Faculty Viewpoints

Standardization. Harmonization. Coordination. They all sound like good ideas. But in a lecture at Yale SOM, Roberta Romano, the Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, argued that the convergence of banking regulations brought about by the Basel Accords may have had the unintended effect of fueling the financial crisis.

Robert Shiller proposes government spending that inspires a vision of a better future.

One analysis estimated that a smartphone is covered by 250,000 patents. As technology grows increasingly complex, companies must navigate a web of intellectual property protections. Are innovation and competition suffering from the race to create enormous patent portfolios? Professor Stefan Wagner of the European School of Management and Technology (ESMT), a member of the Global Network for Advanced Management, talked with Yale Insights about the consequences of “patent thickets.”

In a Chief Executive magazine commentary, Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld applauds McDonald’s for being forthright about recent performance problems at the company and their plan to address them.

What’s the best way to manage a secret project—one whose stakes, whether diplomatic or business, are very high? And what do your actions tell your opponents about your true intentions?

Every Election Day, politicians sporting flag pins step into voting booths and come out proclaiming their pride in the democratic process. But take a step back and things don’t look so rosy. Between badly run elections and a new wave of “dark money” entering campaigns, reformers fear that the very nature of our democracy is at risk.

In a Fortune magazine op-ed, Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld says that in order to make a comeback, NBC anchor Brian Williams will need to find a new, public mission.

Should organizations favor the dependable efficiency of rules and standards or a less calculated but more flexible operation that bends to accommodate individual situations? How about both?

In a New York Times op-ed, Professor Robert J. Shiller explores the link between people’s feelings of uncertainty about the future and the unusual dynamics at work in today's economic world.

Defense spending has been a key driver of technology and innovation in the United States since the beginning of the Cold War, according to Yale SOM professor Paul Bracken. The Pentagon was a prime funder for the early growth of Silicon Valley and more recently quietly created another technology hub, focusing on defense, in northern Virginia.