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The Institute of Supply Management (ISM) is the primary U.S.-based industry association which grants approvals to supply management degree programs. ISM-approved programs provide ample education to meet today’s standards and practices for students with a desire to enter the Supply Management field. Even BusinessWeek, back in 2011, discussed the importance of supply chain management as “the next big thing.” One thing’s for sure: Supply Management and Supply Chain Management are promising career fields for today’s undergrad students wishing to pursue a prosperous career in business.

To help you choose the right school for you for an education in supply chain management, we’ve compiled out list of “The Top 26 Supply Chain Management College Degree Programs.”

Please note that the following list is in no particular order.

As the government shutdown that began in December 2018 enters its second month, many entrepreneurs are left wondering how to address it. This guide will help you not just survive but thrive while the federal government is shuttered.

The chief concern of a small business owner, even in the best of times, is cash flow. According to Lyneir Richardson, executive director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers University, government shutdowns often have an adverse effect on cash flow, and not just for small businesses that rely heavily on public contracts. When those companies feel the squeeze, he said, they will often delay capital expenditures and invoice payments to other businesses they work with, creating a "ripple effect" in the wider economy.
"The biggest fear for small businesses during a shutdown relates to cash flow," Richardson said. "Will my payments be processed? Can I get a loan? Will I get the green light on a contract I've been working on? Will I get paid for the work we've done, or will there be a long line to get my invoice paid? Cash is oxygen, and without oxygen, you quickly start to feel the pressure."

The pharmaceutical industry in Bangladesh has done remarkably well, growing at more than 15 percent a year, with sales of approximately $2.4 billion in 2017.

Pharmaceutical is a high tech science business. While Bangladesh does not have any high tech science business yet, the conditions are perfect for promoting one. IT, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals are very promising sectors. The pharmaceutical sector is doing well but lacks innovative products. The current policy of relying on low margin generic products to grow is a low growth equilibrium trap for the country.

Many pharmaceutical companies have partnerships with universities for conducting basic science research. These partnerships are breeding grounds for developing the molecules of potential therapeutic value.
The pharmaceutical industry in Bangladesh should form similar network and partnerships with the local scientists' community.

The New Jersey Business and Industry Association released a report Friday called “Indicators of Innovation.” It looks at where the Garden State ranks in comparison with six other states in the region when it comes to innovation. The takeaway: we’re struggling to compete.

Rutgers Business School Professor Lyneir Richardson gives New Jersey a “B.”
“The private sector, there needs to be more capital in venture capital and angel investing, investing in innovation, investing in entrepreneurs,” Richardson said.

When considering earning an MBA, a few priorities tend to stick out. Cost, career opportunities, flexibility, and educational value are all obvious sticking points. However, another crucial feature should matter more when it comes time to decide where you’ll go: return on investment.

Rutgers Business School in New Brunswick and Newark, New Jersey, isn’t just the premiere MBA option in the Garden State (ranked 44th overall by U.S. News & World Report): it’s among the best return on investment opportunities you can find anywhere.

MetroMBA talked to several current students. Read on to see their stories and what the future may hold for life after an MBA.

Is the development boom in Montclair going to bring a sizable number of new students into the district, which, in turn, could create a need for more facilities? In the opinion of local developers, the answer is no, because the projects in Montclair are high-rise housing developments that, they contend, do not primarily appeal to families with children.

That, in essence, is the question the Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School sought to address in a study, “School-Age Children in Rental Units in New Jersey: Results from a Survey of Developers and Property Managers,” released last July. The Rutgers researchers found that the number of students increase with the number of bedrooms, that more families live in garden apartments than in high rises, and that the number of children decreases as the income level of apartment dwellers increase.

The successful management of supply chains has always been critical to global trade.
Today supply chains are extremely complex, global and rapidly changing.
An MSc in Supply Chain Management can help you get ahead of the curve of change.

At Rutgers Business School in New Jersey, a one-week executive seminar focuses on the latest supply chain trends, in the MSc in Supply Chain Management program. “We are constantly challenging ourselves as a program, as well as our faculty, to keep our courses as fresh and up-to-date as possible,” says Rudolf Leuschner, who is director of the MSc.
Students can, for example, opt to take optional courses on using enterprise software created by SAP, the German software company, with Rutgers’ MBA candidates.
The MSc course is taught entirely online and can be completed in a year, though students can opt to come to campus for some courses. They study digitally via pre-recorded video lectures and group discussion chatrooms, and in doing so they learn to collaborate remotely and globally using technology, which is not unlike the work of a supply chain manager.

