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This Month From Knowledge@WhartonPHILADELPHIA --(Business Wire)-- This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu), the Wharton School's online research and business analysis journal, which will soon launch a new India Knowledge@Wharton edition, include: CEO Succession: Has Grooming Talent on the Inside Gone by the Wayside? The recent departures of two chief executives -- Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch and Charles Prince of Citigroup -- in the wake of major financial losses at their firms, have focused renewed attention on the issue of succession planning. Published reports speculated that both positions would be filled by outside candidates, and on November 14, Merrill Lynch announced that it had chosen John Thain, CEO of NYSE Euronext, to succeed O'Neal. While such a move is not surprising for a board wanting to signal a fresh start to investors, Wharton faculty say that, increasingly, companies are looking to fill top spots with external candidates, while spending less time on grooming future leaders and managing talent in general. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1845.cfm HCL Infosystems' Ajai Chowdhry: 'We See India as a Very Young Country' HCL, one of India's -- and the world's -- first computer companies, was launched in 1976 by six co-founders. One of them, Ajai Chowdhry, is the CEO of HCL Infosystems, the company's Indian operation. During the 1980s, Chowdhry, an engineer with a flair for marketing, built HCL's international operations out of Singapore. In recent years, he has turned HCL Infosystems into a distributor of high-tech products ranging from Nokia's mobile phones to Apple's iPods. Chowdhry met with India Knowledge@Wharton in his office in Noida, near New Delhi, to discuss how HCL Infosystems has grown from annual sales of $89 million when he took over as CEO in 1994 to $2.7 billion today. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/articl Ted Leonsis: 'It's the Greatest Time to Be an Entrepreneur' Meet the new consumers of the new media age. They want things to be better, faster, cheaper and, even more important, free, according to AOL vice chairman emeritus Ted Leonsis, who is considered an Internet pioneer and whose business portfolio over the years includes an impressive array of online companies. "We're living in a world where consumers have taken control of everything," he noted. Leonsis, a keynote speaker at the recent Wharton Entrepreneurship Conference 2007, offered his thoughts on making money, the Internet age, contradictions in today's consumers, the global marketplace, blogs and philanthropy, among other topics. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1849.cfm Good, Bad or Ugly -- Is It Impossible to Predict What's Ahead for the U.S. Economy? At the end of October, the Federal Reserve gave the financial markets just what they had been asking for: a 0.25% cut in the federal funds rate. But in early November, stocks plunged and the dollar hit a new low. Applause turned into hand-wringing -- then back to applause as the markets rebounded in the middle of the month. Why can't the experts make up their minds? Is the outlook good or bad? According to Wharton faculty, forecasting is particularly hard now because some of the key factors -- such as the credit crunch arising from the subprime mortgage mess, spiking oil prices and the plunging dollar -- have little historical precedent. The result: Finance experts, including the Fed, may not be able to see too far down the road. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1842.cfm Google: In Search of Itself In a span of four days earlier this month, Google launched an initiative to enable social networking tools to work across dozens of web sites and rounded up 33 partners to develop software to power a new generation of cell phones. While these efforts illustrate Google's determination to keep expanding its territory, they also increase the challenges faced by the $200 billion company. And they pose a question that seems to crop up more and more these days: Where is Google headed? http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1839.cfm Emerging Market Mania: Is It Different This Time? The sun is shining brightly at the moment on virtually all the world's emerging market economies. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose nearly 45% in the first nine months of 2007, with the IMF forecasting economic growth rates of 8% or higher, versus 2% to 3% for the OECD nations. Indeed, it's been difficult lately to find an emerging market anywhere that hasn't outperformed the developed world. Does all this fair weather for developing markets denote a permanent change in their fortunes? The topic was debated by a panel of experts at the recent Wharton Finance Conference in New York City. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article Podcasts Getting a Read on Amazon's New Kindle On November 19, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos announced the launch of an e-book device called Kindle. It weighs 10.3 ounces, costs $399 and can be used without a computer, offering instead a free, high-speed wireless data network from Sprint. Users can download books in less than 60 seconds, as well as newspapers, magazines and blogs (for a fee). The device uses an eye-friendly screen and lets readers increase the type size as needed. Will it be a hit, even though most other e-book efforts have been unsuccessful? We asked marketing professor Peter Fader, Don Huesman, senior director of information technology, and management professor Dan Raff to give us their reviews. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1851.cfm The Subprime Drama Continues, but for How Long? The headlines refuse to go away. Almost every day, a new twist seems to appear in the subprime crisis drama. This week, the investment arm of the government of Abu Dhabi announced an infusion of $7.5 billion to acquire a 4.9% stake in Citigroup, which has been slammed by enormous losses in the credit market. The announcement came on the heels of a report from Bank of America that the subprime mess is about to get messier as interest rates "reset" -- or rise -- on more than $360 billion worth of adjustable rate subprime mortgages. Has the crisis run its course? Knowledge@Wharton asked that question and several more to Richard Herring, a professor of finance at Wharton and co-director of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Herring spoke recently at a meeting in Rome about "the darker side of securitization." Licensing content from Knowledge@Wharton: If you are interested in re-publishing at no cost Knowledge@Wharton content on your web site, in your e-newsletter, in print or in other media please contact Peter Winicov: 215/746-6471 or [email protected]. For more information: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/contentlicense.cfm Regional editions: The Knowledge@Wharton Network has a global reach of over one million subscribers who are drawn from Knowledge@Wharton (original English language); China Knowledge@Wharton (www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn); the Spanish and Portuguese editions of Universia Knowledge@Wharton (http://www.wharton.universia.net/index.cfm) and India Knowledge@Wharton (www.ikw.in). Audio offerings/Podcasts: Audio versions of many articles are available 48 hours after they are published, and can be played or downloaded directly by using the links located under the titles of articles. Podcasts are available at no charge, and you can subscribe to them through iTunes. Our podcasts include interviews with business leaders and Wharton faculty, audio versions of select articles, and discussions on current topics and trends. If you have iTunes, you can subscribe with one click: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/weblink/187.cfm If you have your favorite podcast source, the url is: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/podcastcurrent.xml About Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton School Knowledge@Wharton, (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/) is a free biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books, and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and distributes that knowledge online to a global business audience. The Knowledge@Wharton network includes more than one million subscribers and contains more than 2,000 articles and research papers in its database, with more added every week. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania -- founded in 1881 as the first collegiate business school -- is recognized globally for intellectual leadership and ongoing innovation across every major discipline of business education. The most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world, Wharton bridges research and practice through its broad engagement with the global business community. The school has more than 4,600 undergraduate, MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral students; more than 8,000 annual participants in executive education programs; and an alumni network of more than 82,000 graduates. |
