility of their companies, and build their personal brand. All these things are important, of course, but I was looking for more when… Read more >
“Look at this lead pencil. There is not a single person in the world who can make this pencil.” That was Milton Friedman 16 minutes into the first installment of “Free to Choose,” the 1980 television show by the Nobel Laureate and his wife, Rose Friedman. For the next two minutes he told the remarkable… Read more >
At GBSN Beyond, our annual conference, I bumped into a young, energetic woman during the networking break. She was hustling to deliver something to the tech team. Clearly, she was working as part of the GBSN staff team. The only problem is that I did not know who she was. She looked familiar, but her… Read more >
According to a 2018 World Bank report, “globally, the loss in human capital wealth due to gender inequality is estimated at $160 trillion.” Presented differently and more positively, “human capital wealth could increase 21.7 percent globally, and total wealth by 14.0 percent with gender equality in earnings.” Three years earlier, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated… Read more >
