Profs Robert Seamans, Frances Milliken, Hila Lifshitz-Assaf - Faculty Insights: Covid19 & NYC Series
Hi. This, is Bhatia. Wiesen felt and I want to welcome everyone. To another. Edition. Of the, faculty, insights, ANCOVA 19, session, today. We, have an, amazing, and incredibly, packed. Session. For you with four, presenters, I have, my cup haul all of whom are going to offer different perspectives. On remote, work. And remote working in the technology and, policy. And. Organizational. Implications associated. With, it we're, gonna start with Rob Siemens, and then turn, it over to Francis Milliken and then HeLa and then I'm going to finish up so. Rob. I invite, you to start us off. Great. Thank You bhatia so. I'm going to be speaking about the effect of the pandemic on innovation. And some. Public policies, to address at least some of what I think is is going on, so. For, starters there's no question that the effect of the pandemic on innovation, in, the immediate term has been largely negative I've. Planted plenty of anecdotal evidence of, of. Labs that have had to be shut down of R&D, the, ongoing R&D ongoing, experiments, some experiments, that they've been going on for really long periods of time that, have had to shut down so. In the short run for, sure a negative shock to innovation. Longer. Term what we would expect to have happen is, that the innovative effort will shift into new areas again. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of this one, example that I have listed here is that. Following the oil embargo, in the 1970s. It, turns out that as. A result firms. In the u.s. started to invest in new, technologies, including fracking, hi. There's also a lot more, systemic, evidence coming out of the innovation literature, showing. That indeed when you have these large negative shocks the. Leads in the short run to a negative effect on innovation, but longer-term leads to innovation in, new, areas, so. What might be some of these areas, when. It comes to this shock that we're currently experiencing. From the coronavirus, um. First, let me start by just giving a little plug to the NYU. Stern man, an organization's, department we've. Been putting out a series of research briefs around how firms are responding, to, the the ongoing pandemic, and for. Those of you that might be interested there's a link that's provided in the presentation or, you could get by by. Googling, the department, I'm. At least a couple of these research briefs have highlighted, some of the ways in which firms. Are. You. Know shifting their innovative efforts and so three that I'm going to touch on are, remote learning ecommerce. And telemedicine. Now, remote learning of course right now we are we are engaging in some remote learning and. Technologies. Are slowly getting better around, it and I would expect that we'd continue to see some innovation, in this area I'll. Talk more about an e-commerce in just a moment so, telemedicine, what I have at the bottom of the slide, is. A, Google a chart, of Google Trends right so this is searches, for telemedicine. You. See a large spike in, early. March perhaps, no surprise but. What's interesting about telemedicine, is, that it's been around for a long time right, there are many. Physicians. They've, been trying to push telemedicine, many public health organizations that, I've been trying to push it but it really hasn't taken off and part, of the reason for that is that you need adoption. On the physician, side and you, also need adoption, by patients. As. A result, of the pandemic we've had a really big shot. To this and we sort of have moved to this new equity briam where now most, doctors. Offices. Are. Our, sort of telemedicine enabled, and many, patients are starting to use telemedicine so I think we're gonna see a lot more innovation. In this space in. The coming years so, let me talk a little bit about e-commerce. Some. Of what I have to say comes from a recent, NBER. Working paper, and. If there's a link to the paper here. In the slides. So. What's interesting in e-commerce it so we know that there's been a big increase of course in e-commerce a lot more people are engaged in online, purchases. I think all of us now that we're at home a lot more we've been doing a lot more purchasing, online of course, what's. Interesting is how this shifts, employment, from retail, to other sectors and so the sectors that have done really well are.