WalletHub’s editors compared more than 300 Mastercard credit card offers – based on their rewards, rates and fees – and identified the top deals in the most popular categories.

But only you can decide whether a given credit card is a good fit. So make sure to consider your credit standing, existing debts, payment habits, etc., when comparing these offers.

Ask the Experts
John Longo
Professor of Professional Practice in the Finance & Economics Department at Rutgers Business School

Should every person have at least one Mastercard credit card?
For people that use credit responsibly, I suggest that they own either a Visa or Mastercard. Both firms may provide extra warranty protection for some purchases. Credit card purchases also result in an auditable "paper trail" and may offer benefits, such as cash back or points that may be redeemed for other goods and services. In most cases, it isn't necessary to own both Mastercard and Visa.

What, if any, differences do you think there are between Visa and Mastercard in the eyes of the average consumer?
For most consumers, there are no meaningful differences between Visa and Mastercard. Almost any vendor that accepts credit cards will accept both. Besides paying off your credit card each month, I would suggest using a credit card that gives you the most cash back or points related to things you naturally consume, such as airline tickets. In general, some of the more prestigious rewards programs, like Chase Sapphire Preferred, tend to use the Visa name. I think most consumers tend to believe the American Express is a more premium brand than either Visa or Mastercard. Perhaps they may have heard of its invitation-only American Express Centurion Black Card.

WalletHub’s editors compared more than 300 Mastercard credit card offers – based on their rewards, rates and fees – and identified the top deals in the most popular categories.

But only you can decide whether a given credit card is a good fit. So make sure to consider your credit standing, existing debts, payment habits, etc., when comparing these offers.

Ask the Experts
Stacy Smollin Schwartz
Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Department of Marketing, Rutgers Business School - Newark & New Brunswick

Why would a credit card company offer 1% cash back on purchases and 1% cash back when cardholders pay the balances resulting from those purchases, rather than just 2% cash back at either point?
For cardholders, a “double cash back” offer has strong promotional appeal. Receiving 2% cash back at either point may be a competitive rate, but lacks the sizzle of a headline that implies it’s twice as big as what you can get somewhere else. I also like the way this offer rewards cardholders for making payments, adding an element of gamification, customer control, and aligned incentives to pay promptly. For Citibank, adding a payment-triggered reward element allows them to beat competitive offers without floating extra cash, since the merchant is owed the full retail price within a few days of sale. This means the credit card company has more time to generate investment returns from cardholders’ future reward money.

There will be no flashing green leaf signs on the highway. No cartoon figures. No Facebook push. On TV and radio, pot would be pitched to the 21–plus crowd — after hours.
This is how the Garden State is contemplating the regulation of cannabis advertising. Think booze and cigarettes.

The limitations likely won’t hurt emergent cannabis companies that are looking to establish a customer base, said Lyneir Richardson, director of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development at Rutgers Business School-Newark.
“There’s so much public expectation and interest in this new product,” he said. Information about the product will be readily accessible, he said.
Richardson said the advertising regulations are necessary. “Everyone is proceeding with the appropriate level of cautiousness," he said. “We see the business opportunity in legalizing cannabis, but we don’t know the unintended consequences. ... We should get the positive benefits from legalizing marijuana without stepping on the land mines.”

Rutgers Business School MBA alumna Dasheeda Dawson and her groundbreaking cannabis industry workbook set to elevate Times Square as part of historic activation.

After a landmark year of growth and expansion, African-American corporate executive turned cannabis trailblazer Dasheeda Dawson will make history on New Year’s Eve as the head of the first ever minority-led cannabis company to be featured in a Times Square promotional campaign.

