review.chicagobooth.edu | On this episode of The Big Question, Chicago Booth's Jean-Pierre Dubé and Rise Interactive's Jon Morris discuss how data analysis is changing marketing and pricing.

review.chicagobooth.edu | Chicago Booth's Luigi Zingales and George Mason University's Tyler Cowen discuss the market power wielded by digital platforms, and how to promote competition.

review.chicagobooth.edu |Change is necessary for virtually every organization, and yet also often painful for the people involved.

The disparity in wealth between the top and lower echelons of households in the US and other countries has garnered a great deal of research and commentary. But how easy is it to move from one echelon to another—and what could we do to facilitate upward movement? University of Chicago's Ariel Kalil and Ufuk Akcigit join Chicago Booth's Amir Sufi to discuss how early-childhood development, innovation, and inequality affect social mobility. | review.chicagobooth.edu 

Many entrepreneurs hope to attract the attention—and support—of venture capitalists, but very few of them will. What are VCs looking for in their investments?

Technology is providing an ever-expanding menu of options for communicating with coworkers. Yet in spite—or perhaps because—of those tools, many companies suffer from cultures of poor communication. Hal Weitzman sits down with Chicago Booth faculty Ayelet Fishbach, Nicholas Epley, and Heather M. Caruso to find out what causes miscommunication inside and outside the office, and what we can do to fix it.

As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, the ramifications of its departure remain anything but clear. What does Brexit mean—not only for the future of the EU and for the British economy, but for Western democracy? On this episode of The Big Question, Hal Weitzman is joined by Chicago Booth's Christian Leuz, Randall S. Kroszner, and Lubos Pastor to discuss the factors that led to Brexit and the outcomes we can expect from it.

Is leadership an innate quality, or can you turn yourself into a better leader? Chicago Booth’s Harry L. Davis and George Wu, along with leadership consultant Nancy Tennant, discuss what professionals can do to improve their leadership skills, including collecting data, soliciting feedback, and performing experiments.

Improvements in computing power, innovations in data analysis, and changes in how consumers interact with brands and products have ushered in the era of "big data" in business. But now that marketers and other executives have access to enormous caches of customer data, what are they doing with it? Chicago Booth's Sanjog Misra and a trio of industry experts join Hal Weitzman to explore what new opportunities and challenges have arisen due to data breakthroughs.

From Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the mortgage-interest tax deduction, the US federal government plays an enormous role in the country's housing market. But what effect is it having—and is there cause for it to be involved at all? Chicago Booth's Robert H. Topel and Eric Zwick discuss how government intervention affects prices, homeownership, home size, and more.

Are great CEOs born or made? Can you learn the skills to become a corporate leader, or does it take inherent talent? Have we got CEO hiring practices right, and how should we change them if we want to make the C-suite more diverse?

Do market prices generally reflect all available information? Or are they prone to bubbles? On this episode of The Big Question, two members of the Chicago Booth faculty—Nobel laureate Eugene F. Fama and Richard H. Thaler, the father of behavioral economics—discuss how markets behave (and misbehave). Along the way they discuss value stocks versus growth stocks, the existence of economic bubbles, and the curious case of the CUBA Fund.

In the past few years, politics in developed countries seem to have become increasingly polarized. In the US, one of the presidential hopefuls on the Democratic side is a self-proclaimed socialist, while the Republican contest has been dominated by two anti-establishment candidates. Why is all this happening, and is polarization the new normal?

The media failed to warn the public of the 2007-10 financial crisis, although it was at least a decade in the making. Are the media more interested in breaking news and 'scoops' than they are in holding companies and industries accountable? In this episode of the Big Question, Dean Starkman, author of "The Watchdog That Didn't Bark," joins Chicago Booth's Guy Rolnik to discuss whether media 'scoops' are bad for society.

Wage disparities based on gender have been outlawed in the United States for more than 50 years—yet women earn on average 84 percent of what men earn, according to the Pew Research Center. While the gender pay gap has narrowed since the 1970s, progress has stalled since about 2006. In this episode of the Big Question, Chicago Booth professors Marianne Bertrand and Waverly Deutsch discuss the gap.

James Robinson of Chicago Harris joins Chicago Booth's Randall Kroszner and Amir Sufi to discuss the state of the global economy.

The reality for more than two-thirds of entrepreneurs is that their startups will go out of business within the first few years. Why do so many startups fail, and how do you foster a startup culture without blinding people to the harsh realities of entrepreneurship? Hal Weitzman is joined by Scott Meadow, Waverly Deutsch, and Craig Wortmann—all professors of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth—in a panel discussion.

More than eighty percent of big companies in the US and the UK have identified their corporate culture or values, with the same words cropping up again and again. But often the employees of these companies think the stated values do not reflect reality, consider them little more than marketing or perhaps are even unaware they exist. In this episode of The Big Question, Chicago Booth's Luigi Zinagles, Amanda Sharkey and Alain Cohn discuss what corporate culture is and whether leaders can...

Impact investors are often prepared to accept lower-than-market financial returns, but would it make more sense to target profits first and foremost, and then give the proceeds away? Chicago Booth's Steven N. Kaplan and Rob Gertner are joined by Tasha Seitz, Chief Investment Officer at Impact Engine, and Liz Michaels, Chief of Staff and Director of ESG/SRI at Aperio Group, to discuss impact investing.

Almost every big company in America claims that innovation is in its DNA. Yet very few established corporations are truly innovative. In this live episode of The Big Question, Carol Bramson, Jeff Wicoxon and Chicago Booth's Greg Bunch and Michael Gibbs discuss the challenges to promoting innovation, when to experiment, and how corporations can overcome established processes and attitudes.

From activity trackers like Fitbit to the data crunchers in hospital systems, the amount of information being produced about our health is growing fast. David DiLoreto of Presence Health, Jonathan C. Silverstein of NorthShore University HealthSystem, Harold Pollack of University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Dan Adelman of Chicago Booth discuss if big data is making us healthier. This recording originally aired on The Big Question Video Series in May, 2015.

Deadlines have the power to motivate us and give us focus, but they can also produce stress and sleepless nights, not to mention brinkmanship and immobilization. So are deadlines really the best way for managers to get the most out of their employees? And are there better ways of using them that can capture some of the positives, with less of the stress? In this episode of the Big Question, Chicago Booth's Ayelet Fishbach, Oleg Urminsky and Devin G. Pope discuss how deadlines work, and how to...

Meetings have earned a bad reputation in the modern workplace—they're dreaded for being long, pointless wastes of time. But meetings don't have to be a drain on productivity. Joel Mokyr and Leigh Thompson of Northwestern Kellogg join Reid Hastie and Harry L. Davis of Chicago Booth to discuss the potential pitfalls of group work. This recording originally aired on The Big Question Video Series in March, 2015.

Brands are estimated to account for about one third of the stock market value of companies in the S&P 500 index. A company's brand is often thought of as a critical part of its business strategy. Ann Mukherjee of PepsiCo joins Ann McGill and Pradeep Chintagunta of Chicago Booth to discuss the value of a brand. This recording originally aired on The Big Question Video Series in February, 2015.

It's hard to predict the pace of technological innovation, but there are steps we can take to make it more or less likely. Robert Gordon and Joel Mokyr of Northwestern University join Chad Syverson and Steven J. Davis to discuss the influence of innovation on the US economy. This recording originally aired on The Big Question Video Series in January, 2015.