Since fundraising is time-consuming and entails costs, entrepreneurs may want to “test the water” by soliciting investors’ interest before going through the lengthy process to formally convincing a larger number of investors.
Our modern world continues to be plagued by persistent gender inequalities that contrast sharply with the prevailing egalitarian discourse. These inequalities are rooted so deeply in our history that our societies have, in a manner of speaking, “naturalised” them. Of late, some research – notably by Alberto Alesina, a highly respected economist, recently deceased – has endeavoured to shed light on the origins of these inequalities.
The Covid-19 pandemic crisis is affecting our ways of living, travelling, and working. In conditions of lockdown and gradual reopening of businesses, companies around the world had to rapidly deploy large-scale remote work solutions wherever possible and even where it was previously thought to be unfeasible. What are the potential consequences and how can these be addressed?
Karl Popper believed that what defined science was its “refutability” or “falsifiability”. Unlike an ideology, a scientific hypothesis can be refuted if it contains errors. Even so, certain errors persist for a long time and lead to house-of-cards conclusions. If…
Frequently academic management literature is focused on stories of successful companies. The goal of this type of research is to identify what key elements make a company successful, so others could imitate good practices. In our case, a different path…
In these times of great uncertainty, everyone is seeking to better anticipate the future. In the military and intelligence fields, it is striking that, besides tactical or technological solutions, top officials are adopting transdisciplinary approaches similar to consilience.
In 2018, we co-created a pedagogical innovation, The Business Communication Through Drama course. It was designed to help business school students further develop their English language communication skills in addition to acquiring professional competencies through the medium of drama. Why…
We all know about the David against Goliath story and the result of their battle. When applied to startups and large firms, the asymmetry of the situation of the stakeholders usually ends up the other way around. This asymmetry is…
The use of statistics is crucial for anyone wishing to understand how society is evolving. They should be analysed very meticulously though, because the devil is in the detail and one statistic can hide another. Here is a demonstration.
So far, the field of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) does not seem to have made the shift to digital. Yet machine learning and artificial intelligence could be used in several phases of the process for evaluating a target company.
Value measurement is supposed to be one of the strengths of our metric dominated economies. And yet, the true value of things is often ignored, at the risk of ending up with catastrophes.
Richard Davies is an economist based in London. He is a fellow at the London School of Economics and has held senior posts in economic policymaking and journalism. He has been Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers at HM…
In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, dividends are the source of many debates and disagreements. On 24 March, the French Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, urged French companies to exercise the utmost restraint in paying dividends in 2020 and stated that companies in which the State is a shareholder would be asked not to pay dividends.
By reinventing our learning system, the SKEMA faculty is first of all giving learners the means to navigate a complex world (more broadly speaking, VUCA), by extending the school’s teaching beyond the disciplines of administration and management, and to develop their critical thinking abilities by exposing them to the realities of the world.
Godwin’s law asserts that “as an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.” More generally speaking, the longer a debate goes on the higher the likelihood of using extreme analogies. It would seem that the current rivalry between China and the United States is no exception to this rule.
Ever thought about working for yourself, with your own business? Well, think before you act!
It is not unusual to read that private players threaten state prerogatives. A detailed analysis of the situation, including through the prism of international investment agreements, gives this idea a certain credibility while shedding some new light on it.
It is undeniable that studying abroad is a rich and valuable experience for our students, enabling them to adapt and work well in multicultural environments and encouraging greater open-mindedness and cultural awareness. However, we noticed that the students were often unable…
In a complex world, it is no longer possible to content ourselves with deeper but disjointed knowledge. Consilience or “the unity of knowledge” is a way to approach the problems and challenges of our time by interconnecting fields of knowledge…
From the first week of November, women in the United States, Ireland, UK, and around the world are effectively working for free as the gender gap in average pay earnings accounts for remaining two months’ salary of the year. The gender pay gap has remained remarkably constant…
The entrepreneur’s character and talent are an important factor for startup investors. But how does this play out in the crowdfunding setting? We show that the personality trait of narcissism can be an obstacle to fundraising by crowdfunding entrepreneurs. The…
Isolation, deviant behaviour… Video games and esports tournaments don’t always get a good press. Although deviance and risk behaviours are very much present, this viewpoint too often eclipses the positive aspects of gaming and more particularly its educational value when…
As a college freshman in 2002, I remember my first writing class where we had to hand in an essay every two weeks ...
The coronavirus epidemic has generated an abundance of literature on past pandemics. In these publications, the Justinianic plague in the 6th century is often described as one of the deadliest in history. Yet a recent study challenges this idea by…
The weather affects sales of most products The sales of many products can be influenced by weather conditions, positively or negatively. The risk for manufacturers is to incur lower than expected sales because of adverse weather conditions. Moreover, the variability…
In the current coronavirus pandemic, our societies are being confronted with a risk that many believed had been left in the past, at least in the West: mass death. What does this crisis tell us about our relationship to death?…
To cope with the high influx of patients, European hospitals called for additional intensive care beds. What if this shortage, in this time of pandemic, was the consequence not of a lack of resources but rather of a dilemma caused…
Interview with Peter Spier, Professor of Marketing at SKEMA Business School Peter, can you please tell us about the Sales Challenge and the programme it was developed in? The Sales Challenge is organised in the spring semester of the MSc…
During the coronavirus pandemic, the virus has several times been called “the great equalizer”, indifferent to the social status or age of its victims. A more thorough analysis of the data reveals that this is not the case at all.…
Top management teams (TMTs) – comprising the most influential executives in an organization – are important because of their influence over strategic choices and performance. Prior studies have shown that TMT characteristics such as age, education, and functional background affect…
Before the COVID-19 crisis erupted, several signals warning of a possible pandemic had been emitted. Certain scientific studies, some of them published in prestigious journals , reported the risk of zoonotic disease outbreaks and propagation, notably linked to SARS type viruses, as…
Organisations must contend with a staggering level of uncertainty: climate change, energy transition, Brexit, etc. Yet, the way we make decisions to act seems to disregard this new reality. Are we even conscious of the way we reason to make…
In the early 2010s, a Geneva bank believed that the new banking regulations presented an opportunity for growth. Its strategic intent was to develop finance software that would enable it to comply with all rules imposed by the authorities, then…
This article focuses on how companies can cope with online contest games to motivate consumers to share their personal information with the brand and to recommend the game to others. Research results show that pleasure and enjoyment obtained through the game increase players’ game forwarding and personal data sharing behaviors. The value of rewards also motivates…
Evolution in macroeconomic volatility Time-varying uncertainty about macroeconomic conditions, generally measured by the variance of its GDP growth (what we will call here macroeconomic volatility) has been shown to be harmful for economic activity in many countries. The main reason…
Globalisation is underpinned by the trust that binds and connects its stakeholders. Yet the health crisis we are currently experiencing is creating a growing sense of mistrust between countries, resulting in increased risks for their populations. To counter the temptation…