The Warehousing, and storage sectors that's what you see in that black, line and the figure that I have there and also. It turns out in local, delivery that, there's been a very big increase in employment in local, delivery now, so where's the innovation, here well it turns out that firms. Actually need to invest in a lot of innovation, in terms of. Fitting. Out their warehouses, and fulfillment, centers with new technologies, so we will continue to see a lot of innovation, there and we, also need innovations, in terms of business models because firms don't just have to ship goods to individuals, they have to figure out ways for how to get those goods back if, for some reason the customer doesn't like the good or it's not satisfied, with them right and so this sort of that the backend logistics, is actually an area where I suspect, we'll see a whole lot of innovation, now. There's been some recent research showing, that as individuals shift. Their, purchasing, to online it frees up time for them and. Then the question is will what, is it that they do at that time that, extra time that they have it. Turns out that one of the ways in which people are spending their extra time is, by going out more frequently to local coffee shops and spending, more money at local coffee shops, I suspect. That part of the reason for this is that we. Actually miss, some of the person or person interactions, that we typically, would have engaged in if we have been going to a retail store I think. That they're probably going to be a number of other innovations, in this space or a number of ways at least in which purchasing. Activity, is going to change and that, this is certainly an area where I'm going to keep an eye on so. Just coming back to slide on the. Three areas I listed work remote, learning ecommerce. And telemedicine of course, all three of those require that you have a good internet, internet. Connection, at home. And. Unfortunately that this is an area where as a country, we, have we have fallen behind so. There are many areas of the country that do not have good broadband, access, what. I'm showing in this heat map map here. So. This is on a county-by-county basis. The. Areas that are in color our areas where you have more internet, connections, per household and in later it's fewer Internet, connections, per household if, you see that there's a lot of heterogeneity across, the, country and it, looks like just by eyeballing that said a lot of the heterogeneity, here is, urban, and rural areas, but. When you zoom into urban areas so. Here if you can direct your attention to the West has a figure four over, on the right-hand side so, now we're going to zoom into some urban areas and if you look at the map of Washington, DC, the. Green areas is where there are more internet, connections, red area where, there's fewer Internet connections, and again you see a lot of heterogeneity even. Within an urban environment you. See that in Washington DC Philadelphia. San Antonio, at least in the pictures here and again you can see this across many, different parts of the US now. It turns out that, Internet. Access typically, varies, by income, and so that explains partially. The reason why you have this heterogeneity, so. If you turn your attention to, figure two on. The left hand side of the slide this. Is this is using data from 2014 if we were to look at the data from today it would look still, pretty similar. What. This is plotting out is the percent, of households, that, use internet internet, at home, based. Based on the income side based on the income quintile, in which they fall in and when I find really dramatic, is when you look at the bottom income quintile, only, about half of those households, use, internet at home so this is a huge area, where we, need policy. Interventions. Especially if we're, hoping and expecting that, people are going to take advantage of these new innovations. That we've been talking about. So, in terms of internet access policy, options this is an area that I spent a lot of time doing. Research and writing, for, academic.
Audiences As well as for public as well as for popular. Popular, press audiences, and. So what I've got listed here are three different policies, that potentially, could help to address this I'm. Not going to go into detail right now in any one of these with you know perhaps during the Q&A I'd be happy to talk it more at more, length on any of these but. If you're interested please take a look at a recent article I wrote for Forbes that lays out these, three policies, and, talks about some. Of the pros and cons of these, three different policies. With, that in mind, we're. Sorry with that I guess that's my last slide what, I'm gonna do is I'm going to stop sharing I got to turn this over to my, colleague Francis. Thank. You rob and thank, you botch it for inviting me to participate in this panel discussion. I'm. Gonna talk to you this afternoon a little bit about, koban 19, and the switch to remote work and, some. Of the challenges, that are, inherent, or, that are becoming apparent. As a result of the shift, to remote work. If. You'd asked people maybe a year ago did. They think that, most, Americans would be working from home most, managers. And most companies would have been highly skeptical, of the idea that, remote, work would be. So. Frequent, and, so. Omnipresent. As it is now in fact. In a recent survey almost. 50% of working Americans are, now working from home in April up, from about 15%, precoded. 19 and that, figure is actually probably a little bit higher because, if you look at this chart. About. 10%, of working. Americans so, they've been recently furloughed, or laid off so, at least 50% of Americans, working. Americans, are. Now working from, home. Now. The question, is is remote work here to stay, and we, can look at this from two perspectives one, being the perspective, of companies. And. If you look at some, of what corporate. Executives, have to say such as executives, at Barclays JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, they. Say it's highly unlikely that all, their workers will return, to, the office towers, in New York City and, David. Kenney of the chief executive at Neilson says that they probably plan to use their. New york city offices, primarily, for team meeting spaces rather. Than for an office, work. Turning. To the tech, sector that. Not surprisingly, perhaps. Workers. At Facebook and Google and elsewhere can continue working remotely through 2020. And Twitter. Has said that all, of its employees can actually work remotely forever. If. Their position allows, it allows, them to. Now, how do workers feel about working remotely actually, it turns out they like it, 75, percent of the workers survey, said. That they would like to work remotely at least some of the time and 54. Percent said, that they would like it to be their primary way of working. So. If remote work is here to stay, it's. Important, that we spend some time understanding, the challenges. Of working remotely. Understanding. And addressing these challenges will be critical, to creating the opportunities, that remote work might provide going, forward, and to. Avoiding some of the pitfalls that could characterize remote. Work, to. Foreshadow heelas. Talk a bit a. Commonality. Between the two of us is the idea that you cannot just do more of the same when, you're trying to innovate and adapt. To a major change and expect to be successful, it's. Important, to understand some of the challenges that remote, work. Has. Inherent, in it the, first of these you're probably familiar with and is called zoom fatigue. Anecdotally. People are reporting, that they experience, zooming, for long periods, of time to be exhausting. The. Question, is why is that well, it turns out that we're not meant to video chat actually. Video. Chat means that we have to work a lot harder to process people's. Facial expressions. And. Figure out how people are reacting to what we are saying and also. A zoom, chats often, lack body. Language, that conveys. A lot of nonverbal ideas. About what a person is trying to say so soon. Fatigue, means. That we're working a lot harder to, process information and. Especially to, try to process. What. We might call nonverbal. Cues. As as we're listening to someone speak so, that's the first challenge the, second, challenge is distraction. Now. That we're working from home and especially. Drink, ovid 19 our children, are taking, classes from home or going to school from home or not as the case may be. We. Can be distracted by our kids we can be distracted. By our pets by our partner, of our, and, also. We may engage in multitasking. While we are zooming. Such as answering emails or texting.
