-
'High Flying Bird' Will Entertain You and Leave You Thinking - By Dolly Chugh
This weekend, Netflix dropped a buzzy new movie called High Flying Bird. A cross between Jerry Maguire, Ocean's 11, and Nine to Five, the film is about “when an NBA lockout sidelines his big rookie client [and] an agent hatches a bold plan to save their careers – and disrupt the league’s power structure”. Directed by Steven Soderbergh (director of the Ocean's 11 franchise, Erin Brockovich, and Sex, Lies, and Videotape), it is being described as a “slam dunk” as well as an “exhilarating … caper.” I, too, found the movie highly entertaining as it followed a rogue sports agent played by Moonlight star André Holland through his negotiations with star players, hardball lawyers, and quick-thinking assistants. He does the business equivalent of a fake crossover dribble, determined to win the game.
—— Opinion
-
A Mixed Economic Bag in 2019 - By Nouriel Roubini
After the synchronized global economic expansion of 2017 came the asynchronous growth of 2018, when most countries other than the United States started to experience slowdowns. Worries about US inflation, the US Federal Reserve’s policy trajectory, ongoing trade wars, Italian budget and debt woes, China’s slowdown, and emerging-market fragilities led to a sharp fall in global equity markets toward the end of the year.
—— Opinion
-
Why Journalism Urgently Needs a Domestic Marshall Plan - By Michael Posner
This week a commission of prominent experts sounded an alarm about the precarious state of the news media in the U.S. and the resultant danger to our democracy. They rightly emphasized that trust in the news media is at an all-time low and that a changing business environment has left local newspapers in dire straits. In response, they are proposing a series of practical recommendations aimed at strengthening traditional media companies and urging new digital platforms to accept significantly greater responsibility for their business conduct.
—— Opinion
-
What the Next President of the World Bank Should Do - By Paul Romer
As the World Bank’s board considers nominations for the institution’s next president (Donald Trump is expected to nominate David Malpass, the US Treasury department’s top official on international affairs), there are two critical ways he or she can make the bank more effective.
—— Opinion
-
The State of Globalization in 2019 and What It Means for Strategists - By Pankaj Ghemawat & Steven Altman
Globalization, since the Brexit and Trump shocks of 2016, has been shaped by a tug of war between economic fundamentals and policy threats. But predictions that globalization would collapse under a wave of economic nationalism have proven no more accurate than proclamations of a flat world that dominated the global business discourse a decade ago. The new DHL Global Connectedness Index (which we co-authored with Phillip Bastian) demonstrates that the world ended 2017 more globalized than ever before.
—— Opinion
-
Scaling up Analogical Innovation with Crowds and AI - By Hila Lifshitz-Assaf
Investment in research is at an all-time high, yet the rate of scientific breakthroughs isn’t setting any records. To resolve this quandary, scientists are turning to artificial intelligence and crowdsourcing for help in identifying a key inspiration for innovation — the perfect analogy.
—— Research Highlights
-
The Truth about Rosa Parks and Why it Matters to Your Diversity Initiative - By Dolly Chugh
Mind blown. It was like when I found out who Luke Skywalker’s father was or the Wizard of Oz was. I felt the same way when I read The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis. This rigorously and vigorously researched biography invites the reader to follow Parks' story as it really unfolded. In doing so, Theoharis also invites the reader to consider why this more fascinating true story is told far less often than the children's book version which most of us know (a topic she further explores in her latest book A More Beautiful and Terrible History and through a gold mine of teaching resources for educators). February 4 would have been Parks’ 106th birthday. If you believe in what she did and why she did it, it is time you knew who she really was.
—— Opinion
-
Why the Davos Move of Major Global Companies on LGBTI Rights is so Important - By Michael Posner
There are few human rights issues in the U.S. on which public attitudes have changed more quickly and greater progress has been achieved than those relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. Though initial progress was slow, over the last 20 years, advances have been swift and dramatic.
—— Opinion
-
Super Bowl 2019 Advertising Predictions: Will Brands Bring Their A-Game? - By Priya Raghubir
What ads really work in the Super Bowl? Humor? Kids? Animals? Sex? The surprise “unveiling?” If history is any indication, any and all combinations of these elements multiply a brand’s chances of producing a winning ad campaign.
—— Opinion
-
Why the UK Government Needs to Do More to Combat Modern Slavery - By Michael Posner
More than 35 million people around the world are subject to modern-day slavery, a quarter of them children. Victims include women who are trafficked for prostitution or forced marriage and people coerced into bonded or forced labor. In recent years, there has been a growing international effort to persuade governments to address modern slavery more aggressively, including by holding companies legally accountable for abuses in their global supply chains. This initiative has been led by organizations like Focus on Labor Exploitation (FLEX), Anti-Slavery International, and KnowTheChain, and it has been supported by such organizations as the Freedom Fund and Humanity United.
—— Opinion
-
Five Myths About Globalization - By Steven A. Altman
While world leaders converged on Davos, Switzerland, this past week to discuss “Globalization 4.0” at the World Economic Forum, President Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May stayed home to deal with globalization-related crises: a government shutdown over Trump’s demand for a border wall and Parliament’s rejection of May’s Brexit deal. Meanwhile, U.S.-China trade tensions continued to roil financial markets, and trade conflicts contributed to another downgrade of global growth forecasts. The political crossfire over globalization has propagated a raft of myths. Here are five of the most prevalent.
—— Opinion
-
Making Way (hopefully) for 5G - By Lawrence White
To the applause of economists — not to mention stakeholders in the vast wireless communications industry — the FCC has driven the transformation of America’s deeply inefficient system from one that regularly assigned spectrum use by government fiat to one based on market allocation. A substantial portion of the “airwaves” is now flexibly licensed under a structure in which the government retains formal ownership, but licensees have considerable latitude to use or transfer their “rights” to others.
—— Opinion
-
What Next for China’s Development Model? - By A. Michael Spence
China’s strategy for economic growth has been a work in progress since Deng Xiaoping launched the country’s “reform and opening up” in 1978. While the last 40 years of reform have been far from error-free, the government has displayed a willingness to adapt, as well as a capacity for navigating complex transitions, supported by a healthy internal policy debate. But how is China’s development model likely to evolve in the future, as external conditions pose new challenges to economic growth?
—— Opinion
-
Hedge Funds and Newspapers: a Bad Mix - By Michael Posner
Two news stories this week captured conflicting forces at play in the struggle to preserve journalism. On the positive side, Facebook announced that it will invest more than $300 million over the next three years to help support local news organizations globally. But while Facebook was promising to help smaller news organizations “grow and thrive,” the same sort of local outlets came under existential threat from another direction.
—— Opinion
-
Intersectional Escape: Older Women Elude Agentic Prescriptions More Than Older Men - By Michael S. North
New research by NYU Stern Professor Michael S. North focuses on the generational tension over resources that inevitably arises when people are living longer, and the implications for a world that has not caught up to the fact of increasing longevity.
—— Research Highlights
