Media Coverage

Alexandra Skinner, editor of the London-based CEO Magazine, conducted an interview with Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics, and the director of Rutgers Executive MBA program for its Spring 2022 issue. "“The secret of our success is really quite simple. During the four semesters (20 months) the students spend at the Rutgers EMBA Powerhouse, our only goal is to constantly deliver a program that will (i) not waste their valuable time and (ii) add value to their lives. Plain and simple.”

"It is likely that they got paid," said Stacy Smollin Schwartz, an award-winning marketing professor at Rutgers Business School, where she leads an online Master of Science degree program in digital marketing. "It's not so much that they posted about how cute their kids are. But posting that this is the greatest mall they have ever been to. Why would they put out such an endorsement?"

Celebrities, she said, go out all the time but usually won't share locations or brand names. "More likely if they are not getting money for it, they will be a little less conspicuous." They may, she said, let you know they went out shopping but not where.

Rutgers Business School professor Jeffrey Robinson, an internationally known author and co-founder of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, has been named Rutgers University—Newark’s new provost and executive vice chancellor.

“I am excited to contribute to the mission of Rutgers University-Newark as an anchor institution in the city and region,” Robinson said. “Specifically, I look forward to focusing on innovation and economic development along with faculty recruitment and retentions. I am particularly drawn to RU-Newark’s strengths in the arts, STEM, and entrepreneurship.”

Thirty years ago, a group of female athletes sued Brown University in a landmark case (Cohen v. Brown University) that helped paved the way for women to gain equal footing with men in sports through Title IX. One of the plaintiffs was Lisa Kaplowitz, a 17-year-old star gymnast who testified about the opportunities she lost when the program was initially cut and the unfairness of that decision.

“During my testimony to show the inequalities, I held up a pair of men’s gray boxer briefs,” Kaplowitz recalls. “These were standard-issue shorts for men and women. Obviously, they didn’t fit women so well. I said, ‘This is a sign that their assets are getting protected and ours aren’t.'”

Title IX’s influence extends beyond professional athletics and into corporate America. Lisa Kaplowitz, now executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, was part of a 1992 Title IX lawsuit. In 1991, the then-17-year-old gymnast was recruited by Brown University. She turned down other full-ride scholarship offers to attend the Ivy League—only to find out Brown had cut the women’s gymnastics team. Kaplowitz, along with other female student-athletes, filed suit against the school, and the case made it to the Supreme Court, which accepted a lower court ruling that forced Brown to settle and fully reinstate the cut women’s athletic programs.

Regarding money laundering, the crypto industry’s “numbers are not large,” Merav Ozair, fintech faculty member at Rutgers Business School, told Cointelegraph, “but we don’t want them to grow either.” Binance is the industry’s largest exchange, “and we want them to have better compliance.” It troubles her that Binance has been one of the last major crypto exchanges to embrace Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML regulations globally — as an industry leader they should be one of the first to set an example.

Schools with unequal representation in their athletic programs can still be in compliance with Title IX if they demonstrate that they're accommodating all the interests and abilities or expanding the opportunities of the underrepresented sex, said Lisa Kaplowitz, Assistant Professor and Co-Founder of the Center for Women in Business at Rutgers Business School and former Title IX plaintiff.

According to Kaplowitz, large participation gaps are common. Across the country, most institutions violate Title IX protections, she said.

"These schools need to invest in women's sports," Kaplowitz added. "Practice time preferences need to be better, travel budgets need to be better, you pay the coaches better, and when you look at the collegiate level, scholarship money has to improve and become more equal." Representation and visibility of female athletes are also important for encouraging greater participation among young women, she said: "When you see a pathway, you can develop the pipeline."

“We typically think an expert has the skills and confidence to perform despite adverse conditions,” said Jerry Kim, coauthor of the study and an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School. “But the reality is that confidence is built upon a foundation that can be threatened. Particularly in a time of constant feedback, every expert is subject to extreme scrutiny.”

