Ford set its sights on overtaking Tesla in the electric car market when it announced in May its competitive $40,000 price point for the new F-150 Lightning electric pickup. Scanning consumer sentiment and determining whether it succeeded in winning over popular opinion is typically a difficult process. But new research from Maryland Smith found a way.

Editor’s note: For women with a science or engineering PhD, is academia a more equitable haven, compared to industry? Is it a place where gender gaps narrow in pay and promotions? In recent research published in Nature Biotechnology, Maryland Smith’s Rajshree Agarwal and Waverly Ding, together with Hitotsubashi University’s Atsushi Ohyama, explored those questions. Writing for the journal’s “Behind the Paper” series, they describe their findings. Below is an excerpt of what they wrote. By Rajshree Agarwal and Waverly Ding

Income, educational attainment and political ideology all play into racial disparities in vaccination rates that have left African Americans more vulnerable to COVID-19, Maryland Smith researchers found.In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they write that “structural inequities pose a serious threat to progress” in the push for nationwide vaccination.  

It’s a tale as old as time – David vs Goliath. And this classic underdog story illustrates pioneers of the global mobile money industry as well, according to new research from Maryland Smith.

Companies are always looking for ways to get teams to innovate more and find creative answers to problems. New research from Maryland Smith’s Myeong-Gu Seo finds one way to do so is to encourage employees to bare their feelings – both positive and negative – to team members.

A groundbreaking study from Maryland Smith’s Center for Health Information and Decisions Systems is the first to examine how reciprocity could be used as a motivator to influence behaviors.

For more than a year, many of us have been working remotely as part of a dispersed team. But how efficient are those teams? New research from Maryland Smith’s David M. Waguespack finds that dispersed teams succeed faster than teams working together in the same space. But dispersed teams are slower to abandon failing projects.

A new machine-learning algorithm can sort through social media posts to truly understand how consumers see brands.

In the 1980s, Atari ruled the video game universe. Game developers flocked to the pioneering platform, churning out new titles. But most games developed for Atari were not Pac-Man-level quality, and that ultimately led to the platform’s demise. New research from Maryland Smith pinpoints the best strategies for today’s platforms to curate lots of high-quality content and avoid Atari’s fate.

New research uses AI-based text analysis tool to track how a brand’s reputation rises or falls, moment by moment, on brand-related events.