The. Bottom line is distraction. And multitasking. Negatively. Affect your ability to pay attention and to concentrate, especially, on complex. Tasks, so, so far I think we have two challenges. In remote. Work that have to do with a cognitive processing, of information the, Zoom fatigue, showing. That it's. More difficult to, process, information and. Zoom chats possibly, and then there's the role of distractions. A. Third. Challenge, is what I call lack of common ground, it's. Easier, to communicate effectively when, people with people when you have common ground common, ground refers to the idea that participants, in a conversation. Shares some common understandings. And assumptions. This. Is harder to do in remote communication. Because people are less certain, about how. People feel about issues. Or about, how, what. Other people know about issues. And. So there may be this hesitancy. To. To, talk. In. Zoom communications. In part because you're not sure, that. You share common, assumptions, with the people in the, conversation. Related. To that is. A challenge, that has to do with the, possibility, that it will be harder for upper managers, upper, level managers to get, information, from. Employees, about, problems. That are emerging or issue that emerging, in the organization. We already know from. Past research that's speaking up about problems, or issues, to. One's boss is, perceived. As as risky. And. My. Hypothesis. Would be that it would be perceived as even more risky, in. Remote. Work, because, of the challenges, of lack of common, ground and the challenges, of being unable to see, how people are reacting to. The points that you're trying to make so. This may. Impart, handicap, upper. Level managers, in terms of getting, access. To complete. Information, about what's going on in. The organization a. Final. Challenge I'll call inclusion.
Challenges, And the challenge is how do you make sure that people feel included when you're unable to see them face to face for. Example in the elevator, or at an office lunch so. Taya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft says. That what he misses the most about working in person, is when he walks into a physical meeting, you're, talking to a person that's next to you you're able to connect with them for about two minutes before and after this, is very tough to replicate, virtually, as are some of the other soft skills, crucial. To managing, and mentoring in. Fact a recent, research studies, suggests that. That. People are actually spending more time communicating. With people they know very very well now. During. This, period of remote, work and less. Time communicating, with people that they do not know well. So. The challenges, of this, abrupt change to remote work are captured, on this slide the five challenges and, I think a key to, being, able to take, advantage of the opportunities, that were remote, work provides, going, forward, will, be trying, to figure out creative, solutions, for, dealing with some of these challenges, so, thank, you for allowing me to participate in, this panel discussion, and I'm now going to stop sharing my screen and, turn it over to Sheila. Thank. You Frances so. I, will kind, of combine, some themes from Rob and Frances, around innovation in common time and the challenge is working. Also remotely, for, innovation, so, my name is Hilary future self and this is brand new research I'm showing preliminary, insights, and some stuff. That are clear results, and I would welcome any comments and feedback or questions that you have so I put my contact, details here, H at NYU. So. What is different about innovating. In Kovach time and why am i focusing on that one, clear. Difference, is that we need to accelerate, innovation. Safely. Time means. Saving, life so, how can we innovate in those areas that we do knit innovation, and that are increasing. Faster. So, I will focus on two levels of analysis, today one is the team level of analysis, this is based on field studies that have been conducting, on, accelerating. Teams. And the, work process, for innovation, with Sara Lee mcreech Emily or Samuelson, and it's now impress and the link for the paper will be in the chat and a, new study that I'm now doing with, the European, Commission in a big effort I'll share with you soon called EU versus virus, they. Were focusing, also on remote, collaboration on, the team level and then the second, study that I will share towards the end is the organisational, level of analysis what, organizations. Are doing using. How are they're using new ways of open innovation to accelerate, their innovation, process and this is a mixed method study with Karim Lakhani and, researchers, States. In his lab so. Why. Is it so hard to accelerate, innovation to begin with time pressure impedes, creativity, it is very hard to innovate from a cognitive perspective and, Francis was emphasizing, is there a new condition, there is stress time. Pressure does. Not go so well with opening, your mind and thinking outside of the box so how do we do that and the. Additional. Layer of a challenge is the team level of coordination, so, usually, it's hard to coordinate with people that you just met so what happens when you have ad hoc teams as many, companies, and organizations are. Doing people. That usually have. Just met either from different places in their organizations, or across organizations, that are trying to solve together corporate, related problems, very, fast, so, ad hoc + acceleration. That's, very hard so most of the research that we have so far will, tell us that this will fail so.
