Kellogg Insight

“You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.”

Though these words by American businessman Harvey Mackay are mostly meant to be provocative, they’re not too far off from capturing what it’s like to navigate the business world today.

Whether it’s a higher salary, a better deal, or the right to give a key presentation—getti...

“It’s the economy, stupid.” For the past three decades, this phrase has been a reliable shorthand for describing what voters really care about.

But these days, political rhetoric often centers on cultural flashpoints like religion or immigration instead of the economy. This tendency to highlight cultural issues over economic ones is surpris...

The business of Wall Street used to be very slow.

Stocks were bought and sold in person. Clerks manually recorded transactions. And fleets of messengers hand-delivered bond certificates. Trading hours were limited to five to six hours a day so that the rest of the financial industry could keep up with the paperwork.

Today, technology...

As video games become increasingly popular, they present a great opportunity to teach a variety of subjects. But that leaves companies attempting to both teach and entertain in a bind. Push the educational content too hard, and players might check out. But dial up the fun factor to increase engagement, and the educational mission could get lost.

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You can either help build cars or you can manage the workers who build them. You can write code or set the five-year roadmap for an entire team of coders. You can care for patients or oversee the hospital’s growth.

In short, you can be an expert—an “individual contributor”—or you can be a manager.

“There is this well-known idea that ...