News & Events

Rice Business professor Wagner A. Kamakura and Rex Y. Du of the University of Houston set out to create a model that makes analyzing data across large panels of time to identify marketing trends quickly, accurately and quantitatively possible.

Millions of Texans will remain unprotected from surprise medical bills despite state lawmakers this year passing one of the nation's most aggressive pieces of legislation to curb such bills. "I worry primarily about those who work for big employers ... for Dell or any other big electronic manufacturers in Austin," said Ken Janda, a Houston-based health consultant and professor at Rice University. "That is why the activity in Washington is so important, because that will fix the other big piece of the puzzle."

“Voter apathy is a civic abdication.”― Charles M. Blow. Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business includes pop-up stores, flash mobs, and Instagram, among other methods in their article: “Innovators Are Finding New Ways To Encourage People To Vote.” The Washington Post cites classroom registration as a good method for getting students to the polls (among other methods.)

Every Sunday morning, Mary Kate goes shopping in the same shop in downtown Washington. A pink and cream store equipped with the usual displays where dozens of dresses, blouses and pants are hung. The only thing missing is the prices. And for good reason, here nothing is for sale. Mary Kate, a pretty 32-year-old green-eyed blonde, is a subscriber to Rent the Runway, a sort of American-Netflix of clothes. For a monthly subscription of 159 dollars (142 euros), she can borrow, in the shop or via the site, four clothes ... (Originally in French)

Some workers come up with new ideas by themselves, but actually doing something with their ideas is often a social process that requires support, collaboration and sponsorship. So a creative idea generally adds value to an organization only if it is recognized by others.

Universities, for their part, also want to ensure that their forays into online programs are consistent with their reputations. Peter Rodriguez, dean of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, told me of Rice’s online M.B.A., “This is the first online degree at Rice University, [so branding] is a big concern. You want to handle it well as you march into this new territory.”

Poets&Quants’ Professor of the Week, Erik Dane of Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, has studied epiphanies and the role of nonconscious thought in decision making. His paper, “Suddenly Everything Became Clear: How People Make Sense of Epiphanies Surrounding Their Work and Careers,” published in the journal Academy of Management Discoveries, attempts to uncover how people understand and utilize their epiphanies.

The documented increase in accidents appears to persist and even increase over time, and that rate has stayed steady through weekdays, weeknights, weekend days and weekend nights, according to John Barrios, assistant professor at Chicago Booth, and Yale V. Hochberg and Hanyi Yi, both of Rice University, in the working paper, “The Cost of Convenience: Ridehailing and Traffic Fatalities.”

"The thrill of using a coupon and getting a better deal than other consumers takes precedence and shoppers lose sight of the actual cost," Utpal Dholakia, a professor of marketing at Rice University, wrote in Psychology Today.

For the sixth year, the University of Houston and Rice University have joined forces to give their student entrepreneurs a program to thrive in. RED Labs and OwlSpark, the two universities' accelerator programs, just concluded their seventh class with a presentation from the companies.