Welcome to My Blogs

I have created a number blogs to publish useful information. One is a Teaching Blog dedicated to providing past, present and future students useful information.
My Research Blog is dedicated to disseminating useful information to other researchers and scholars.

A new blog is focused on how to improve forecasts, which is a key strategic skill:  forecasting-strategy.ch

To track progress in machine learning, I also run an   AI blog.

There is also a blog that has collected all of Charles Tilly’s Writings on Methodology.

Below you find every entry across all my Blogs.

Malcom Gladwell Reviews the Problems with IQ Measurements

This is an excellent piece that shows how important it is to actually understand how IQ measures are constructed. Any empirical researcher can learn from the New Zealander who showed how much the alleged genetic intelligence is socially constructed. Read NONE OF THE ABOVE: What I.Q. doesn’t tell you about race.

Introducing the Meeting Meter?

Are you participating in too many meetings? Are these meetings too long? Time is money and group time costs much more money than the time of a single person. With the Meeting Meter™ you can develop an agenda and calculate the true cost of meetings while they take place. The Meeting Meter™ is a simple tool for creating more effective meetings.

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You can download the Meeting Meter™ for free.

What CEOs are Reading

The common perception is that CEOs are reading the latest popular management books to help them with their difficult job. An article in the New York Times suggests otherwise. I am not sure if the CEOs that Harriet Rubin portrays in here article are representative of all CEOs and I think the title of the article “C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success” is an overstatement, but any manager should read what she has to say. 

Harriet Rubin: Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist who built a personal $1.5 billion fortune discovering the likes of Google, YouTube, Yahoo and PayPal, and taking them public, may seem preternaturally in tune with new media. But it is the imprint of old media — books by the thousands sprawling through his Bay Area house — that occupies his mind. “My wife calls me the Imelda Marcos of books,” Mr. Moritz said in an interview. “As soon as a book enters our home it is guaranteed a permanent place in our lives. Because I have never been able to part with even one, they have gradually accumulated like sediment.” Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete. Ken Lopez, a bookseller in Hadley, Mass., says it is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps that is why — more than their sex lives or bank accounts — chief executives keep their libraries private.

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Book Review Instructions

During the SMY, each student will present a review of a book or an article that has extended their thinking about Strategic Management. The article or book should not be a core management text that most students would be already familiar with. New insights often come from another domain. For this reason we encourage you to look far afield for texts that provide you with some insight into the problems of the general manager or entrepreneur. For example, “It’s Only a Game” by John O’Neill (former CEO of the Australian Rugby Union and Football Federation of Australia) is a good insight into managing a complex organisation. We have posted an example of such a book review on the eLearning website along with some background information on the value of this assignment.

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Charles Tilly’s Writings on Methodology now on the Web

Charles Tilly is one of the most innovative and productive social scientists alive.  His research know-how should be passed on to the next generation of researchers, not only to those who are fortunate to take his classes at Columbia University.  With the approval of Tilly, Sekou Bermiss and I made electronically available all his writings on methodology. You can search this archive by key word and topics.  Go to: Tilly on Methodology Archive

April 2008: Daniel Little Interviews Charles Tilly on YouTube

New School of Strategy & Entrepreneurship launched in Sydney

The UNSW Academic Board has approved the creation of a new School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship within the Faculty of Business (incorporating AGSM) to continue AGSM’s general management teaching and research. To be headed by Associate Professor Peter Murmann, the new school will focus on innovation and entrepreneurship as a subject within general business. Welcoming the move, Professor Alec Cameron, Dean of UNSW’s Faculty of Business (incorporating AGSM), said the new schools’ vision was to be recognised as Australia’s leading cluster of scholarship in the area of strategy and entrepreneurship research, teaching and executive development. “After the integration of AGSM and the Faculty of Commerce and Economics there were several existing schools but none was dedicated to general management and strategy,” said Professor Cameron. “So as part of the integration the idea was to create a separate school, and to include entrepreneurship to highlight the fact that the concerns of the general manager and the entrepreneur were both being addressed and people were being prepared for these roles.”

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Myer is more valuable after becoming once again independent from Coles

In August 1985, the Myer Emporium Ltd and GJ Coles & Coy Ltd merged, becoming the largest ever Australian Corporation. The merger did not work nearly as well as anticipated, a common fate for merged companies. In 2006 Myer was sold off to private equity. Within in a year the firm was worth an additional 1 billion, illustrating powerfully that free-standing companies often create more value than when they are part of a larger corporate structure.
More details are provided in a recent articles in the Australian.

