All Insights Articles

Over the last few decades, society has started to take on some of the environmental problems caused by industrialization. But sometimes solving one problem creates or aggravates another. Yale environmental chemist Paul Anastas argues that managers who take a systemic approach to sustainability are needed to create lasting solutions.

Somehow ice and cold water have become the social media phenomenon of the summer. Millions of people have shivered and screamed while dumping buckets of ice over their own heads, and a medical charity has tens of millions of dollars raised as a result. Yale Insights spoke with Yale economist Florian Ederer to try to make sense of all of this.

Modeling the economic consequences of climate change is difficult, uncertain work. In addition, any result is sure to be subjected to political attack. For decades, Yale's William Nordhaus has been developing models that can inform policy decisions.

Laboratory experiments have suggested that, counterintuitively, having both an internal motivation for completing a task and an external reward makes performance weaker. A study by Yale SOM’s Amy Wrzesniewski tested this idea in the real world, by examining how the motivations of West Point cadets affected their performance. The results have strong implications for how leaders can get the best performance from their organizations.

What kinds of motives are most conducive to success? In a New York Times op-ed, Professor Amy Wrzesniewski and coauthor Barry Schwartz discuss their research looking at the motives of new West Point cadets and how they relate to success as Army officers.

Will the rising tide of mobile ad spending lift all media-company boats? Or will only the shrewd and the quick be able to capitalize on the trend toward more media consumption on mobile? Facebook’s Carolyn Everson describes how the company has made itself mobile-first.

Former Spanish prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero discusses Spain’s long, difficult recovery from the global economic crisis and the lessons of the crisis for the future of the European Union.

Green tech investors want to put their money behind firms with the potential to disrupt their industries and bring both positive environmental impacts and financial success. But what’s disruptive is by its nature unprecedented and unpredictable. How do investors assess the potential of a green technology company?

Yale SOM’s David Bach finds five key factors behind Germany’s victory at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil—and they’re all about smart management.

Sustainability leaders often have to interact with a wide range of stakeholders with varied interests and incentives. They need to figure out the best way to engage, communicate, prioritize, and implement—in other words, to persuade. According to a panel of sustainability executives, that can mean sidestepping the language and baggage of sustainability entirely.