Welcome to the United States of Europe. It’s a large, Western nation with a population similar to that of the United States of America. Its workforce is roughly comparable to America’s, too, as is the quality of its academic institutions and its overall economic development. Of course, the United States of Europe doesn’t really exist. But if it did, it might look something like the European Union plus some of the…
In February 2022, WNBA star Brittney Griner was arrested at a Moscow airport with cannabis oil in her luggage. She was charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced to nine years in a penal colony. The legal process, though ordinary on the surface, was political theater. Ten months later, Griner walked free, exchanged for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Griner’s case is a textbook example of hostage diplomacy. A government arrests…
Most remote job listings look like any other—until you read the fine print. More skills are required. More experience is expected. That’s the pattern that Letian Zhang, an associate professor of management and organizations at Kellogg, began to notice while studying how technological changes reshape work and management. Zhang collaborated with Kellogg PhD candidate Shinan Wang and professor Zhenyu Liao of Northeastern University to conduct 37 in-depth interviews of hiring…
History is full of entrepreneurs and inventors who’ve shaped entire markets: Thomas Edison who turned electricity from a curiosity into a practical public utility, Marie Kondo who popularized joy in personal organization, Bill Gates who helped make personal computers a mass-market reality. But for every Edison, there have been countless others whose names didn’t become synonymous with an industry. To better understand why certain people become such influential figures—a “person…
Market research is hard. Gathering data in the field, conducting focus groups, and executing test campaigns takes time and money. To simplify this process, many companies are turning to a new alternative: synth personas, generated with AI. Built from large amounts of customer data, these composite characters promise to help marketers predict how consumers will respond to new products, services, and marketing campaigns. Instead of recruiting a subject pool of…
“You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.” Though these words by American businessman Harvey Mackay are mostly meant to be provocative, they’re not too far off from capturing what it’s like to navigate the business world today. Whether it’s a higher salary, a better deal, or the right to give a key presentation—getting ahead often requires thoughtful and skillful negotiation. Kellogg faculty offer insight and research-backed…
“It’s the economy, stupid.” For the past three decades, this phrase has been a reliable shorthand for describing what voters really care about. But these days, political rhetoric often centers on cultural flashpoints like religion or immigration instead of the economy. This tendency to highlight cultural issues over economic ones is surprising, as voters consistently rank the economy among the most important concerns. For example, the share of voters calling…
The business of Wall Street used to be very slow. Stocks were bought and sold in person. Clerks manually recorded transactions. And fleets of messengers hand-delivered bond certificates. Trading hours were limited to five to six hours a day so that the rest of the financial industry could keep up with the paperwork. Today, technology has reduced all of these frictions to near zero. From anywhere in the world, an institution…
As video games become increasingly popular, they present a great opportunity to teach a variety of subjects. But that leaves companies attempting to both teach and entertain in a bind. Push the educational content too hard, and players might check out. But dial up the fun factor to increase engagement, and the educational mission could get lost. This apparent trade-off has dogged educational-game design for years. Unlike gamified classroom tools,…
You can either help build cars or you can manage the workers who build them. You can write code or set the five-year roadmap for an entire team of coders. You can care for patients or oversee the hospital’s growth. In short, you can be an expert—an “individual contributor”—or you can be a manager. “There is this well-known idea that if you want to make it inside a company, then at…
The United States is famous for its market-based health-insurance system, where—nominally, at least—many private companies compete and customers have choices. In reality, U.S. health-insurance markets are dominated by a small group of insurers—or sometimes just one. According to Kellogg professor of strategy Amanda Starc and Martin Gaynor of Carnegie Mellon University, the largest insurer in any given state enjoys 64 percent of market share on average. If you expand it…
Artificial intelligence is upending more than the tools marketers use—it is rewiring how organizations work. As companies begin scaling AI beyond the pilot phase, the bottleneck is no longer the technology itself but its implementation. The leadership challenge of implementation comes down to reconfiguring workflows, rethinking roles, and bringing people through change. While AI is not changing the roots of marketing—understanding customers, building brands, and creating value are still core principles—it…
One of the best ways to understand the modern world is to look back at history. From the origins of government to the peacekeeping role of potatoes in the Old World, episodes from the past can explain a lot about why things are the way they are today. Kellogg researchers are no strangers to this notion. Below, they dive into history, uncovering nuggets of wisdom that have stood the test…
You don’t have to be a doomscroller to know that social media is flooded with high emotions and hostility. Whether the topic is politics, sports, movies, or music, it often feels like the loudest and angriest voices dominate the conversation, creating a virtual shouting match that drowns out more-thoughtful opinions. Scientists have speculated that these flames are fanned by the engagement-based algorithms social-media networks use to keep users on their platform.…
If money talks, can it tell businesses what to do on the climate? This was seemingly the premise of ESG—Environmental, Social, and Governance—a mode of investing that scored companies on measures of sustainability. Boosters had hoped it would be the beginning a new normal in the investment space, incentivizing corporate behaviors that would ultimately build the climate economy.This episode, we learn why it’s hard to put a price on “green.”…
Imagine scrolling through a social-media landscape curated just for you—subtly and perfectly shaped to your tastes, speech patterns, and core values. That kind of hyper-personalized future is not here yet, says Jake Teeny, an associate professor of marketing at Kellogg. But as generative AI supercharges companies’ ability to use their customers’ personal information to craft targeted messages, it’s becoming more realistic. “I think it’s going to change how we interact with…
Business leaders who don’t pay close attention to antitrust compliance may have recently received a wake-up call. In January 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division announced its first-ever whistleblower award. A bid-rigging scheme involving the online used vehicle auction platform EBlock led to a $3.3 million fine for the company. And under a new program, the employee who reported the scheme received $1 million. The whistleblower’s payout was part…
For every benefit to being a leader, there are just as many challenges—if not more. But challenges are not always bad news for leaders. They often create opportunities for growth and learning, especially when people respond to them thoughtfully. Kellogg faculty offer advice to help leaders navigate several different challenging circumstances—from heated disagreements and hidden biases to major personal setbacks. 1. Don’t hesitate to make tough calls At one multinational firm, there…
One of the main drivers of the current excitement around artificial intelligence is its uncanny ability to act almost human. Unlike the stiff chatbots of the past, recent models can more effectively respond to a user’s emotions with nuance and understanding. The effect is convincing enough that some people attribute complex human abilities such as empathy to these computerized companions. Companies have already capitalized upon this advance to deploy AI…