The New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants (NJCPA) is pleased to announce that 41 individuals are the recipients of its 2022 Ovation Awards. The awards represent outstanding achievements in seven categories: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Exceptional Educators; Emerging Leaders; Impact; Innovation; Lifetime Leader and Women to Watch.

DeFi’s biggest impact, however, lies in the ways it can serve those who the traditional financial institutions overlook, according to Merav Ozair, a fintech professor at Rutgers University’ business school and blockchain technology expert.

Ozair believes DeFi adoption will start in countries without stable financial institutions. In 2021, El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender to help the majority of its citizens who don’t have access to traditional financial services. Venezuela also launched a state-backed coin called Petro as an alternative to the highly inflated value of the bolívar. Its success, however, remains limited.

“Our corporate partners are extremely important because of the experiential learning opportunities and support they provide,” Lei Lei, dean of Rutgers Business School, said of the partnership. “The opportunity for our students to apply their knowledge in real-world situations offers them a powerful learning experience that strengthens their time in the classroom.”

“It is unusual for companies to invest in a supplier, especially a supplier that that company is not even in business with yet,” said Kevin Lyons, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Supply Chain Management and Director, Public Private Community Partnership Program, Rutgers Business School, who supported PSEG in the development and implementation of the program. “PSEG is meeting their pledge, recruiting state-based, diverse companies, then mentoring these suppliers and giving them opportunities for work.”

“‘You don’t look like a CFO,’ the venture capitalist told me as I walked him through our company's valuation during a funding round.”

- Lisa S. Kaplowitz, Assistant Professor, Finance and Executive Director, Rutgers Center for Women in Business

Title IX not only gave me the opportunity to play sports, it helped me find my voice and feel confident throughout my professional career in the male-dominated finance industry.

Mini-MBA programs: helping participants get a leg up in their careers

While executive education has traditionally been about training the most senior leaders, the “Mini-MBA” program at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey was designed with the middle layer of management in mind.

“We believe that learning has to be relevant, flexible and valuable,” says Peter Methot, Associate Dean of Rutgers Business School Executive Education. “To that end, we continue to work towards removing the barriers for learners.”

The Mini-MBA was launched in response to strong demand from local employers for programs that facilitate upskilling and reskilling.

“Employers’ expectations of training credentials as well as learners’ willingness to postpone career opportunities are shifting,” says Methot. “We believe that flexible, relevant and stackable credentials like a Mini-MBA will only continue to develop.”

The Mini-MBA at Rutgers equips learners with skills related to a specific topic — for example, digital marketing, supply chain management or team management — and can be completed in as little as one week or spread out over several months.

The main aims for participants are to step up another level in their career, or support them in managing their new responsibilities.

“Employers often sponsor participation in Mini-MBA programs for their employees as a means to assist their professional development and advance internal expertise in specific areas,” says Christina Murphy, Associate Program and Marketing Director at Rutgers.

One hallmark of the program is a “capstone” project that enables participants to apply what they are learning to a real-world business scenario.

“Some participants select their current company or organization as the focal point for this project,” says Murphy. “They are able to offer their employers recommendations and ideas that can positively impact business results.”

“We typically think an expert has the skills and confidence to perform despite adverse conditions,” said Jerry Kim, coauthor of the study and an assistant professor at Rutgers Business School. “But the reality is that confidence is built upon a foundation that can be threatened. Particularly in a time of constant feedback, every expert is subject to extreme scrutiny.”

In this study, we document that the strength of creditor protection influences corporate debt structures. Using data from 46 countries, we find that managers choose more concentrated debt structures and use more bank debt relative to other debt types in countries with better creditor rights protection. The choice of more concentrated debt structures in the face stronger creditor rights is made for two main reasons.

First steps, best practices, and understanding why having a family emergency fund is now more important than ever in the U.S.

What are some quick tips on saving up for a family emergency fund?

