See ya next year

We were pleased to see that the well-regarded local blog Pittsblog picked up on news of our new entrepreneurship initiative. Thanks.

This will likely be our last post until after the New Year. Enjoy the holidays and travel safe.

Jonathan Potts

The write way to do business

According to estimates from the University of California at Berkeley, businesses around the world churn out approximately 232.9 billion documents every year. Add to that the roughly 31 billion emails people send around the world daily, with only a portion of it for business, and you're talking about a lot of writing. And it's increasing. Some estimate the number of paper office documents alone increased 43 percent between 2002 and 2003. No doubt about it--we're writing more in business.

Business schools have taken note. This recent Associated Press story discussed the Fanning Center for Business Communication at the University of Notre Dame, run by my colleague Jim O'Rourke. As Jim notes in the article, writing can create serious issues, especially when it comes to making money and saving money in business. Two studies by Watson & Wyatt suggest that communication influences the bottom line. Their 2003-04 study found that "A significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a 29.5 percent increase in market value."  Their 2004-05 study found "evidence that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance."

As we track these trends and studies at the Tepper School of Business and the Center for Business Communication (CBC), the management communication faculty continue to work hard to advance effective communication strategies. The CBC supports strategic communication in organizations and business schools by encouraging research, promoting best practices, and fostering training and development programs that help students and people in business communicate more successfully.  

In Tepper School business writing courses, the faculty teaches our undergraduates and MBAs how to develop a clearer understanding of what business audiences need and want in documents. We work with them to create the kinds of upfront scaffolding, structuring, and planning necessary to create stronger business communication. We also use our writing assignments to provide a vehicle that fosters critical thinking as students examine business problems and communicate business solutions. And, since people in business are constantly selling ideas, plans, proposals, and other ideas, our faculty pushes them to enhance their rhetorical abilities, making sure they have a stronger sense of how to persuade and convince business audiences.

We're happy to see some nice results. In 2004, Tepper students competed in a series of business plan competitions, and brought home over $352,000 in prize money, and Tepper became the first business school to ever have two of its student teams win both first and second place in the prestigious international Moot Corp competition, beating out teams from around the globe. This year, a surgeon, coming back to school to complete an MBA, led a Tepper team and took first place again in this World Cup of business plan competitions. Perhaps more importantly, these Tepper students have communicated successfully enough to have raised several million dollars from venture capitalists, and the companies are up and running - a winning combination of solving business problems and then selling the solutions.

(This was written by Thomas Hajduk, the director of the Center for Business Communication and an associate professor of management communication and entrepreneurship in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon. It was submitted by Geof Becker, director of media relations for the Tepper School of Business.)

Saving lives or costing them?

The Food and Drug Administration is holding a hearing into whether certain kinds of antidepressants make some adults more likely to commit suicide, and the New York Times reports that the issue will be even more contentious than when the agency considered the same issue among adolescents.

In 2004, the FDA performed a meta-analysis of the results of randomized clinical trials of antidepressants and concluded that the drugs led to increased suicidal behaviors and thoughts, which it termed "suicidality," among children and adolescents. As a result, the FDA required manufacturers to place a black box warning on the labels of antidepressants - the strongest regulatory action the agency can take short of an outright ban. This has led to a decline in prescriptions of antidepressants for children and adolescents.

Carnegie Mellon Statistics Professor Joel Greenhouse, along with researchers at Ohio State University, has received a five-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to investigate the link between antidepressant use and suicidality among adolescents. A study published in April by the research team suggested that the FDA may have overstated the risk to most children and adolescents, and that only patients suffering from certain disorders, taking a specific class of antidepressants, were at increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. (There is no link, by the way, between suicidality and suicide itself.)

You can read more about Greenhouse's work here. To arrange an interview, email me at jpotts@andrew.cmu.edu.

Jonathan Potts

Death of a dictator

Journalists, historians and foreign policy experts are sorting out the legacy of former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who died Sunday. Pinochet came to power in 1973 as part of a right-wing military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Pinochet ruled Chile until 1990, and his regime was responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of political opponents.

Silvia Borzutzky, teaching professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon, has written extensively about Chilean economic development and social security policies, and is available to discuss with reporters Pinochet's death and his continuing influence on Chilean society. Borzutzky's most recent book is "After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Democracy and Market," which she co-edited with Lois Hecht Oppenheim.

You can email Borzutzky at sb6n@andrew.cmu.edu or you may contact me at jpotts@andrew.cmu.edu.

Jonathan Potts