Is Business Broken?

Generic drugs are the absolute backbone of American healthcare. They make up roughly nine out of 10 of all prescriptions filled in the US, keeping essential medications affordable for millions of Americans. But affordability doesn't guarantee availability.

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists lists more than 150 drugs in short supply. So why is it so hard to keep generic drugs on hospital shelves and in medicine cabinets? And how can we build a supply chain that is both affordable and reliable?

To explore these questions, host Curt Nickisch is joined by four experts: Rena Conti, professor at BU Questrom; Marta Wosińska, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; Monica Gorman, co-president of Crowell Global Advisors and former White House official; and Jill Bradshaw, general manager of Microbial Solutions at Ginkgo Bioworks.
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Clothing helps people signal status and belonging, but that drive has also fueled a global system that produces disposable fashion at a massive scale. 

How did we build a world of disposable fashion? Are our deepest consumer desires fundamentally incompatible with a sustainable planet? And if the market is built on overconsumption, how do we fix it before it smothers us?

In this episode, host Curt Nickisch explores those questions with Nailya Ordabayeva, Associate Professor of Marketing at BU Questrom; Ken Pucker, professor of the practice in sustainability at Tufts University and the former Chief Operating Officer of Timberland; and investigative journalist Dana Thomas.
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Generative Artificial Intelligence can now draft a paper, solve a complex math problem, construct a deck, and polish a cover letter in seconds. But when AI does the work for us, it can separate the finished product from the thinking that went into creating it. As we grapple with how AI is changing the way we learn, we’re also forced to reconsider what learning looks like in the first place. If our traditional proxies for knowledge no longer tell us what someone knows, how do we know what people are actually capable of?

At a live show, recorded at WBUR CitySpace for Boston AI Week, host Curt Nickisch sits down to explore these questions with Maria Flynn, President and CEO of Jobs for the Future, Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, and Chris Dellarocas, the Richard C. Shipley Professor of Information Systems at Boston University.

Related reading:

American Job Quality Study: National Workforce Survey

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More than 70 million Americans now do some form of freelance or gig work. For many, the appeal is flexibility: the freedom to choose when, where, and how much to work. But that flexibility sometimes comes with a cost.

Gig platforms give companies a workforce they can scale up and down with demand, while shifting more of the risk onto workers, who often lack the benefits and protections of traditional employees. In July, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that ride-hailing and delivery platforms were among the largest employers of workers receiving SNAP and Medicaid benefits in 11 states. So is gig work creating a fundamentally new way of working, or simply a new way for companies to organize labor?

In this episode, host Curt Nickisch explores that question and more with Gordon Burtch, professor of information systems at BU Questrom, and David Weil, professor of social policy and management at Brandeis University and former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Obama administration.

Related readings:

Federal Social Safety Net Programs: Millions of Workers, Including Many Employed by Large Employers, Continue to Rely on Medicaid and SNAP

The Dangerous Myth of Flexibility - The American Prospect

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In the age of remote and hybrid work, one question has taken on new urgency: how do you measure productivity when you can’t see it?

From AI-powered engineering dashboards to internal chatbots that log every question an employee asks, companies now have more visibility into the workforce than ever before. These tools are often built with good intentions to help employees grow, collaborate better, and deliver more value. But when workers experience them as surveillance, even the best-designed product can backfire.

How are these technologies actually being used? What are the unintended consequences for trust and morale? What does responsible deployment look like?

In this episode, host Curt Nickisch unpacks these questions and more with Thomas Costa, Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security at the U.S. Government Accountability Office; Rhonda Morris, former Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer at Chevron; Kabrina K. Chang, professor of business law and ethics at BU Questrom; and George Champlin-Scharff, senior business agility and operating model consultant at Scrum Inc.
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