Stanford GSB News

September 2009

Marketing

Courting So-So Customers Can Be Good for Business

Marketers often lavish attention on their best customers, but Stanford Graduate School of Business researchers James M. Lattin and V. Srinivasan suggest it may be more cost effective to increase spending on clients who only occasionally use their products or services.

Customers Can't Buy It If They Don't Know It Exists

Rock groups can lose as much as 40% of their potential sales because consumers don’t know enough about them, says the Stanford Business School’s Alan Sorensen. There are lots of crowded markets out there where lack of information skews sales.

Technology

Services Market Is Key to Open Source Software

Open source software has become a major and fast-growing presence in the computer industry. Professor Tunay Tunca of Stanford Graduate School of Business and his co-authors argue that the key factor in whether to create open source software is the strength of the market for support, integration, and related services supporting such programs.

Behavior

Being Jilted Can Make You Yearn More—or So You Think

Being rejected increases many people’s motivation to pursue that elusive objective. But there’s a catch, say Ab Litt, Uzma Khan, and Baba Shiv of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Being rebuffed, in fact, makes people less fond of what it is they think they want. Once they obtain the desired goal, many are quick to lose interest in it.

Media Multitaskers Pay a Mental Price

Think you can talk on the phone, send an instant message and read your email all at once? Stanford researchers say even trying may impair your cognitive control.

Environmental Issues

Saving Resources Could Start Today with Retrofitting Old Cars and Trucks

Cars and trucks powered by domestic electricity rather than imported oil is an exciting but daunting vision. The first step could be retrofitting one million vehicles to run on electricity as well as gas, say Stanford Business School Professor Robert A. Burgelman and Lecturer Andrew S. Grove, former chairman of Intel. They describe a student project to find ways to reduce oil demand.

Half of the Fish Consumed Globally Is Now Farm Raised

Farm-raised seafood now accounts for 50% of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report. Yet the success of aquaculture is putting a significant strain on marine resources by consuming large amounts of wild fish harvested from the sea to feed the farm-raised varieties.

How To

Job Hunter’s Toolbox

Resources and video tips from the Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA Career Management Center.

How to Tell a Story
(A Case by Professor Jennifer Aaker and Victoria Chang)

Stories are all around us. Stories move us, make us feel alive, and inspire us to be more than we would be otherwise. Learning how to tell a story cannot guarantee the reaching of truth, but it can help you connect with your audience, move your audience, and make your material more memorable. Traditionally, business people persuade using only the left side of the brain, or reason. However, persuasion occurs just as much (if not more) through emotion. By developing the right side of the brain, engagement can be better built through uniting an idea with an emotion. And the best way to do this is by telling a compelling story

Books

A Professor’s Lasting Influence

Disillusioned by seeing poverty daily in the slums of Brazil, and unsustainable charity to aid the poor in Africa, Jacqueline Novogratz entered Stanford Graduate School of Business hoping to "gain the confidence and skills" to fuse the business and nonprofit worlds. There she met John Gardner, a professor emeritus, who mentored her until his death in 2002 at age 89 . In her 2009 autobiography, The Blue Sweater, the founder of the Acumen Fund describes what she learned from Gardner.

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