Re-Opening Pandora’s Box (safely this time)

By Larry Wigger While much is yet unknown about Covid-19, its transmission, potential immunity, or efficacy of treatments, the world’s energies are turning more and more to the business of re-starting economic engines.  Here in the U.S., our libertarian roots are showing, with public angst against any extended prohibitions on business and public activities.  What […]

food supply chain - chicken, pig, cow

Is the Supply Chain Broken?

By Anthony Vatterott A few weeks ago I wrote a small piece on the supply chain challenges during interruptions both natural and man-made.  If you recall, I stated that the food supply chain is relatively stable and safe from negative implications of larger supply chain interruptions because most of the food products we consume (dairy, […]

Piles of shipping crates

3 Things to Watch in Supply Chains

By Larry Wigger It is nearly impossible to digest the latest coverage of Covid-19, without reading or hearing of severe supply chain disruptions.  Whether it is tales of toilet paper shortages at the grocer, delays in Amazon Prime deliveries, or critically low stock of ventilators and masks, everyone is painfully aware of gaps in supply […]

Being a Better Consumer of Data and Models

Dr. Brian Anderson Data and models are part of our daily life–now more than ever. But it can be challenging to evaluate how useful a model, particularly when different models of the same problem make very different predictions. In this session, Dr. Brian Anderson outlines three things to help you be a better consumer of […]

Making Digital Transformations Stick

Dr. Brian Anderson The closure of campus in response to the new coronavirus world forced innovation and creativity as Bloch worked to rapidly adapt our critical processes to a fully digital workflow. It is—for the most part—working, and for many processes far better than we would have imagined. We are seeing that the digitization often […]

A Different Way of Thinking

Jeanie Sell Latz, J.D. Over the past few decades many businesses have focused on the sole objective of creating shareholder value without always giving much thought to the reasoning behind this premise. It was often stated that managers had a legal duty to consider shareholders’ interests to the exclusion of other stakeholders—customers, employees, suppliers, and […]

No Strategy Time

Dan Stifter “Strategy is easy and execution is hard. “ Anyone not heard that before? Bueller? Couple more classics: “Strategy is about choices.” Hard to disagree with that one. “Do more with less.” If you haven’t heard or said this, well, hope you’re enjoying your trust fund. These all appear insightful, but none of them […]

Portrait of Brian Anderson

The Grand Theory of Entrepreneurship Fallacy

Dr. Brian Anderson Periodically, I have a conversation where the topic turns to entrepreneurship researcher’s inability to answer—with precision—why some ventures succeed, some fail, some become zombies, and some become unicorns. Similar conversations surround the topic of startup communities and clusters, and the role of research universities in supporting entrepreneurial ecosystems. Often someone bemoans that […]

Person working at a table, writing on paper while someone else gestures in the background

Brain over Belly: Experiments for Decision Making

America’s leading companies have been moving away from decisions based on intuition and towards data for more than a decade. Amazon, Google, Netflix and Facebook are constantly running experiments in an effort to make better decisions. Experiments are no longer the sole domain of scientists in labs. Today’s leading enterprises employ and master the science […]