“New Year’s Eve is a time for celebration, and ushering in a fresh start and perspective, says Dawson, founder of “The WeedHead™,” a lifestyle brand aimed at high powered professionals curious about and/or working in the legal cannabis industry. “It’s a time for entrepreneurs and businesses to reassess their goals and objectives. My book ‘How to Succeed in the Green Rush,’ is a workbook designed to help small business owners, contractors and professionals interested in the cannabis industry, enter with the knowledge they need to succeed in 2019. We’re thrilled to showcase our workbook at Times Square, the world’s most iconic New Year’s Eve location.”

Dawson received her MBA from Rutgers Business School and completed her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology at Princeton University in 2001.

This semester, I engaged my Rutgers Business School students on a team project to learn about sustainability innovations that companies are making - I loved the results.

First, it was quite exciting to learn about companies that are innovating for global good. For example: TerraCycle, a young company "Eliminating the Idea of Waste® by recycling the non-recyclable.

Second, students loved the experience. They wrote:
"Before working with my group to do this project, I gave very little thought to sustainability. After working on this and learning of TerraCycle, the idea of sustainability is at the forefront of my mind."

Special thanks to the companies who opened their doors to our student teams!
#sustainability #innovation #business #education

This post is based on their recent article, forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics.

We study fund-firm connections that arise when firm executives and directors serve as fund directors. We find that connected funds are significantly more likely to vote with management in proposals with negative ISS recommendations or low shareholder support. As our data shows that management support does not exist either before connection formation or after its termination, this result is unlikely to be caused by omitted factors. Rather, the connected fund’s voting patterns show independence from ISS recommendations and successful connected voting is associated with positive announcement returns, suggesting that connected fund support for management reflects information advantages. Lastly, we find that a fund family and firm are more likely to connect when the fund family holds a large stake in the firm and is geographically proximate, as well as when it has a record of voting independently from ISS.

A Rutgers University student is headed to the national finals after winning the state round of a business competition called the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.

Kwaku Agyemang co-owns BrownMill Co., a Piscataway-based fashion company that aims to reduce the amount of textile waste that ends up in landfills. With the senior’s win at the local level, he received $1,500 and the right to go on to the national round of the competition, to be held Jan. 10-11 in Denver — with the chance to advance to the global finals in Macau.

Agyemang, 21, is a finance major at the Rutgers Business School with a concentration in entrepreneurship. The Ghanaian-American is a native of Newark who now lives in Piscataway. “BrownMill is a lifestyle brand touted as a mix between bespoke tailoring and streetwear, with a focus on the community,” he told ROI-NJ.

Upon joining a group, extroverts are perceived as having high status. But in an online experiment involving imagined scenarios, extroverts’ perceived status slipped from 4.37 to 3.87 on a 7-point scale as the group came to consider their assertiveness and talkativeness less valuable and to suspect that they were motivated by self-interest, say Corinne Bendersky of UCLA and Neha Parikh Shah of Rutgers. To retain their status, extroverts must contribute at especially high levels to counter growing negative perceptions of them, the researchers say.

For the second year in a row, The Financial Times has added top-25 lists of business schools in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region to go with its annual ranking of European schools.

Rutgers Business School made the list at No. 24: FT has ranked the Rutgers MBA as only No. 89, but its open executive education offering is ranked much higher.

If you’re a parent, odds are you’ve heard it before.
When one of your kids gets something from you, whether it be money or items, your other child immediately wants to know “Where’s Mine?”. This prompts the question: As parents, do we always treat our kids equally?

Rutgers University Marketing Professor Kristina Durante and her colleagues tested that question.
“We were having parents enter a lottery to win a treasury bond worth $25. And they had to tell us with a name which of their children they would give the treasury bond to.” Said Durante.
The parents could only enter once and had to choose between their girl or their boy for the potential winnings. Moms chose daughters. Dads chose their sons.
“It suggests that we do play favorites, even if we don’t think that we do.” Said Durante.

"When I opened my business I quickly realized how many things I didn’t know about being an entrepreneur. As a business owner, you really are responsible for everything. I was working longer and longer hours without seeing growth in my business. I wanted to be in charge of my own success. The Rutgers Business School Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development (CUEED), and its Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative (EPI) gave me the tools to sustain and grow my business," Holly Kaplansky.

Owner Holly Kaplansky provides a video on her perspective of running a business and how CUEED helped.

Upcoming events may alter the way we think about and use the preceding time.