An emergency fund is especially important, and the first step in the process is to determine how much money you need for your emergency fund; typically three to six months of expenses. Budgeting is particularly important to set up an emergency fund goal, and then you need to plan on how to fund it every month. Without a measurable goal, it will be difficult to establish the emergency fund. Building it should be a priority as it will act as a catalyst to conquering other parts of your financial plan.

It’s unusual for chief operating officers to become not just the public face of the company they lead, but also A Personal Brand. But that’s exactly what Sheryl Sandberg did in her 14 years at Facebook, now Meta.

“He’s a very unusual CEO, and so her ability to do what she has done in branding herself from a COO position is in part also reflective of the unusual nature of that company and the fact that she was almost completely responsible for making it profitable,” Rutgers Business School professor Nancy DiTomaso told me.

“There are very few women who achieve that kind of brand strictly because of their corporate roles,” DiTomaso said. “It’s almost always because they have been responsive to or taken it upon themselves to speak out on issues that go beyond their corporate roles.”

“The issues that Sandberg put on the table are extremely important and have had an impact, even if there are limitations to it and even if she hasn’t always made the right decisions in regard to other aspects of her life,” DiTomaso said.

Fees are a highly valued part of the revenue stream of a bank because they are usually generated without the benefit of human intervention; think about checking account overdraft fees. But consumers absolutely hate those fees and they are now under scrutiny from the bank regulators.

Another area of fee generation is in the foreign exchange area of the retail side of banking. Foreign Exchange is a focus of every major global business. But you and I are forced to use electronic money to purchase things globally whether clothes or meals or hotel rooms. This, of course, creates the question of how a credit card provider, the main platform for electronic money magically translates US Dollars into some other currency, and vice versa. The retail transactions are much too small for a FOREX trading desk. So that business must be managed in by either using a spread trade as the source, charging a currency translation fee, or both.

Not having researched this lately, I suspect it is still a wholesale/retail business.

Aggregate all the retail trades. Sell the foreign currency. Purchase the domestic currency. Charge a significant spread differential to create profitability. And in those circumstances where the size of the trade is too small, charge a fee. Again, think bank overdraft fees. The banks would much rather charge us a very high-interest rate on the overdraft versus a fee, treating it like a loan. But they cannot earn enough to make the activity profitable. So instead, charge an overdraft fee. This is very much in line with the operating philosophy regarding foreign exchange.

After high school, Payumo took up accounting at a community college in New Jersey. Her siblings are all accountants, and she loves math. But after finding out that accounting was mainly “crunching numbers,” she switched to marketing at Rutgers Business School.

“I wanted to pursue something in the business field, hence I switched to marketing.” Being well-versed in social media (“I used to make Filipino-related videos”) she wants to be an entrepreneur that utilizes content creation in marketing.

She has never been prouder of pursuing something she genuinely enjoys and she takes pride in being a Filipino American graduate of a prestigious public university. “Wearing the Philippine flag was truly an honor, and I was easy to find by my family & friends during the graduation ceremony.”

Now in its third year, The HistoryMakers Faculty Innovations in Pedagogy and Teaching Fellowship is designed to foster classroom innovation and teaching, and to diversity curricula while furthering student learning and research skills during the upcoming academic year. Award recipients will receive a $7,500 award and the opportunity to demonstrate how faculty can creatively incorporate The HistoryMakers Digital Archive into a semester course and syllabus.

Anastasia Bailey, Assistant Professor, Rutgers Business School

Project Description: Bailey’s course, “Managing Growing Ventures,” will use The HistoryMakers Digital Archive to explore the various challenges faced by managers of new ventures during their early growth states and will introduce students to a set of tools and concepts that managers of young firms may successfully employ in growing their business and enhancing survival.

John M. Longo, a professor at Rutgers Business School and the Chief Investment Officer for Beacon Trust, wrote in an email that the endowment’s significant allocation to alternative investments such as hedge funds “likely preserved capital or resulted in lesser losses,” despite turbulence in the stock market.

He added that despite “disappointing” recent performance by Google and Meta, “both firms remain well positioned for the long-term.”