Time Pressure if its creativity, in coordination. With the lack of a common ground and with. A lack of a pre, organized, structure, leads to failure but. This. Is happening and needs to happen so I've been starting that in. The last couple of years in, a health tech, packet ponds where, if you bring people that have just met for 3 or 2 or 3 days to, solve such, emergent, and may problems. That in the end a very ambitious goal in 72. Hours you need to hand, over a working. Prototype to, a needed user so, this is the paper that I said that is now impressed, and you can find it also in the comedy related part since we updated, it to covert and. There's the. New study that I will share with you soon on the covert related, and hackathons. As well but, what have I learned from, exciting. This program of two or three years so. I've learned that teams fall into, two common mistakes the first one is, how. To deal, with the time pressure, most. Teams try, to deal with it by compressing, the, regular, organizational. Processes, of innovation, the best practices, that we teach and that we know to do they're just trying to make them faster so if they're doing agile or scrum, and they have once a day instead, of meeting they trying to do it once an hour this, does not work so as Francis also said we cannot just take import, our regular, processes, and expect, them to work if we just compress them the. Second problem is the coordination, so. This, is counterintuitive, so, actually, the way the teams try to work was. To fully and clearly coordinate. Since they don't have a lot of time they just make make, each other they wanted to make sure everything, is clear and any every person knows what they have to do this. Does not work as well unfortunately. This. Is. Counterintuitive so, I'm stressing it as well if you try to really do everything to coordinate, freely and clearly, this, will lead to failure and lots, of frustration, so, what does work what are the good news how can we make this work so the first thing is not to try to compress, what you know to understand, that these new extreme conditions, require new different processes. Way. More experimental. And the, second thing about coordination, is, do not try to fully coordinate, but instead, what, we found the teams that were able to produce working, product new. Brand new working products in three days that they did something that we call minimal, and adaptive, coordination. What do we mean minimal. Means, you do not fully agree, on the specific, measurements, and methods of materials of the product or the solution that you're going to build you, only agree on the rough outline, and straight, to jump into experimentation. So, timewise, this was up to an of the discussion, and then quickly split into individuals, and teams that start to iteratively. Experiment. And the adaptive, part comes. When you adjust to the results, of this experimentation, from each other so. That's what's house but, what's happening in Alamut adding remotes to eat right so this happened in hackathons, when we had in-person what happens when you do remote so. This, is the big you. Versus, rat virus effort that I was telling you this, is the largest. Online. Collaborative. Effort. So far to fight coffee more, than 20,000, participant. Two, thousand and four hundred projects. That participated. Out of which 120. Working, projects. That are becoming now startups, and I warmly recommend for you to study and then. It's, open to academic, it's. A very interesting project but I'll tell you what have we learned so. What did we learn, the winning teams the 120. Out of the 2400. Were those that either were teams before many, some of their coordination, issues. Were solved before they had a common ground or what. They did when they just met was, that they made sure that they have a visible, workflow. Because I said you need to adjust to each other so. How can you adjust when, you are hardly seeing each other so what we warmly recommend, based on this quick, study and that, we're still kind of analyzing, the data is to open cameras, to share ongoing. Work documents, do, not wait until something, is perfect to share with your team members if you wait until it's perfect it's too late so, that's kind of what we've learned on the team level of analysis, and if you want to hear more about how to manage such teams for creativity, I created, this. Short animated, movie and we will share it the link and via the chat now. Moving to, the organizational.
