Is Business Broken?

Where does innovation begin? What are the critical factors driving innovation today and tomorrow? And what happens when federal funding gets shaky, the IPO market stalls, and political uncertainty rattles an entire industry? A century and a half after Boston University Professor Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone, questions around the innovation economy are more urgent than ever.

At a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, host Curt Nickisch sits down to explore these questions with Dr. Melissa Gilliam, President of Boston University; Kendalle Burlin O'Connell, CEO & President, MassBio, and Elizabeth Jurinka, Operating Director, Healthcare Policy, Vistria PRG.
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Ocean shipping carries close to 90% of global trade, and it accounts for about 3% of global emissions. The International Maritime Organization has set ambitious targets to reduce those by 20% by 2030, by 70% by 2040, and reach net zero by 2050.

Ships are expensive and pay for themselves over decades, and the technology for green fuels is still developing. What are you supposed to do if you're a shipping company? Do you invest early and take on the risk? Do you drag your feet? And why should we be thinking about the shipping industry in the first place?

Host Curt Nickisch unpacks this question and more with Ravi K. Mehrotra and Amulya Mohapatra from the Foresight Group; Chris Wiernicki, independent industry consultant and the former Chair and CEO of the American Bureau of Shipping; Valerie Thomas, professor of industrial engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology; and Justin Ren, Associate Professor of Operations and Technology Management at BU Questrom.

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We are living through a massive migration of wealth. More and more capital is leaving public markets and flowing into private equity. There's even a growing push to let everyday investors put their retirement savings into private markets. But as private equity's footprint expands, so does the debate over who actually benefits.

Has private equity made the economy more efficient, innovative, and productive — or has it become a system for extracting wealth at the expense of workers, consumers, and communities? Can private equity be a force for good? And if this is where the money is flowing, what rules and safeguards do we actually need?

Host Curt Nickisch unpacks this question and more with Danny Wadhwani, Private Equity investor and Co-founder at ThinkLite; Gretchen Morgenson, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist from NBC News; and Thomas Wollmann, Associate Professor in Markets, Public Policy, & Law at Boston University Questrom School of Business.

Related reading: 

Painful Bargaining: Evidence from Anesthesia Rollups

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Exciting news! Is Business Broken? has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Business category!

We couldn't be prouder of all of our listeners who helped make this possible. And with this nomination, we're up for a People's Voice award.

We’d be so grateful if you’d take a moment to vote for us: https://wbby.co/57452N.

The voting period ends this Thursday, April 16th. Thank you so much! 
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AI is already making its way into healthcare, from helping doctors write notes to interpreting medical images and managing growing amounts of patient data. As one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S., healthcare is quickly becoming a major testing ground for these tools.

As tech giants roll out health-focused chatbots and tools, patients and providers face big questions: Is AI giving doctors back the time and presence that the business of medicine stripped away? Or will it become another lever for consolidation and control in a care system that doesn’t always reward real value?

Host Curt Nickisch unpacks this question and more with cardiologist and author Eric Topol, anesthesiologist and pain physician Sunny Jha, Microsoft Health Futures principal researcher Michael Hansen, and BU Questrom professor Carey Morewedge.

Related readings: 


AI chatbots versus human healthcare professionals: a systematic review and meta-analysis of empathy in patient care


ChatGPT Health performance in a structured test of triage recommendations


Protecting Physicians From AI Impostors | Think Global Health


GenAI and the psychology of work

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