UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

U.S. Must Find Ways to Mobilize Resources to Rise to the Challenge of Other Competitive Countries

"The President refers to the challenges of global competitiveness as a "Sputnik' moment " said U.S. Under Secretary of State Dr. Robert D. Hormats. "The difference is that Sputnik was launched from only one country, the Soviet Union. It's different today as 'Sputniks' are launched from all angles, not just from
one country. [In terms of global competitiveness] it's not just China (which commands all the attention). It's South Korea, its Russia. There are huge numbers of competive challenges from many countries -- the list includes countries from Israel to Brazil."

Hormats remarks were made in conversation with Professor Kal Raustiala, director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations in an event co-sponsored by the Burkle Center and UCLA Anderson's Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER). The conversation, billed as a discussion of the State Department's role in U.S. foreign economic policy, was held in Anderson's Entrepreneurs Hall Friday, February 25. Hormats noted that there were two broad ways to respond to the challenges of global competitiveness. The first -- which he rejected while acknowledging the existence of advocates -- is to turn inward, failing to take advantages of competitive challenges and and blame external factors in other countries for an inability to compete. "The other," Hormats said, "is to recognize the challenes and see how we can take advantage of them and find ways to work with other countries."

Recognizing and meeting those challenges, Hormats said, will take major effort in four areas: improving education as a means of creating new technologies and to fill the jobs created by innovative companies; a decrease in dependence on foreign hydrocarbons through the development of green technologies; the development of infrastructures including rapid transit, better ports and ways of moving information across electronic grids and harness the changes in the global economy and find ways to work with nations like China, India and Brazil in creating the rules of the global economy in the 21st century.

Miguel Unzueta Thinks Critically

Miguel Unzueta says being named one of the "The World's Best 40 B-School Profs Under the Age of 40" by the MBA-blog Poets & Quants is "humbling and exciting. It's cool to be recognized when there's so many other people out there" -- though he can't help but humbly add that "to put it in perspective, it was just
one blogger making the list.

Maybe so, but modesty aside, P&C took the time to peruse the nominations and comments, coming up with this from Veronia Vasquez ('11):

"Professor Unzueta’s mastery of the underlying principles of organizational behavior is plain to see.  He turns something that seems completely unrelated to business, i.e., psychology, and provides direct applications to managerial concepts.  More than any other MBA course, Professor Unzueta’s class really taught me something about myself and the type leader I’d like to become."

* * *

One of the first things you'll notice after sitting down in Unzueta's office is that while he's got the requisite textbooks linings his shelves, the volumes that appear most prominent are a set of books about sports covering a range of topics from Coach John Wooden to The Wages of Wins by David Berri, Martin Schmidt and Stacey Brook (a sort of Freakonomics for sports). Unzueta, you see, is a big-time sports fan, a devotee of the Dallas Cowboys, Texas Longhonrs and his hometown UTEP Miners (with a growing affection for your UCLA Bruins) who'd rather talk NFL football than discuss his own accolades. 

When he's not doing his own sports analysis and research, Unzueta studies race relations and attitudes. He's published numerous articles on affirmitive action and diversity-related issues, including a recent paper that found that the more the non-beneficiaries of affirmitive action associate affirmitive action with quotas (though quotas are actually illegal), the better they feel about their own accomplishments. In his Organizational Behavior course, Unzueta presents his students with the human ramifications of management decisions, analyzing current events such as the recent recession through a psychological prism. His goal as an instructor is not to provide a "magic formula" to students who often "want purely numerical answers to concrete problems." Rather, he tries to impart a framework for critical thinking.

"The first thing you want to figure out is what questions you want to ask," Unzueta says. "To get high quality answers you need high high quality questions. The hope is that students will be open to the idea of critical thinking, because that's something they can use throughout their careers." 

Does Advertising Impact Stock Prices?

Does advertising impact stock prices?

That's the question posed by UCLA Anderson's Bud Knapp Professor of Marketing Dominique Hanssens in a paper co-authored by his former doctoral student Amit Joshi (PhD '05), now an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Central Florida. The paper titled "The Direct and Indirect Effects of Advertising Spending on Firm Value" (which appeared in the January 2010 issue of The Journal of Marketing) earned Hanssens and Joshi the 2010 MSI/H Paul Root Award. This award is given "to a paper that has made a significant contribution to the advancement of the practice of marketing, and is cosponsored by the American Marketing Association and the Marketing Science Institute."

Hanssens tells this blog that "the paper looks at whether or not advertising helps (a company) with its stock price as well as sales. We know that advertising has an impact on consumers, what about investors."