Myer’s makeover reaps $1bn

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How to get around the difficulty of estimating returns from innovation

Bombardier Recreational Products, based in Quebec, has spent C$225m ($195m) over 11 years developing the Can-Am Spyder Roadster, a three-wheeled motor vehicle. When it goes on sale later this year the $15,000 Spyder will be aimed at baby-boomers who like the idea of riding al fresco but do not feel comfortable on a two-wheeler, says Jose Boisjoli, BRP’s boss. Mr Boisjoli admits that his firm has no idea how much demand there will be for the Spyder. One way to think about how much you should spend on innovation is to ask: how much money can I lose with a failed innovation without jeopardizing the existence of the firm.

Conglomerate Watch: Immelt find it tough to follow Jack Welsh’s act

GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt finds it difficult to convince markets that his new strategy will deliver value as his predecessor did.
Two articles in the Financial Times highlight how important it is for CEO to communicate effectively to financial analysts whose recommendation drive the stock price of a firm. Here are excerpts from the informative articles.

GE redoubles efforts to woo investors.

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The Power of Richness III: Crafting Qualitative Research Papers

The large crowds that came to the Power of Richness PDWs in Atlanta and the year before in Hawaii have convinced us there is significant demand in the Academy for learning how to do qualitative research well. This year we will build on the success of our two previous qualitative methods PDWs and create an even more ambitious PDW. The first part of the PDW will feature a panel of leading qualitative scholars (John Van Mannan, Steve Barley, Andy Hargadon, and Bill McKelvey), who will offer their insights about how to craft qualitative research papers. The second part of the workshop will have parallel sessions designed for people beginning or developing qualitative research and those trying to publish qualitative research. For more up-to-date information on this Qualitative Research PDW, interested parties should go to our website PDW 2007 where we will post new information as the specifics of the PDW (tutorials subjects and leaders chosen), working paper discussion leaders, etc.

WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS: Participants interested in submitting a working paper for feedback in the working paper discussion groups need to send their papers (more than 10 and less than 35 pages) to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) at by July 13. Each paper should provide several key words on the title page indicating the type of qualitative method, data, and analysis techniques used. Working papers will be accepted for evaluation and feedback in this part of the workshop on a basis of first-come, first-served until we fill all the slots we can make available. ONLY those participating in the working paper sessions need to register through submitting a paper. All other parts of the PDW are open to everyone.

When and Where: Friday, August 3, from 1:00 to 5:00 pm at Marriot Liberty Ballroom C.

Presentation slides from the event are now posted. Please click on this link

The Global Climate Crisis

The website for An Inconvenient Truth provides the basics facts about the science of climate change.  Watch the trailer for film.

Give the DVD to your friends this holiday season.

Commissioned by the British government, the economist Stern published on October 30th his study evaluating the economic consequences of global warming. He writes: “The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response (p. i) ...There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change if strong collective action starts now.” (p. xxvii) You can download a summary of his review here. If you don’t have time to read the 27 page summary of the 600 page report, here is a short review of its conclusions in the New Yorker.

Reflections On “The Long Tail” - Give me Good Data!

A few days ago, I came across a very positive review of The Long Tail, a new book by Wired Maganize writer Chris Anderson. The book’s main thesis is that “the future of commerce and culture isn’t in hits, the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve, but in what used to be regarded as misses - the endlessly long tail of that same curve.” The books purports to show that the 80/20 rule (most sales derive from a few products) does not apply any more with internet retailing because internet retaling can stock many more items. This morning Lee Gomez in his Wall Street Journal column trashed Anderson’s analysis, claiming that Anderson’s data was flawed. (You can read the Gomez colum “Long Tail’ May Not Wag the Web Just Yet”  on WSJ.com or through your library’s article database.) Anderson in turn claims that Gomez did not get the data right and wrote a facinating rebutall on his website. What this exchange underlines is that getting good data and working meticulously to draw the correct conclusion often is worth a “fortune” for managers. More broadly, before you adopt a new fashionable business idea, ask yourself what data supports that the idea in fact is going to work. With more data you might have realized that the idea hurts as often as it helps.

Understanding the Strategies of Airbus and Boeing

Boeing and Airbus are pursuing different strategies with their next generations planes (the superlarge A380 and the supereffecient Boeing 787 Dreamliner). A recent article in the New York Times nicely demonstrates that the differences on the two companies’ strategic bet are driven by two different views how passenger travel will develop in the future. In essence, the firms tried to create strategies that fit with the perceived future environments of airplane travel.

Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery

David Warsh tell the story of how the idea of increasing returns that was already present in Adam’s Smith’s Wealth of Nations transformed academic economics in the 1980s. Read Paul Krugam’s review in the New York Times.

The World’s Most Innovative Companies

Rachael Powell (Cohort A2) brought to my attention an interesting article from Business Week. From a methodological point, it would have been nice if the BW staff had looked at companies that were not innovative and confirmed that these firms did not do any of the practices that characterize the most innovative companies.  Read Article.