To help push back on this tendency, lead author and Rutgers University marketing researcher Gabriela Tonietto recommends “any strategy you can think of to minimize the number of boundaries that you’re creating” in your schedule–for example, planning back-to-back meetings in the morning while keeping the afternoon open. Separating longer tasks into smaller subtasks might also help, she says. “The reluctance to even get started contributes the biggest part of this effect.”

This is the second time the FT has ranked the top schools in the Americas and Asia-Pacific. These top-25 tables reflect both the quality and breadth of business schools offerings. The FT measured performance in the main 2018 rankings: MBA, executive MBA, Masters in Management (MiM) and the two rankings for executive education. The tables use the same methodology as for Europe; the exception is that placings for the Americas do not include the MiM as too few schools participate.

The FT’s ranking of the top 25 schools in the Americas — based on their performance in other FT rankings — reflects how the market is changing and also how it is not.

Rutgers Business School in New Jersey is an example of how this can affect a ranking position. Its full-time MBA is number 89 in the FT global ranking, but the school makes it on to the Americas list because of its executive education offering.

The Morris County Economic Development Corporation, a division of The Morris County Chamber of Commerce held the First Annual Innovation and Sustainability Forum with a focus on the Impact of Corporate Social Innovation. An informative and interactive panel on health and wellness, community engagement and environmental sustainability was followed by networking, lunch and a keynote address from Executive Vice President of Global Health and President of the BD Foundation ( Becton Dickinson and Co.) Gary M. Cohen.

The panel moderator was Jeana Wirtenberg, PH. D, Associate Professor for Professional Practice in the Management and Global Business Department, Rutgers Business School. She leads the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative for the Business School and is Associate Director of the new Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation (RICSI).

The state can benefit from applying artificial intelligence to its data, says Jaideep Vaidya, a computer scientist at Rutgers Business School in Newark, New Jersey. He is developing data-analysis software for Newark that will help to make decisions on the basis of citizen complaints.

Newark — a densely populated city with a poverty rate of almost 30% — has a large number of vacant plots, which do not generate property tax and sometimes attract crime. Vaidya says that predictive analytics can make computer models of different actions or incentives that might entice businesses to take over those plots. Officials can also use predictive analytics to work out the best way to bring in revenue, “which in turn lets you lower the tax burden”, he says.

Prof. dr. Glenn Shafer (Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, USA): 'Did Blaise Pascal and Christiaan Huygens provide a game-theoretic foundation for probability?'

Abstract: The originality of Pascal's, Fermat's, and Huygens's work on mathematical probability in the 1650s is often exaggerated. Fermat's method of dividing stakes, which counted equally likely cases, had already been part of Europe's learned tradition for centuries. The game-theoretic foundations provided by Pascal and Huygens had their own antecedents in the tradition of commercial arithmetic. The success of Pascal's and Huygens's foundations for Fermat's methods can be seen as a merger of the learned and commercial traditions, set against the backdrop of the larger merger represented by the 17th century's use of algebra to reconstruct the mathematics of the ancients. This success is renewed by the modern game-theoretic foundation for probability, which supports modern measure-theoretic methods just as Pascal's and Huygens's foundations supported Fermat's methods.

Supply chain management delves into business at the big-picture level. It puts all the operations together to ensure that everything functions smoothly. It’s the ideal position for individuals who are interested in managing people, organizing moving parts, and analyzing global trends.
We’ve outlined our top seven picks for MBA programs in supply management.

#4 Rutgers Business School is home to a full-time MBA concentration in Supply Chain Management. Students who choose this path are 100 percent employed three months after graduation thanks to the fact that they graduated from the 11th ranked school according to the U.S. News & World Report. The concentration prepares students to handle everything from logistics to supply chain management, procurement, sourcing, and more. Best yet, students can choose from over 40 supply chain management courses to complete their degree.
In addition, Rutgers offers the Center for Supply Chain Management for educational and research opportunities. The Center provides various resources including a certificate program, a wide range of events, and cutting-edge research.

Funds were tight this summer for several members of Sigma Lambda Beta and their housemates.
"I felt like, 'We are in college, why would we need the food pantry? That’s not really for us,'" Rosado said.