As a result of research that included dozens of companies in several different spaces including apparel and computers, Hanssens and Joshi found that advertising does have an impact on stock prices and investors, but with a caution. "Don't overspend (on advertising)," Hanssens cautioned. "Overdoing it will have a negative effect." 

Hanssens says the research in this award-winning paper is part of a bigger research theme that looks in general on the impact of marketing on firm value. "I'm very pleased about the award, particularly because it recognizes the work of one of my former doctoral students," Hanssens said. "I'm also glad for the recognition that marketing looks beyond the traditional boundaries of consumers and looks at its impact on investors."

Someday Craig Newmark Will Pay For Accountability Journalism

Craig Newmark, founder and CEO of Craigslist, recently joined UCLA Anderson thought leader Jonathan Greenblatt on stage at Korn Hall for a discussion whose topics ranged from why the iconoclastic, self-described "nerd" has chosen not to fully monetize his ubiquitous classified ad site, the importance of social entrepreneurship, the impact of social media and why Jon Stewart's The Daily Show is an essential part of the public discourse. 

In the following interview, Newmark -- who earlier told the capacity Korn crowd that "the news media should comprise the immune system of democracy" -- speculates on how he -- and we -- will be getting our news in the future:

Prof. Bhagwan Chowdhry Wants You to Do What You Do Best

Around Anderson Bhagwan Chowdhry is mostly known as a finance professor who also serves as faculty director of Anderson's Master of Financial Engineering program. Now, the microfinance expert is slowly gaining renown for his work proposed Financial Access at Birth (FAB) Campaign in which every child born in the world is given an initial deposit of $100 in an online bank account to guarantee that everyone in the world will have access to financial services in a few decades.

In support of FAB, Bhagwan has taken to twitter and the blogoshere, becoming a frequent contributor to the Huffington Post. In his most recent Huffpo offering, Chowdhry encourages U.S. wage earners to do what they do best: earn high wages, then share those wages with people in need across the globe. Writes Bhagwan: 

So, if you are fortunate enough to live in a country where productivity is high and, as a result, wages are also high, what can you do to help poor people? You could quit your high-paying job and volunteer for a socially-conscious organization. You could take some time-off from work and feed the poor and the homeless. Yes, you could do all that and it probably would help assuage your guilt and make you feel better about yourself. But you could help the poor more, much more, if you continue to do what you do best for which the society is willing to pay you the maximum you can earn, and then donate part of what you have earned to organizations that are the most efficient at helping the poor worldwide, because that is what they do best. This is what Matthew Bishop and Michael Green would call Philanthrocapitalism: Do what you do best and share.

More on philanthropy and productivity here. 

Susan Wojcicki ('89) - "The most important Googler you've never heard of"

Sometimes the myth is reality, sometimes a bunch of people sitting around someone's garage brainstorming really do come up with the next, next thing.

And in the case of Google, that garage belonged to Susan Wojcicki ('89). 

Calling her "the most important Googler you've never heard of," the San Jose Mercury News recently profiled Wojcicki (who recently joined UCLA Anderson's board of Visitors) and noted that story about her garage is the least important fact about her association with Google. 

The article points out:

Wojcicki, in short, might be the most important Googler you've never heard of -- even many who recall her garage's place in Silicon Valley history don't realize that its former owner went on to become arguably the key figure in Google's online advertising juggernaut.

 

Wojcicki's contributions to Google's growth are "absolutely not" appreciated outside of the Googleplex, said Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, a former Googler. "I don't think she's concerned about that. Susan's interested in doing a great job and making sure her team gets recognition for the things they do. ... Within Google, the executives and certainly 

the people on her team have enormous respect for her."

Inside the company, the low-key, even-keeled executive is known as a talented manager who inspires people under her with her willingness to share credit. As Google's chief moneymaker -- advertising products under Wojcicki brought in $28.2 billion in revenue in 2010 -- she also has a striking belief in the odd mix of professorial idealism and capitalistic ambition that comprises Google's sense of self.

 

"The reason I like my job is that I have this desire to create," Wojcicki told the Mercury News recently in a rare interview. "I have this desire to create things and build things, and Google has enabled me to build and create things and to build products that are used by people all over the globe."

 

Wojcicki has still another role at Google. She has helped shape the company's unconventional culture, drawing on her experience as the first Googler to have a baby and as a pioneer who has navigated the cultural land mines that make women so rare among Silicon Valley executives.

As a senior vice-presidentat Google, Wojcicki (according to the article) oversees advertising products that account for 96% of the company's revenue. She is responsible for AdSense (which puts Google ads on websites and blogs) and she was behind Google's acquisitions of DoubleClick and YouTube.

Read more about Susan here and find out how she's guiding Google to do business beyond usual.