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All Insights Articles

  • Design, Test, Spread

    Nicolas Encina ’10 and his colleagues at Ariadne Labs have been demonstrating the potential of a collaborative, multidisciplinary process for designing and scaling simple improvements to healthcare—and also its limits.

    A scrum board covered with sticky notes at Ariadne Labs.
  • Please Mr. Postman

    Some have defended cutbacks to the United States Postal Service, weeks ahead of the election, by citing the USPS’s financial struggles. But the postal service was created to provide a public service, writes Yale SOM’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, not to turn a profit.

    A USPS worker wearing a mask puts envelopes in a mailbox while driving past
  • Smartphone Data Shows How Shared Staff Spread COVID-19 through Nursing Homes

    COVID-19 infections have spread rapidly through nursing homes. A new study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Judith A. Chevalier finds one likely explanation: staff members who work at multiple nursing homes.

    A staff member outside Fair Havens Center nursing home in Miami Springs, Florida, in May 2020. Fifty-four residents of the nursing home have died from COVID-19. Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images.
  • Departures from Convention

    With the Democratic National Convention taking place online, Prof. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld reflects on other conventions Americans have abandoned, and the traditions we’ve let go of, during this tumultuous time.

    The Statue of Liberty at night
  • Study: To Maximize Productivity, Affirmative Action Should Continue Indefinitely

    Maximizing the productivity of the workforce will require ongoing policies to boost minority participation, according to a study by Yale SOM’s Aniko Öry and Michèle Müller-Itten of the University of Notre Dame.

    Wassily Kandinsky's “Circles in a Circle” (1923)
  • A Climate for Change

    Judy Samuelson ’82, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, explores whether this cataclysm will trigger lasting change.

    An illustration of people in business clothes marching with signs
  • In the Second Nuclear Age, Information Advantage Defines the Balance of Power

    More than a massive nuclear arsenal, says Yale SOM strategy expert Paul Bracken, information technology and shifting alliances drive post-Cold War military advantage in an unpredictable, multipolar world.

    A computer-generated image of a missile flying over a landscape
  • Will COVID-19 Worsen Inequality in the United States?

    The path of the pandemic has been shaped by inequality, with poor and minority workers experiencing greater exposure to infection and fewer health protections. Has the policy response helped ease these inequities—or made them worse?

    Outdoor service at a restaurant in New York City on July 30, 2020.
  • Can We Make Recycling Work?

    The ubiquitous blue bin for single-stream recycling obscures a set of tradeoffs and challenges, including contamination that complicates processing and lowers the value of recyclable materials.

    A materials recovery facility (MRF) in Philadelphia in 2017. Photo: Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images.
  • A Federal Program Is Supposed to Keep Midsize Businesses Afloat. Why Isn’t It Reaching Them?

    Yale SOM’s William English explains how the Main Street Lending Program fits into the array of federal stimulus efforts and offers proposals for making it work better.

    The door to a business with a sign reading "Closed due to cororavirus until further notice"