Fighting that misconception is a priority for each of the food pantry’s directors. This year, Danielle Warren from Rutgers Business School is studying the stigma associated with food insecurity and ways to combat that through messaging. By studying food pantry use and attitudes at Rutgers-Newark before and after releasing new messaging about food insecurity, Warren said she will be able to determine whether the messaging is effectively reducing stigma.

Rutgers Business School's Kristina M. Durante looks at how technology and other factors have changed consumer culture.

We spoke with Kristina M. Durante, associate professor of marketing with Rutgers Business School-Newark and Brunswick whose research lies at the intersection of social psychology, evolutionary biology and consumer decision-making about how new technology and other factors have changed consumer culture.

How are holiday shopping habits changing?

Older generations are still shopping at brick and mortar stores. For some, it’s a tradition; part of your culture includes Christmas shopping at a store. But those older shoppers are fading.
Parents are younger and part of the digital generation. They want a frictionless experience. I think it’s specific to toys and kids. We want hyper-efficiency shopping for toys, but if it’s your sister or friend’s birthday, you tend to think beyond ‘What is the hot thing I can get with the click of a button.’ This is where brick and mortar may have more opportunity.

Over five years ago, I shared my personal presentation tips in a three-part series published in the online edition of “The Journal of Sales and Marketing Management.” Half a decade (and more) later, as the digital revolution continues its unstoppable tsunami throughout our personal and professional lives, the individual’s abilities to effectively communicate have never been more important, more self-evident, and more under siege.
As a former vice president of marketing, as a former vice president of sales, and for the past 15-plus years, as a professor of marketing, I see the need for oral as well as written communications to be severely challenged at a time when we need more effective communications in our highly fragmented and extremely challenging climate.

The 4th annual CEO Evolution sponsored by Citrin Cooperman took place last week at the Newark Museum.
The panel consisted of Braun Kiess, serial entrepreneur, finance professional, educator and angel investor; Marjorie Perry, CEO of MZM Construction & Management; Biagio Scotto, president of Villa Restaurant Group; and Tom Tsivgas, owner and CEO of Yesterday’s Business Computers.

For Keiss, leadership has direct correlation with inspiration.
“Leadership to me is the ability to inspire others,” he said. “That ability to have others see your vision of the world is what really makes a great leader.”
Keiss has 13 years of experience through different industries. He has been a founder or investor in at least 12 companies including RST Automation, Pleasant Run Structures, Rainbow Direct, Partners2Market LLC, Swing Safe Inc. and Readington Hop Farm LLC.
Keiss spent two years with the Business, Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) institute at Rutgers, is an adjunct professor of finance and entrepreneurship at Rutgers Business School and a preferred instructor for the school’s executive education and executive MBA programs.
He said the most challenging part of being a leader is adaptation.

Morris County Annual Innovation and Sustainability Forum 2018
Impact of Corporate Social Innovation keynote address by Gary Cohen
Morning panel on health and wellness, philanthropy & community engagement, & environmental sustainability. Moderator Jeana Wirtenberg, Ph.D., is an associate professor of professional practice in the Management & Global Business Department at Rutgers Business School.

I came across an interesting piece published by Rutgers Business School

"Future of retail may be decided by supply chain analytics"
http://www.business.rutgers.edu/business-insights/future-retail-may-be-decided-supply-chain-analytics

which referenced a quote from 20 years ago by Boston Consulting Group’s Harold Sirkin warning that competition is no longer “company versus company but supply chain versus supply chain.” While the piece was focused on comparing Amazon and Walmart WMT +0.76%’s supply chain, the greater theme is relevant to every retailer. The modern-day battle now hinges on technology innovation and aptitude -- of “supply chain analytics versus supply chain analytics.”

A conference last month at Rutgers Business School drew top names in graduate management education to discuss how today’s digital revolution is reshaping the ways business schools teach their students—both in the classroom and beyond. Keynote speakers included deans from Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, among others.

The Innovations in Graduate Business Education (IGBE) Conference, hosted every two years by Rutgers, drew 150 attendees for two full days of presentations around the theme “Lifelong Learning in a Digital Era.” Top administrators from Wharton, Kellogg, Kelley, Darden, MIT Sloan, and Tuck also took part as speakers and panelists in sessions focused on topics ranging from digital disruptions in educating business students to how to engage with alumni for lifelong learning.

