The Independent's May MBA supplement includes an article on networking opportunities for women at business schools. Sally Jaeger, assistant dean of the MBA program, comments on the resurrection of a women's mentoring program at Tuck, saying that to date, 250 women have volunteered to be alumnae mentors. Liz Brecht T'05 contributes her point of view as a recent graduate, noting the strength of the alumni network: "There are 7,000 alumni that want nothing more than to hire other Tuckies," she says. In the same supplement, Dean Paul Danos notes the increasing number of business schools located in—and looking to—Asia. "These new business schools increase awareness of the MBA and its value proposition," he says.

Close article

The annual U.S.News & World Report list of top business schools was published in April and ranks Tuck number 9 overall. In the specialty rankings for programs with excellence in specific areas, Tuck placed number 5 in the general management category and debuted at number 10 in the nonprofit category. This portion of the ranking is based solely on ratings by educators at peer schools. Business-school deans and program heads were asked to nominate up to 10 programs for excellence in each of the specialty categories. The U.S. News ranking is based on both expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research, and students.

Close article

In January, Walt Disney Co. announced that it would acquire Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in a move aimed at bringing the company farther along into the digital era. This puts Pixar Chief Executive Steve Jobs—now a Disney board member—in an awkward position, according to an article in ZDNet News, as Jobs is also CEO of Apple Computer, whose rivals may also seek to distribute Disney and Pixar videos online. Professor Espen Eckbo notes, "It's like sitting on both sides of the table when negotiating.... The only issue is whether the degree of conflict of interest is large enough to raise a red flag." Many are looking to Jobs and his Pixar employees to creatively influence Disney. Professor Anant Sundaram told The Washington Post that he is skeptical of Pixar's influence over the company, stating, "One is hard-pressed to find where a much smaller entity comes in and changes the larger entity.... What happens is the smaller entity and its modes of operating often get squelched."

Close article

In a May Q&A with BusinessWeek Online, Career Development Office Director Richard McNulty fielded questions on recruiting and Tuck's visibility with domestic and international companies. He noted the intense demand that Tuck is seeing in the U.S. and abroad from organizations in strategy consulting, investment banking, private equity and real estate, consumer products and retail, asset management, technology, and private wealth management. "More than 600 companies—from Apple to Deutsche Bank, Starbucks and Novartis—have recruiting relationships with Tuck. About 50 consulting firms are looking to hire Tuckies this year," he says.

Close article

Professor Sydney Finkelstein contributed an article to the March 31 Financial Times on business failure and managing uncertainty. "We are still in our infancy when it comes to understanding uncertainty that arises from leadership, strategy and the internal workings of organizations," he says in the article. "Yet what is more important to a company's survival?" The article presented the idea of an early warning system set in place to identify vulnerabilities that can lead to a company's failure. "Armed with this information, leaders are in a position to make the necessary real-time adjustments before it is too late," he says.

Close article

A March 3 article in The New York Times looks at the system by which Google and Morningstar auctioned their first public shares directly to investors (Dutch auctions) and compares it with a more traditional system (bookbuilding) that involves investment banks underwriting the offering. Professor Kent Womack comments that auctions should be ideal for taking big, well-known companies public. "Smaller companies have more reluctance to go with the method where they're not getting a lot of aggressive salesmanship put on by the investment bank," he says.