SMITH BRAIN TRUST — It might be the biggest but least-talked-about drag on the U.S. economy and, paradoxically, it might be why your equity portfolio looks so good, with perky stock prices, cushy buybacks and better-looking dividends. It’s called short-termism, or quarterly capitalism. It’s what happens when companies focus on returning money to shareholders each quarter, rather than spending money on productivity improvements or on research and development that could result in the next big innovation.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — If you want to meet new people, leave your “wingman” at home and go out alone. People will think you are more open-minded, curious and interested in the world and be more likely to strike up a conversation with you. That’s the finding of new research from Rebecca Ratner at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and Smith marketing PhD student Yuechen Wu. 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Information systems professor Louiqa Raschid learned valuable lessons from her involvement in developing the Sahana Open Source system for natural disaster recovery management that was used effectively for such events as Superstorm Sandy. Currently, she’s leading an effort to monitor and avert a different disaster type — a financial crisis.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Those annual employee performance reviews can be pretty stressful. But what if instead of being a once-a-year thing with just your boss, they were every day, with everyone you work with? JPMorgan Chase & Co. is revamping the way it evaluates its 240,000 employees, deploying a mobile app that will let colleagues across the organization send and receive instant feedback about each other any time.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — There’s no question that internet advertising is increasingly vital for business survival. The question is: Where do you start? And how can you be sure that your advertising dollars are reaching the right audience?

Gender diversity can improve a firm's performance, research shows, but consensus is fleeting as to why a lack diversity persists on corporate boards.

Investing in CRM and Analytics Key to Paradigm Shift in Product Innovation 

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Wall Street responds to surprises, but not always in intuitive ways. Share prices go up at the firm level when a company issues a stronger than expected earnings report, which makes sense. But the opposite often happens at the aggregate level when companies collectively exceed expectations. Share prices can drop instead of rise.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Uber has amassed a string of negative headlines in recent months. But Brent Goldfarb, a management and entrepreneurship professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, says the future of the ride-sharing app will hinge on something else.

SMITH BRAIN TRUST — Has Starbucks figured out a way to entice its devoted morning-coffee crowd to come back later in the day? The Seattle-based retail chain is rolling out a line of ice cream coffee treats — called affogatos — at 100 stores across the country, betting that a more decadent coffee treat will inspire an afternoon or evening splurge.