While the White House has lifted some Trump-era tariffs on goods imported from other countries, economists have claimed that doing more would help bring down record-high inflation.

"The sooner we get rid of those tariffs on the rest of the world, the better for us because consumers, customers pay those tariffs," Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, told The National Desk.

Merav Ozair, Ph.D., blockchain expert and FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School, says that the more industries and companies see the value in NFTs, the more mainstream they will become. NFTs are appealing to businesses because they are authenticated on the blockchain and can’t be duplicated, unlike digital artwork, photos or videos uploaded to social media platforms, which can be downloaded, shared, etc.

“The whole idea is that the NFT concept really opens up a lot of business models that we couldn’t have before the blockchain technology,” Ozair says.

Although she doesn’t work with floral companies, she sees potential for NFTs in the floral industry. For instance, as the metaverse — a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users — grows, florists could offer virtual flowers, Ozair suggested.

“You’re going to have a physical space and a virtual space,” Ozair says. “And you’re going to have NFT flowers and you’re going to have real flowers.”

Or, florists could offer an NFT for each arrangement sent out the door, Ozair says.

"Some industries are very good at ramping up and ramping down," said Rudi Leuschner, an associate professor of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School. "You flip a switch and they can produce 10 times as much. Baby formula is not that type of a product."

"Usually with baby formula, it is one of those products that is fairly stable in demand, it doesn't change much, there's no seasonality," said Rudi Leuschner, an associate professor at Rutgers Business School.

"So the supply chain was made to go with one speed and one speed only."

The Michigan plant was a large producer of specialty formulas, according to Steven Abrams, a professor of paediatrics at University of Texas as Austin's Dell Medical School.

He said the shutdown further complicated the situation for parents of children with special dietary needs.

"There are a number of babies that have severe allergies or have special diseases where they can only get one type of formula," he said.

"And for those babies, because those formulas were particularly affected, it's been a real crisis."

The 2022 ROI Influencers: Manufacturing list honors men and women and their businesses that represent the small and midsize companies that make New Jersey go. They all share a passion for the industry, many are family owned, often in their second (or third) generation of leadership. All are essential.

Kevin Lyons
Associate professor, supply chain management
Rutgers Business School

Under his guidance, Rutgers students have crafted and presented plans focused on supply chain management. His research has centered on how to integrate the different aspects of the supply chain — including raw material extraction, logistics, manufacturing and design — into economic development.

Disruptive innovation is anti-inflationary by definition. Classic disruption aims a set of new technologies at a problem and finds a solution that is both better and less expensive. The 2022 Disruptors take aim at a wide range of solutions, untangling supply chains, controlling carbon emissions, democratizing access to financial services, and improving health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

CNBC’s Disruptor 50 Advisory Council — a group of 55 leading thinkers in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship from around the world (see list of members below) — then ranked the quantitative criteria by importance and ability to disrupt established industries and public companies.

The 2022 CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Council includes Lyneir Richardson, assistant professor of professional practice and executive director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED).

The average household is paying about $315 a month more than it did last year for the same basket of goods, said Parul Jain, associate professor of professional practice, Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick.

It leaves the Federal Reserve Board under pressure to slow down business and consumer demand without tipping the economy into a recession, she said, describing what sounds like a complicated task.

Criticized for moving too slowly, the Fed now is playing catch-up by aggressively increasing short-term interest rates and raising borrowing costs — all while waiting for the supply chain to navigate disruptions, from COVID lockdowns in China to the continuing war in Ukraine.

"We've got a fair amount of issues on our hands," said Jain, who expects inflation will ease by the end of the year.

Falta de mano de obra, en su mayoría inmigrante, incrementa la inflación en EE.UU.
(Lack of labor, mostly immigrant, increase the inflation in the US.)

