This technical note discusses the various financial services segments in which technology solutions have been used to solve problems, including lending, payments, wealth/investment management, insurance, and regulation. For each of the segments, the note identifies key issues facing the segment, why and how fintech might provide an answer to the challenges faced, and the potential difficulties fin
While the importance of developing a superior brand is a common goal across firms, a key challenge marketers face is the measurement of a brand. What does it mean to measure a brand? It is about the worth of the brand? Is it about the target consumer's perception? Or is it about how well known the brand is? The purpose of this tech note is to: (1) create a conceptual model framing the ways in whic
Knowledge, creativity, adaptability, and the ability to learn are critical necessities in a world in which the pace of change is accelerating. Many of us will choose to or be required to make a career pivot, in which we must reassess our aptitudes, interests, and priorities. It is in these junctures that significant, positive change is possible. This is where transformational learning can occur.
This note explores the first principles of pricing financial contracts. Debt contracts go by many names, but the term bond is used in this note to denote any market-traded debt contract. The note is divided into three sections. The first section examines the simplest of financial contracts?the zero-coupon risk-free bond contract. The second section examines bonds with the additional complexity of
This note provides a description of international flows and positions data, a way to identify extreme capital flow episodes (such as surges and stops), and a straightforward technique to predict whether a country should receive more or fewer portfolio inflows in the coming year based on a notion of benchmark inflows.
One of the fastest-growing areas in business is socially responsible investment (SRI), which incorporates environmental, social, and governance concerns. From 2007 to 2017, SRI increased from $2.71 trillion to over $21 trillion, and in 2017, 84% of all millennials were interested in SRI. Given these trends, how should an entrepreneur with a social mission proceed? One of the first decisions is cho
When a consumer purchases an item, the presumption is that the benefit obtained from it exceeds the price paid—we can think of this difference as the consumer profit. How do consumers calculate this profit, especially when they do not immediately consume the purchased item? This technical note presents a model of mental accounting that gives insights into the process that consumers follow to calcu
The goal of this technical note is to give students tools for thinking about how exchange rates will move over a period of five years into the future. While forecasting exchange rates is arguably more art than science, managers, policymakers, and investors are nonetheless often required to form opinions about the future evolution of exchange rates. Specifically, this note defines the real exchange
This note is an introduction to using macroeconomics in evaluating the long-term growth prospects of emerging markets. Methodologically, it is an application of growth theory, the Solow model in particular, and it gives students the opportunity to practice reading and interpreting the data of international macroeconomics. The textbook Solow growth model and its basic extensions align well with how
Service systems are inherently subject to variability, whether through customers, service providers, suppliers, or unexpected events. Yet customers demand excellence and consistency regardless of this variability. In general, there are two ways to handle this variability?through people or through processes. We use the concept of robustness to describe these two approaches, addressing when one or t
This note on warfare summarizes treatises by Chinese (e.g., Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ca. 500 BC) and Japanese (e.g., Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings, 1643 AD) warriors, reviews their philosophies and leadership lessons, and offers modern applications.
This technical note gives students an overview of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in order to help them understand how these fields can contribute to the future of marketing. To provide context, students are first introduced to the history of AI and the basic parameters of AI, ML, and deep learning (DL). The differences between ML and statistical modeling are also described