For small business owners, few issues matter more than the economy and regulations. While people vote for many reasons, small business owners reliably keep an eye on some major recurring issues.

"I believe small business owners are always optimistic. It's a challenging political time, but entrepreneurs are focused on generating revenue, being profitable, finding new customers and finding new markets," said Lyneir Richardson, executive director of Rutgers Business School's Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development.

Arthur Guarino

The Next Financial Crisis could be closer than we think. . .

While the global economy, and most certainly the U.S. economy, are enjoying a healthy and robust expansion, there are clouds on the horizon that spell trouble.

The first of these clouds is the trade war that the Trump Administration has started with China. Both nations rely heavily on each other and trade disruption will have a severe economic impact on both. The United States relies on the low-cost products imported from China which allows its consumer-based economy to thrive. China must sell products to its biggest customer, the United States, in order to be able to keep its economy growing at a healthy pace. Tariffs and trade protectionism will mean an economic slowdown for both countries and an eventual recession that neither can afford.

The other clouds come in the form of bubbles, that if a recession were to occur in the next 18 to 24 months will doom both the American and world economies.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, talks with Rutgers Center for Real Estate's Morris Davis at the Opportunity Zone event.

For 45 minutes Monday morning, New Jersey’s junior U.S. senator held the attention of more than 200 top-level real estate professionals at the Rutgers Center for Real Estate event on the Opportunity Zone program the Democrat co-authored with a fellow senator, Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina.

Nancy DiTomaso has spent her career at the intersection of business and inequality, examining the ways in which race, gender, and culture create or deny job and career opportunities. Her highly lauded 2013 book, The American Non-Dilemma: Racial Inequality Without Racism (Russell Sage Foundation), addresses the ways in which inequality is reproduced – not, as many of us believe, through discrimination against minorities but through advantages afforded whites, known as “opportunity hoarding.”

DiTomaso, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Management and Global Business at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, has also turned her lens on inequality in the workforce between men and women and has come to a similar conclusion: “Discrimination for men, as well as against women,” she says, “still plays a role in the availability of job opportunities for women compared to men.”

Student food pantries help fill grocery gaps while removing stigma around food insecurity.

Fighting that misconception is a priority for each of the food pantry’s directors. This year, Danielle Warren from Rutgers Business School is studying the stigma associated with food insecurity and ways to combat that through messaging. By studying food pantry use and attitudes at Rutgers-Newark before and after releasing new messaging about food insecurity, Warren said she will be able to determine whether the messaging is effectively reducing stigma.

Rutgers University–Newark (RU-N) and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) are on track to reach, and in some cases exceed, their Hire.Buy.Live.Newark goals unveiled more than a year ago. A major collective impact initiative, Hire.Buy.Live.Newark was created to dramatically reduce poverty and unemployment in Newark and strengthen the city's economy by 2020.

Perhaps no one embodies the Hire.Buy.Live.Newark initiative more than Yla Eason, an instructor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick (RBS). Eason officially joined the Rutgers faculty in 2017 and moved to downtown Newark in 2018. She teaches two undergraduate classes, one on advertising and another on marketing for nonprofit organizations. As part of her advertising class, students have created campaigns for Forward Ever Sustainable Business Alliance, a Newark-based nonprofit, targeted at other Rutgers students to get them to sign up for a “Shop Newark” cash rewards card.

“Through frequent meetups, we are attempting to change the purchasing culture at Newark’s large institutions by introducing, and in some cases reintroducing, procurement managers to Newark suppliers of goods and services,” stated Kevin Lyons, professor of professional practice at RBS, and director of its Public-Private Community Partnership Program. The principal investigator of extensive research into the breadth and depth of Newark’s network of more than 400 manufacturers, Lyons has been working for several years with regional collaborators to improve key business functions of Newark-based manufacturers. “Significant inroads have been made in the print and paper industries. We’re making noticeable progress in food, catering, textile, and apparel.”

Developers waiting to learn about tax treatment of Opportunity Zone investments in New Jersey may get some answers on Monday when Gov. Phil Murphy is expected to join US Sen. Cory Booker on stage at an Opportunity Zones conference being sponsored by the Rutgers Center for Real Estate at the Hyatt Regency hotel here, according to Ted Zangari, chair of the real estate practice at Sills Cummis & Gross, a commercial law firm with New Jersey offices in Newark and Princeton.