Dos millones de empleados hacen falta para salir de la crisis, según el experto Arturo Osorio. La clave es que la mayoría de estas plazas son cubiertas por inmigrantes. "Los trabajos duros casi siempre los hacemos nosotros", dijo un empleador latino.
(Two million employees are needed to get out of the crisis, according to expert Arturo Osorio. The key is that most of these places are covered by immigrants. "The hard jobs are almost always done by us," said a Latino employer.)

“Since the shutdown of Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis facility … the remaining baby formula manufacturers have struggled to quickly increase production because their operations were planned and designed to produce a steady level of product based on their pre-production projections of consumer demand,” Kevin Lyons, a professor at Rutgers Business School with expertise in supply chain management, told FactCheck.org in an email.

He explained that in other industries, manufacturers can adjust their output based on consumer demand, but baby formula manufacturers can’t do that because their projections and the raw materials they need for production must be planned well in advance.

"There is so much pent-up demand from all the COVID years,” said Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School. “There's a lot of pent-up demand and keep in mind, private consumption for Americans — that's like 70% of our economy.”

“The sooner we get rid of those tariffs on the rest of the world, the better for us because consumers, customers pay those tariffs,” Langdana said.

“This Fed needs to get its messaging right and say ‘we are attacking inflation early; we are slowing down an over-superheated labor market. Soon, more workers will be coming back to work and we are very confident we are on track,’” Langdana said.

Managing expectations and getting the economy to the next step of the recovery is where there will be an opportunity for the U.S. to rebound, he said.

“(Innovation is) where we need to bounce back,” Langdana said. “We've always come up with the next big thing. It's been us Americans and I really am expecting that coming back from us in the near future.”

Rutgers Business School blockchain expert & FinTech Professor Merav Ozair joins Jill Malandrino on Nasdaq TradeTalks to discuss unleashing the benefits of Web3 and the metaverse.

TradeTalks broadcasts live from MarketSite in Time Square, the historic Philadelphia Trading Floor and Global Industry Conferences and Events. Featuring conversations with top industry thought leaders on trends, news and education.

Watch the video interview 12:31

Since the shutdown of Abbott Nutrition’s Sturgis facility, other manufacturers have struggled to quickly increase production because their operations are geared toward a steady level of consumer demand, according to Rudi Leuschner, an associate professor of supply-chain management at Rutgers Business School.

“Some industries are very good at ramping up and ramping down,” Dr. Leuschner said. “You flip a switch and they can produce 10 times as much. Baby formula is not that type of a product.”

On top of the broader supply-chain issues that have emerged during the coronavirus pandemic, such as labor shortages and difficulty securing raw materials, the problem may be compounded by panic-buying, Dr. Leuschner said.

Companies that produce items like baby formula - in which demand is typically steady over time - have troubles catching up when there is disruption, said Rudi Leuschner, director of the masters in supply chain management programme at Rutgers Business School.

And as parents rush to buy as stories of empty shelves spread, that only makes the problem worse, he warned.

"It's not a situation where you can just snap out of it," he said. "It was designed to run at one speed."

While this year's formula shortage may expose the fragility of the supply chain, it may not be enough to make a business case for backup inventories, Prof Leuschner added.

“Blockchain technology has the ability to really unleash the value of real estate,” Merav Ozair, a blockchain expert and assistant professor at Rutgers University’s business school, told Colorado Newsline in an interview. “It opens up a lot of activities and business models that you wouldn’t have otherwise.”

It’s no secret that cryptocurrencies and their underlying blockchain technology has revolutionized the financial world. Blockchain technology is essentially an immutable digital ledger of transactions that can’t be rewritten once it is recorded. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies act as digital mediums of exchange for transactions recorded on their respective blockchains.

As the value cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed since Bitcoin first reached the market in 2009, investors are now looking for ways to make use of their capital gains without divesting from the technology that helped create their wealth. One popular avenue for such investors is to purchase real estate.

Spenders are finding new ways to rack up debt with buy now pay later programs that break up big purchases into smaller installments, but those small payments can add up quickly and are landing some younger buyers in debt. Now, there's a class-action lawsuit aimed at changing how those companies issue fees when people can't pay their balance. For more, KCBS Radio news anchor Megan Goldsby spoke with Dr. Merav Ozair, Professor of Fintech at the Rutgers University Business School.

