Research@Smith: Spring 2015
Read the spring 2015 issue of Research @ Smith.
Read the spring 2015 issue of Research @ Smith.
Dancing Elephants and Leaping Jaguars
Using a database of 130,000 Yelp reviews, Smith PhD student Jorge Mejia and two Smith professors have found a way to predict which Washington, D.C., restaurants will close. The technique, which grew out of Mejia’s dissertation, involves new software that can “read” and analyze the contents of online reviews.
Rajshree Agarwal, the Rudolph P. Lamone Chair and Professor in Entrepreneurship, has been named academic director of the new Ed Snider Center for Enterprise and Markets.
Mind the Gap to Motivate Employees
“Once they had appointed one woman, the men seem to have said, ‘We have done our job.’”
— Cristian Dezső, Associate Professor
Teams searching for innovation increase their odds of driving the evolution of a field when they reach out to colleagues — or to research findings — outside their field's area of expertise, a new study from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business suggests.
“It’s a mixed bag. On the one hand you’re excited about the challenge that’s involved, but you also perceive the threats.”
Kathryn M. Bartol
Co-director, Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change (CLIC)
“It’s not always an advantage to be pretty. It can backfire if you are perceived as a threat.”
Marko Pitesa
Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
Billionaire entrepreneur Michael Dell gave good advice when he returned to the University of Texas at Austin as commencement speaker in 2003. “Try never to be the smartest person in the room,” he told the graduates of his alma mater.