This Month from Knowledge@Wharton

Business Wire, June 29, 2006

PHILADELPHIA -- Knowledge@Wharton:

Stories this month include "Wharton Istanbul Forum: Perspectives on
  Investing in Emerging Markets" and "Is Your Team Too Big? Too Small?
                       What's the Right Number?"

Plus: Knowledge@Wharton podcasts--Prof. Ian C. MacMillan, co-director,
Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs, on "The $60 Billion Question: Warren
          Buffett's $31 billion gift to the Gates Foundation"

This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu), the Wharton School's online research and business analysis journal, include:

Wharton Istanbul Forum: Perspectives on Investing in Emerging Markets

The Wharton Global Alumni Forum, held June 8-9, 2006, focused on the theme of building bridges between markets, cultures and continents. The event was held in Istanbul, a city that straddles both Europe and Asia, and is itself a bridge between ancient civilizations and today's modern secular world. Those who made presentations during the conference included "insiders" -- ranging from Turkey's prime minister to CEOs of Turkish companies -- as well as "outsiders," including members of private equity firms and executives of multinationals like Coca-Cola and Citigroup. All are looking to invest in Turkey and other emerging markets, not just in their economies but in their future as participants in an increasingly interconnected global community. As Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the conference: "In a world where tension and struggle tend to be contagious, we need to find common values. We need to cooperate and communicate. And when we speak of security and peace in the world, we know (that will happen) only if all societies benefit equally from the fruits of globalization." Knowledge@Wharton offers coverage of the Forum, including different perspectives on investing in emerging markets, the challenges facing multinationals in developing countries, the role of logistics in the global marketplace and one man's effort to bring peace to the Middle East. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=SpecialSection&special Id=54 (Due to its length, this URL may need to be copied/pasted into your Internet browser's address field. Remove the extra space if one exists.)

Is Your Team Too Big? Too Small? What's the Right Number?

When it comes to athletics, sports teams have a specific number of team players: A basketball team needs five, baseball nine, and soccer 11. But when it comes to the workplace, there is no hard-and-fast rule to determine the optimal number to have on each team. Should the most productive team have 4.6 members, as suggested in a recent magazine article? What about naming five or six individuals to each team, which is the number of MBA students chosen each year by Wharton for its learning teams? Is it true that larger teams simply break down, reflecting a tendency towards "social loafing" and loss of coordination? Or is it that the best number of people for a team is driven by the task at hand and by the roles each person plays? Research by Wharton faculty offers some insights. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1501.cfm

Getting a Fix on Network Neutrality

On June 8, the House of Representatives squashed an amendment that would prevent telecommunications companies from charging Internet content companies more to deliver enhanced services, such as high quality audio and video content. The amendment would have required "network neutrality," an often-debated term that means different things to different people. To its supporters, like Google, Yahoo and eBay, it means that telecommunications companies should be required to treat all Internet traffic -- whether bandwidth-hogging video or a brief email message -- the same. To companies like Verizon and AT&T, imposing network neutrality would mean that they could not charge for enhanced services on networks that cost them billions of dollars to build. Experts from Wharton and elsewhere weigh in on the issue. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1497.cfm

Are Emerging Markets Striking Back, or Out? The View from Investors

At the start of the Wharton Global Alumni Forum's June 9 panel on investing in emerging markets, Assaad Jabre, acting executive vice president of the International Finance Corp., offered a succinct view of the future: "Emerging markets will be the winner of the globalization process," he stated. "A few years ago, many people were saying that developing countries would be the victims. We know that won't be the case. China, India, Turkey and others are success stories." One major reason for this, he said, "is the growth of the private sector in those countries." Jabre was joined on the panel by Harry Alverson, managing director of The Carlyle Group, who spoke from the perspective of an investor in emerging markets, Tezcan Yaramanci, chairman of Bank Europa Turkey; Yavuz Canevi, chairman of TEB-BNP, and Yosef Shiran, CEO of Israel-based Tefron. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1503.cfm