Listen to the podcast: 4:00 minutes

Kristina Durante, vice chair and professor of marketing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, said that, for example, music from a person’s childhood is so therapeutic that it’s used in residential treatment programs because it spikes feel-good hormones. Items work just the same way – they bring a person back to simpler times.

Teenagers and children seem to be gravitating towards retro items, too, although most of these items stopped being made long before they were born.

Durante has seen it happen firsthand with her 11-year-old daughter, who has even told her mother, “I should have been born in the '80s.”

Her daughter told Durante that she wants to live in a time when bullies can’t access you on your cell phone, when there were ways to have fun that had nothing to do with social media or the internet.

“Young people haven’t lived in that time, but they have an idea that it might have been simpler,” Durante said. “For these digital native Gen Z’s, it’s never been simple. It’s always been a chaotic, cataclysmic social nightmare because of social media. They’ve never lived in a time where they played all day in the backyard and their mom’s voice called them in, so they’re basically co-opting it as their time of tranquility.

"Although you can’t pry their phones out of their hands, they are feeling the negative impact that social media has to their well-being.”

Dr. Merav Ozair, a blockchain expert and FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School, said criminals who use cryptocurrency to scam people without being caught are fooling themselves.

“Any criminal who's fooling themselves that they can go get away with scamming or stealing or whatever else, illicit transactions, money laundering, whatever on a public blockchain, they can do the most sophisticated things that they want to,” Ozair said. “It just may take us a little bit more analytics and being more sophisticated on our end in terms of the analytics we have to come up with and develop, but we can catch them.”

Ozair and other developers are working on applications to catch wrongdoers quickly and help prevent the loss from happening at all by alerting traders to potentially fraudulent transactions or scams.

Dr. Merav Ozair, a blockchain expert and FinTech professor at Rutgers Business School, said criminals who use cryptocurrency to scam people without being caught are fooling themselves.

“Any criminal who's fooling themselves that they can go get away with scamming or stealing or whatever else, illicit transactions, money laundering, whatever on a public blockchain, they can do the most sophisticated things that they want to,” Ozair said. “It just may take us a little bit more analytics and being more sophisticated on our end in terms of the analytics we have to come up with and develop, but we can catch them.”

Ozair and other developers are working on applications to catch wrongdoers quickly and help prevent the loss from happening at all by alerting traders to potentially fraudulent transactions or scams.

“Completely ignoring all cultural conversations would be ignoring the context in which its employees, customers, investors, and community are living,” says Stacy Smollin Schwartz, a marketing and strategy consultant and professor at Rutgers Business School. “Brands that pretend it’s just ‘business as usual’ while their stakeholders grapple with pressing cultural challenges will erode trust, as that ‘human voice’ they have worked so hard to establish sounds a lot more like out of touch “marketing speak.”

The metaverse will be our new culture and mainstream reality. It’s not a matter of if, only when. We will live in parallel worlds -- the virtual and the physical -- immersed in two worlds that are separate yet connected via the utilization of blockchain technology.

The term “Metaverse” was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 science fiction book, Snow Crash. In the book he presented a kind of virtual reality where every interaction could have a direct impact on the physical world. Sound impossible? Not really.

Johnson & Johnson’s Global Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), Leonardo DeCandia, reflects on the company’s centralisation of procurement in its operations.

DeCandia explains: “About six years ago, we recognised that more strategic value could come from procurement if it was better managed as an enterprise function. We looked at our governance responsibilities around the world and how we could conduct these in a more harmonised, collective way. Johnson & Johnson was one of the early adopters of strategic sourcing.”

“Marcus is the exact leader we need at this time in Newark,” said Dr. Kevin Lyons, Associate Professor PP, Supply Chain Management Department and Director, Public Private Community Partnerships, Rutgers Business School. “His breadth of experience and knowledge of community development and affordable housing finance will catapult the Newark Land Bank to the next level and our ability to assist more Newarkers to build wealth and own their own homes.”