Amazon’s new convenience store Amazon Go’s design offers shoppers an eerie freedom. Breezing out of a store without breaking stride feels efficient but also a little like shoplifting. Less perceptibly, the cameras and shelf sensors also log data that provides Amazon a remarkable view of what people do in a physical store.

The success of other companies that use technology to merge online and offline customer tracking suggests that Amazon could reap considerable benefits. Stacy Smollin Schwartz, a professor at Rutgers Business School, points to Starbucks’ popular mobile app, which uses loyalty points and personalized challenges to lure customers into stores, and Disney’s MagicBand wristbands that track visitors’ perambulations around theme parks. Both have shown that a digital lens on a person’s real-world actions can open up new ways to change their behavior.

For Amazon, that might mean sending people targeted promotions through the Amazon Go app—for example, to encourage someone who grabs a daily breakfast sandwich to also drop by for lunch. “Knowing people’s habits and being able to individually try to manipulate those habits to increase the individual loyalty and profitability of each customer is very valuable,” says Smollin Schwartz.

Auditchain is preparing to launch the MVP of the DCARPETM Explorer reporting environment and will use it to live stream the reporting of its own financial statements and internal continuous audit analytics. This will show the world what layer 2 of the Decentralized Continuous Audit & Reporting ProtocolTM “DCARPETM “ looks, feels and functions like. All data will be actualized, be presented in near real-time and not fictitious.

Which influencers and websites do you follow to keep up to date with the latest developments?

As a company, we follow the Rutgers CAR Lab and Dr. Miklos Vasarhelyi, the head of the lab along with his partner Michael Alles, each of whom are renowned experts in the field we address.

The result is a dining scene that, in the words of Morris Davis, a Rutgers professor who studies the economics of real estate and housing, is “diseased.” And more problematic still, the laws are seen by local officials as holding back efforts to revitalize downtowns and attract new, often younger residents.

And to those who fear the death of BYOBs, should the law change, Rutgers professor Davis said the market should decide.

"If the marketplace wants BYOBs, restaurateurs will choose to have BYOBs. Let the marketplace decide. Let's see what happens. In every other state, there are hardly any BYOBs. Maybe BYOBs aren't that great."

Best for Government Employees

In the next few years, roughly a third of the government workforce will qualify for retirement, creating vacancies in agencies and departments at the local, state and federal levels of government. The need for qualified governmental accountants has never been greater, and a Rutgers Master of Accountancy in Governmental Accounting offers a great credential for candidates who want to fill those jobs. Rutgers Business School provides the same tuition rate for out-of-state students that it does for those who live in the state and enroll in the online Master of Accountancy in Governmental Accounting program.

Caliburn, a supercomputer with the computational power of more than 10,000 standard desktop computers, is catalyzing diverse, innovative research at Rutgers University and across New Jersey, according to the Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute.

At Rutgers Business School, Gyorgy Matyasfalvi, a recent graduate of Professor Jonathan Eckstein’s group, built software tools for writing code that would be simple and readable yet run efficiently on hundreds or thousands of processors. Caliburn fulfilled an essential role in validating the research results on example problems involving planning the growth of electric power grid systems under thousands of possible demand scenarios.

Bitcoin was perhaps the hottest investment story of 2017, rising roughly 500 percent last year to a peak of more than $19,000 per coin. The digital currency’s precipitous drop in 2018 has cooled much of the speculative fervor, but it’s unlikely that the cryptocurrency is dead. Nor is it likely to replace the US dollar anytime soon, if ever, as the world’s dominant currency. The truth is likely somewhere in between.

Speaking at the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO’s) forum at Rutgers Business School, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rudolf Leuschner, associate professor at Rutgers University’s Department of Supply Chain Management, suggested that the added cost could prompt ocean carriers to focus on serving only two or three ports, including the largest, on the US East Coast, rather than stopping at several ports as a vessel moves along the coast.