Wesfarmers: Interview with Former CEO Michael Chaney

In the spirit of “Where are the Now”, here is an interview with the outgoing CEO of Wesfarmers, Michael Chaney, before he became chairman of the National Australian Bank (NAB).

Malcom Gladwell Reviews Charles Tilly’s New Book “WHY”

Gladwell writes: In “Why?” (Princeton; $24.95), the Columbia University scholar Charles Tilly sets out to make sense of our reasons for giving reasons. In the tradition of the legendary sociologist Erving Goffman, Tilly seeks to decode the structure of everyday social interaction, and the result is a book that forces readers to reexamine everything from the way they talk to their children to the way they argue about politics. Read the full review in the New Yorker.

The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management

One of the things that made Peter Drucker such a superb writer on management was his intense and wide ranging curiosity about everything in the world and his keen eye for the essential aspects of reality. Unlike many other people who paid with their life for not wanting to see reality, Drucker, for example, extrapolated from what Hitler had said in the years before becoming Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and left for England the moment Hitler rose to power. Drucker died a few days ago at age 95, but many of his insights are as valid as ever. Drucker’s writings have been edited into one book a few years ago, which is available electronically on Kindle. The value of the book lies not so much in giving concrete instructions about what you should do as a manger but in making you think about your own situation. Here are some of the key insights, the foremost being that management is about human beings.

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Even the Best Cannot Predict the Future

It is very useful to recognize that the social world is too complex to predict well what will succeed and what will fail. Those who think they know with great certainty what will succeed run the danger of overinvesting in their pet scenarios. What is the lesson? Just like with stocks, we should always have a portfolio of beliefs about the future, reducing the risk of getting stuck with the wrong scenarios.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
—Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
    —Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
    —The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

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Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround

In the early 1990s, IBM was in danger of going bankrupt. Loius Gerstner was called in to turn the company around.  Anyone who is trying to change a formerly successful orgazation will benefit from reading Gerstner’s thoughts on change management. Beware: the book starts out slow, turning off many readers. But after the first 20 pages, Gerstner’s training as an organizational consultant provides him the analytic language to lay out what are the key challenges in changing large organizations. Because he was an outsider at IBM, he has no reservations to analyze how IBM got itself into a near death experience.  I highly recommend this book.

The Power of Richness II: Exploring Qualitative Research Methods

Inspired by the large number of participants at the “The Power of Richness: The Why, When, Where and How of Qualitative Research Methods” PDW in Honolulu, Diana Day and I (Peter Murmann) decided to organize a follow-up workshop on qualitative methods at the academy meeting in Atlanta.  The workshop will again have a stellar group of scholars presenting their ideas about how to make qualitative reseach powerful. The confirmed presenters are: Kathy Eisenhardt (Stanford), Mauro Guillen (Wharton-U. of Pennsylvania), Sara Rynes (Editor of AMJ), Nicolaj Siggelkow (Wharton-U. of Pennsylvania), John Wagner (Associate Editor of ASQ), Karl Weick (Michigan). More details about the workshop will as we are getting closer to the event.

When and Where: Friday, August 11, from 1:30 to 4:30 pm at the Atlanta Marriott in International 4

Update March 17,2006: The workshop is being sponsored by virtually all divisions of the Academy: BPS/HR/MED/MOC/MSR/OB/ODC/OMT/ONE/PNP/PTC/SIM/CAR/CM/
ENT/GDO/HCM/IM/MC/ and RM.

Visit the Discussion Forum for the Event where you can now download the presentation slides from the workshop. 

Project on the Competitiveness of Firms in the Global Paper & Pulp Industry, 1805-2005

Together with two Finish scholars, Juha-Anti Lamberg and Jari Ojala, I started a comparative study of the paper and pulp industry. Human beings have been making paper from various raw materials for thousands of years. But in 1804 a Frenchman invented a continous paper machine revolutionized the manufacturing and started the modern paper making industry.

The goal of our project is to study shifts in competitive advantage from one country to the next and from firm to firm during the last 200 years.  We are starting our comparative analysis looking at Britain, Germany, Finland and Sweden. Our long-term plan is to study all the major paper producing countries in the word. If you are interested in participating in this study, contact us.

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The Freedom Tower Case: Why is group decision making not better individual decisions

Individual human beings have limited skills, knowledge,  and expertise can get carried away by emotions when making decisions. One would think that involving multiple people in a decision could overcome the limitations of individual decision making but social psycholgoists have long known that groups have their own limitations. The New York Times published a pertinent article on how a comittee came up with the redesigned Freedom Tower that architectual critics find dissappointing given the grandeur of the originial proposal.

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