By now, most members of the New Jersey tech ecosystem have heard the phenomenal news that New Jersey ranked in the Top 10 in the nation for venture capital invested in 2021.

Gov. Murphy and the NJEDA made commitments to inclusive innovation. The news of more private investment in the state is clear evidence of the effectiveness of the programs and policies.

CUEED launched and now operates the Black and Latino Angel Investment Fund, which is a group of investors providing seed-stage capital to high-growth, next-economy startups owned by people of color. The Black and Latino Angel Investment Fund brings diverse experiences as New Jersey-based entrepreneurs and successful small business owners, academic leaders, corporate representatives and venture corporation founders.

EE.UU. registra una cifra récord de 11.5 millones de ofertas de trabajo y suma 4.5 millones de renuncias.
(EU has a record high job offerings with 11.5 million openings and 4.5 million resignations).

"The lack of employees is hitting hard after the pandemic," says a restaurant owner. These are the most affected sectors. "Industries that require interaction with people, this is so," said Professor Arturo Osorio.

Imagine yourself stranded on an island, unable to communicate with anyone. Would you embrace this isolation, or try to find ways to communicate with the outside world? It seems that most of us do not favor isolation on any scale. Any movie about stranded people on an island – from “Robinson Crusoe” to “Cast Away” – always depicts a situation where stranded people long for the moment they will be able to communicate with the world outside of the island.

So why would we wish to be on a platform, a virtual space, or metaverse that is essentially an island?

In the age of the internet, we have learned to appreciate accessibility, mobility and connectivity on a global scale, and the experience of the latest pandemic has enhanced our demand for more mobility and connectivity.

Let’s look at the case of the online game Ghost Recon Breakpoint, developed by Ubisoft.

Supply chain challenges don’t discriminate between industries like healthcare, automobile, or information technology. These obstacles are rooted in similar problems and issues and often have similar solutions though, according to David Dreyfus.

Dreyfus, an assistant professor in the Supply Chain Management Department of Rutgers Business School, earned his Ph.D. in operations and sourcing management and previously worked for Volvo Construction Equipment.

“There’s a lot of overlap,” he said. “It’s not IT only or healthcare only; it just shifts around.”

Shortages with chips, which are used in many electronics from computers to automobiles, can be compared to the consumer grocery products mentioned earlier. As the need went down in the early pandemic stages, manufacturers turned to the production of more profitable and in-demand products. Once things settled and demand returned, chip manufacturers were slow to deliver because of other products they were producing, labor shortages at every stage from inception to delivery, and because they felt the chip technology — while in demand — was out of date.

“You can’t switch chip manufacturers quickly. It requires rigorous testing and development that takes months or years,” Dreyfus said. “Before Omicron, there was a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the supply chain, and this started the conversation for chip upgrades to car manufacturers. You can’t switch chip manufacturers quickly though because it requires rigorous testing and development that takes months or years.

How much of Geico’s success as a company would you ascribe to Warren Buffet?

Warren Buffet has had a long history of investment with Geico since the fifties but I do not think the average consumer knows that his Berkshire Hathaway has fully owned Geico since 1996. However, I do think Geico’s performance has indirectly benefited from the shrewd management principles that Buffet expects his managers to observe over the decades.

“We are leading the way into the future with new curriculum options that answer the demands of students who want to learn with greater flexibility,” said Business School Dean Lei Lei in a public statement. “Our new programs are designed to allow students to study the topics they choose, linking together classes to build job skills needed for future work in a digital era.”

“Stackable programs fulfill the educational mission of lifelong learning for lifelong employability that is geared toward students who want to upskill to stay technically current and relevant in their professions without having to commit the time and money required for a degree program,” Program Director Benjamin Melamed said in a statement.

The idea is to allow students to customize their education for technical training, according to Assistant Professor Hussein Issa.