“If I am a ship [carrier] now stopping at every major port, starting in Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, etc., as I make my way up to New York, ­New Jersey, I think I am going to consider skipping some of these ports if every time I am wasting miles, wasting fuel,” he said. “We are going to see a selection process where some of the more important, or bigger, ports are going to receive more traffic while the smaller ports are going to see a decrease in traffic.”

Authentic Leadership for Progress, Peace & Prosperity, the 20th anniversary global conference hosted by the International Leadership Association (ILA), will examine authentic leadership through the lens of "leadership for what" while raising issues and challenges of critical theoretical and practical importance across the spectrum of leadership.

The conference will also feature Keith Grint and Joanne Ciulla, who will each be honored with the ILA's Lifetime Achievement Award for their respective accomplishments in advancing the field of leadership. Grint is a Professor of Public Leadership at Warwick University in Coventry, England whose recent research includes work on mindfulness in high-reliability organizations. Ciulla is Professor of Leadership Ethics and Academic Director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers University Business School. Her book Ethics: The Heart of Leadership is a classic in the field.

Pharm Exec spoke to program leaders from three of the top universities offering MBAs with pharma/healthcare concentrations to outline the structure of their courses and to consider the question that may challenge pharma-oriented students as they pursue the MBA path—that is, to specialize or not to specialize?

Rutgers’ Pharmaceutical Management MBA program was launched in 2000, instigated by a Novartis seminar in the late 1990s that highlighted the concern that the MBAs the industry was recruiting still needed further training in pharma and healthcare. Given New Jersey’s position as “the Mecca of the US pharmaceutical industry,” it was suggested that NJ-based Rutgers develop a suitable program. “We didn’t know at first how long the program would last,” says Mahmud Hassan, PhD, the program’s director, “but quickly we were amazed with the quality of the applicants.”

In the life cycle of businesses — launch, growth, and exit — the first phase is the most challenging, but it's also the most important. First, an entrepreneur has to figure out what he or she wants to do, then determine if there's a market for the venture. Of course, there's also the not-so-small matter of paying for everything.
Brian Bergen, owner of the interior landscaping company Bergen Botanicals, faced those challenges when he decided to launch a business.

“In 2013, I enrolled in the Rutgers University MBA program, and had the idea to identify an underserved market,” he noted. “Even after I later won a $20,000 first-place prize in the Rutgers 2014 Business Plan Competition, I continued to work full-time while I got the business off the ground,” he added.

Bergen’s approach meets most of the items on a virtual checklist designed by Jeffrey Robinson, academic director, The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development; and associate professor, management and global business, Rutgers Business School. “There are five things a person should consider before they start a business,” he said. “I call the process VOICE: Vision, Opportunity, Innovation, Capital and Entrepreneur’s network.”

Medtronic disagreed with the IRS’s use of the comparable profits method (CPM) for 2005 and 2006 audit years, which they argued wasn’t the best method and the results were inconsistent with the arm’s-length standard. The taxpayer filed a law suit in the U.S. Tax Court. On June 9, 2016, the Tax Court issued its decision stating that the IRS’s allocation of income to Medtronic for the intercompany licensing of intangibles was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable. The court rejected the IRS application of CPM and endorsed the comparable uncontrolled transaction (CUT) method applied by the taxpayer.

This paper addresses the IRS deficiency notice in the amount of $1.4 billion, Medtronic’s challenge and victory in the tax court, and the overturn in appeals. The case contains significant implications for tax courts, corporations and tax professionals relating to the application of the best transfer pricing method, the need for strict adherence to the regulations and analytical transparency. Tax analysis could now be subject to rigorous replication requirements.

"Shiller's CAPE: Market Efficiency and Risk" by Valentin Dimitrov and Prem C. Jain

Robert Shiller shows that Cyclically Adjusted Price to Earnings Ratio (CAPE) is strongly associated with future long‐term stock returns. This is often interpreted as evidence of market inefficiency. We present two findings contrary to such an interpretation.

First, if markets are efficient, stock returns should be higher than the risk‐free rate. We find that even when CAPE is in its ninth decile, future 10‐year stock returns, on average, are higher than future returns on 10‐year U.S. Treasurys. Thus, the results are largely consistent with market efficiency.

Second, consistent with a risk–return tradeoff, we find that CAPE is negatively associated with future stock market volatility.