Thought Leadership

The future of health in Sub-Saharan Africa is both uncertain and promising. Life expectancy in this region has increased significantly, and growing economies may provide opportunities for increased financing for health. To effectively improve health in Sub-Saharan Africa, deliberate political investments and African-led models are necessary, as well as robust health systems that can adapt to changing disease and demographic patterns. Community health workers will play a crucial role in achieving universal health coverage and combating pandemics. However, Sub-Saharan Africa remains reliant on foreign financing and must combat corruption and improve domestic health governance to achieve autonomy. Ultimately, interventions to improve health in the region must target the population's changing needs and infrastructure demands.

Most of us tend to judge our colleagues and their professionalism, trustworthiness, credibility, and communication skills through the lens of our own backgrounds and culture. Our families, countries, generations, educations, and the like, all shape how we behave and interpret the behaviors of others.

Research by Juan Bu and Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra shows that new ventures in emerging markets, initially created informally, suffer from costs that persist and constrain a firm's ability to innovate even after they formalize their status. As a result of these informality costs, informally created new ventures are more likely to develop imitative rather than innovative new products. However, being acquired by other firms and improvements in the national innovation system can weaken the persistence of these informality costs, resulting in more innovation. To explain these findings, Bu and Cuervo-Cazurra develop the concept of internal imprinting, which captures how the internal characteristics of a company result in the establishment of practices that persist over time, affecting behavior and innovation. Managers in emerging markets should consider formalizing their firms from the beginning or joining a private business group to mitigate the negative impact of informality on their firms' innovativeness.

Reverse innovation, which involves transferring new ideas and innovations from emerging economies to developed economies, can help fix the American healthcare system, which suffers from high costs, uneven quality, and less-than universal access. Developing countries like India are under great pressure to use their very limited medical resources to serve the greatest number of people, at the lowest cost, while maintaining quality. As a result, a handful of Indian healthcare exemplars have mastered clever ways to simultaneously lower healthcare costs, improve quality, and expand access. Govindarajan and Ramamurti identify their secret sauce and recommend that healthcare organizations in the US and elsewhere consider emulating those strategies and practices.

Research by Juan Bu and Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra shows that new ventures in emerging markets, initially created informally, suffer from costs that persist and constrain a firm's ability to innovate even after they formalize their status. As a result of these informality costs, informally created new ventures are more likely to develop imitative rather than innovative new products. However, being acquired by other firms and improvements in the national innovation system can weaken the persistence of these informality costs, resulting in more innovation. To explain these findings, Bu and Cuervo-Cazurra develop the concept of internal imprinting, which captures how the internal characteristics of a company result in the establishment of practices that persist over time, affecting behavior and innovation. Managers in emerging markets should consider formalizing their firms from the beginning or joining a private business group to mitigate the negative impact of informality on their firms' innovativeness.

In these tricky economic times, asking for a raise may seem even more daunting than it would have even a year ago.

The newest trend on social media platforms is de-influencing—influencers urging followers to think twice about impulse-purchasing certain cult-favorite products, often in favor of cheaper alternatives. However, experts warn that this fad—which may seem rose-colored by its messaging—is just another marketing scheme.

Netflix announced that it's bringing its new anti-password sharing measures to four more countries––Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain––after testing the waters in Central and South America last year. This all comes as the streaming company looks to roll them out more broadly in the coming months.

The collapse of an Interstate 95 bridge in Philadelphia creates not just a traffic problem, it's also a “really serious” supply chain problem—and that's going to hit your wallet, Northeastern University expert Nada Sanders says.

Forced labor is often unidentified and unaddressed in global supply chains because international production networks are complex and obscure. Many companies are not actively tracing their supply chains beyond the first or second tiers, leaving out the complete picture of the origin of their raw materials.