NEWS
Clips

Why Start-Ups Fail
“Start-ups generally fail because when you are changing something there are huge risks, and one thing you can be sure of is that technology just isn’t going to do what you think it’s going to do,” James Schrager, Ph.D. ’93, told Silicon Prairie magazine in April. “If it were predictable, it wouldn’t be innovation,” said Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and strategic management. Silicon Prairie is a monthly publication affiliated with the Chicago Tribune.

Women Succeed in E-Commerce
The April 10 Chicago Tribune quoted Ellen Rudnick, ’73, in a story on women’s successes in e-commerce. “E-commerce is a unique period in business history for women to play, to construct new ways of doing things,” said Rudnick, clinical associate professor of entrepreneurship and executive director of the entrepreneurship program. The Tribune article suggested women may be particularly suited to the new online business environment. Women are often more adaptable to network structures and creating communities than men are, according to the article, because women have traditionally been trained and rewarded for creating networks rather than hierarchies.

The New Salesman
The April 8 New York Times ran a story describing how the Internet and “e-procurement” are changing the job of corporate purchasing managers. Before the change, “many salesmen tried to distinguish themselves with service because they couldn’t differentiate themselves with product,” said Gary Eppen, Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Operations Management and deputy dean for the part-time M.B.A. programs. However, “with e-procurement spreading, they are going to really have to offer unique products.”

B2B Speeds Ahead
“Companies that want to get involved in B2B Internet commerce should act within two years or face being locked out of the market entirely,” said Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, at the Future of Finance conference in April (see “E-Commerce and the Future of Finance”). The rush is on to get a foot in the door of business-to-business e-commerce, and according to Kaplan, “as new entrants pour into the business-to-business space, it’s increasingly difficult to make sense of the landscape.” His statements were covered by the Dow-Jones News Service on April 28. New research by Kaplan on models for B2B e-commerce was included in a March 4 story in the Economist, and an article written by Kaplan, titled “E-Hubs: The New B2B Marketplaces,” was featured in the May/June issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Kaplan’s Corner
ePrairie.com, a Web site featuring technology venture news from the Midwest, has launched a new weekly column, “Kaplan’s Corner,” featur- ing insights from Steven N. Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance. ePrairie.com says it intends to devote this new column to “tak[ing] a critical look at the state of midwestern business, talking news and trends while identifying those contenders and pretenders that make up today’s competitive landscape.” The first column appeared online April 24. On May 9, ePrairie.com also included an interview with Kaplan on the topic of growing venture capital funding in Illinois.

Outcry at CBOT
The Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) is waging an uphill battle to keep its open outcry system relevant in the Internet age, according to a May 15 story in Fortune magazine. The article quoted Dean Robert S. Hamada, a public director of the CBOT, who said, “The potential electronic competition really scares everyone. . . . Everyone has to wake up to the fact that distances and national boundaries don’t mean anything anymore. Someone undercuts you by a couple pennies a trade and you’re dead.”

Microsoft Woos Chicago Alumni
Even with things looking somewhat less rosy for Microsoft Corporation, it seems that the software giant’s desirability still hasn’t paled with recent graduates of the GSB. The May 1 USA Today reported that “the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business says its M.B.A. graduates accepted 14 of 19 job offers made by Microsoft last year and sees no signs of that slowing this year.” While the story devoted attention to a growing uneasiness that employees, unsettled by the current turmoil, will slip away from the company, indications are that GSB graduates won’t be first among those abandoning ship. Top Dollar for GSB CEOs Chicago GSB alumni are fast-tracked for high-earning success, according to Forbes magazine’s annual listing of the 800 top-paid CEOs. Among the schools that granted M.B.A. degrees to those top earners, the GSB came in fourth, tied with Columbia. The other schools topping the list were Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford. The article appeared in Forbes’s May 15 issue.

Investing in Health
Do the high costs associated with medical research really pay off? Absolutely, according to Robert Topel and Kevin Murphy, whose newest research on the economic benefits of medical research appeared in a report broadcast by CNN on May 9. “Many people get concerned about the high cost of medical care and the high cost of drugs in particular,” Topel said, “but the benefit-cost ratio is extremely high, and therefore, I think it would be a mistake to try to curtail investment in new medical technology.” An article appearing June 3 in the Economist reported that Topel and Murphy estimate that “eliminating deaths from heart disease would generate economic value of $48 trillion [and] curing cancer would be worth $47 trillion.” Robert Topel is Isidore Brown and Gladys J. Brown Professor in Urban and Labor Economics. Kevin Murphy is George Pratt Shultz Professor of Economics and Industrial Relations.

Industry Similarities
Growing up, we were told to play with our toys, not our food. But in the business world, the toy and food industries share much in common, according to Peter Rossi, M.B.A. ’80, Ph.D. ’84, Joseph T. Lewis Professor of Marketing and Statistics. Rossi’s remarks appeared in a May 18 Chicago Tribune story about Robert Eckert, who made the switch from CEO of Kraft Foods to CEO of Mattel. Rossi pointed out that the two industries are really not that different. “Both are mature industries,” he said. “Both products are sold through the retail distribution channel. The major difference is the product life cycle is much shorter in toys.”

Economic Slowdown Predicted
NBC Nightly News featured John Huizinga, deputy dean for the faculty and Walter David “Bud” Fackler Professor of Business Economics, discussing the forecast for the U.S. economy. Huizinga predicted “a slowdown that will be concentrated in a few industries, such as construction or big-ticket consumer items like automobiles,” during the April 14 broadcast.

How to Snag an M.B.A.
Glenn Sykes, director of M.B.A. career services at the GSB, offered tips for small companies in a May 22 Business Week article. The article, which first appeared online, was headlined “How to Snag an M.B.A.” In past times, recent business school graduates would go straight to the big companies, Wall Street, or consulting firms. Today, however, small companies have a shot at recruiting these desirable candidates. Sykes advises companies to “start working with the talent while they are still students” and to try “working with the school’s entrepreneurship program, making sure alumni are involved and attending alumni activities.”

All Eyes on Singapore
The GSB’s new Singapore campus continues to receive media attention in publications worldwide. The Straits Times, a Singapore-based newspaper, devoted a feature in its April 25 issue to the restoration of the new campus, which opened September 14. A cover story titled “Asia’s Best M.B.A. Schools” in the May 5 issue of Asia Week discussed the benefits of the program’s three-continent student exchange between Barcelona, Singapore, and Chicago. The article quoted William Kooser, ’81, associate dean of the executive M.B.A. program.

New GSB Face on the Web
The GSB’s new Web site, part of a larger GSB positioning effort launched last winter, was spotlighted in the May 9 Chicago Sun-Times. Toni Shears, online content editor, described the impetus behind a revamped Internet image for the GSB: “We wanted to do a better job portraying our strengths‹the flexibility of getting an M.B.A. degree here and the power of the degree.”--E.T.