Level Of analysis, so. What organization. Is what are they doing to accelerate, the process one. Thing that we have seen is definitely. That they're responding, fast. By. Using open, innovation initiative so what I mean by open innovation, is a wide variety of, collaboration. Online, crowdsourcing. Hackathons, citizen, science so, kind, of across boundaries not only with the organization, a few others something that is opened for the population, and other professionals, to join and you can see timewise when, this is kind of showing the graph with their cases in the u.s. how, the responses. Have, grown and are still growing we're collecting, kind of quantitative, data of about, more than a hundred kind. Of since February right now of these, initiatives sponsored, by government, universities, and companies. What. Else have we seen that since, the problem space, is so dynamic the. Time that's, the kind of why I'm talking about time and acceleration is shortened, for this effort initially we, thought we understood the problem and people. And organizations, gave kind of a month or two months to solve a problem, now, it's becoming shorter and shorter over, time because the people understand, that the problem is constantly, changing and we need to be more agile and understanding, of the problem and one. Interesting case that I'm doing kind of a deep dive into is the ventilator, shortage. Problem. And the different ways the different organizations. Attack it the big lesson that we have learned so far that I can share is. That they're designing, the process with a full path to implementation, already. In place and what. I mean by that is most times that organizations, are using, crowdsourcing. Or open innovation that really focused, on finding a solution but they forget, often, unfortunately what happens once they found a solution how, will it get implemented, or adopted, that's where the failure usually happens, and now, because there was a real need they, made sure that the path is clear for implementation, in different, ways and.
In New ways so this is fascinating and if anyone wants to share more, of what they know about it I'm really curious and to, hear so, this, is it for today and I'll stop sharing screen and I'll move to bhatia. Thank. You, we. Are definitely. In the middle of a remote work revolution. That I think my colleagues, have highlighted, that. Is changing, our work our organizations. And our cities, and. Here. Are some one. Of the things, that I think is a big change is the way that remote, work has become strategic, for, a period of several, weeks it was. The most common, new topic. Highlighted. By, CEOs, in, earnings, calls and what. We've seen is actually a change, in the way that CEOs, are talking, about remote, work you, can see that early on there was a lot of attention to employee, health, and business, continuity, the, orange and grey lines here, but, those, have fallen off and what is rising. Is a focus, on real, estate in the ways that remote, work can save money and a. Big, focus the blue line is. That big focus, on figuring. Out how we can take advantage of remote work to, restructure. Our organizations. And offer up new opportunities. Remote. Workers, in in, the past have, been over, represented. By either the highest, sort, of top earners, like many, of the professionals. That, that we come into contact with and also, those at the lower end of the wage scale that's, changing, under Kovac where, ma it's much more Universal in fact, there's a lot of things that have changed about, remote work under, Kovac before. It was, low, intensity, virtual, work people were working virtually, just a, day a week or a couple of days a week it was actually two days, modally. Now. High-intensity. Everyone's, doing it a hundred percent of the time not, everyone, before. It, was exceptional. Only three point four percent of workers were did. Worked. Remotely. At. Least eighty. Percent of their time now, much, more universal over sixty percent as Frances, highlighted, before, it was predominantly, voluntary. And now is predominantly, required. Before. It was disproportionately. Female. And now it's much more diverse, before. The alternative. To working remotely was, working, in the office and how the alternative. Is pretty much not working, which we heard. Before. The child care and elder care we had a system, and infrastructure, that was offering, up support, now, that, support, is either, gone, or it, generates, demands, like the demands on working parents, to home-school. So. As we reopen, what can we learn. The remote, work precoded, that, we can use to, figure, out how to manage it post covet, well. First of all there, is some evidence and, I think some of the enthusiasm, for remote work is coming from the fact that remote work does seem, to improve performance there. Is some evidence about, how remote work improves, financial, performance but, it's really very difficult to tease apart the, confound, of, the. Selection, bias are there certain kinds, of firms that are more likely to have remote, work but. Then we can turn to the individual, level and see what are the impacts, at the individual, employee level, and you, can see there that there is lower attrition. Among remote, workers and that. Working remotely, really, does seem, to increase, employee. Performance. As rated. By their supervisors. And on objective. Ratings, of performance, but, a lot of that is coming from the fact that, people. Increase, their work hours when, they work from home these. Performance. Benefits, are not uniform. It's much more likely that you will see performance. Benefits, from. Telecommuting. More from working, remotely more for, people who are doing more independent. Tasks, and it. Also is true that people who are doing more complex. Tasks, who are going to be more disturbed, by, distractions. In the workplace. Those, folks do better and show, more performance, increases, when, they work remotely. Employees. It's interesting because like basically, employees. With low social support these, folks are the ones who show a greater, benefit. From telecommuting. More in. Terms of their job performance, but, this actually seems, to be it's not a function, of don't support, your workers and they'll work better in, fact it's the fact that, when. You have a toxic work environment the, same pattern, shows in, other people's research in on. Things like having a toxic work, toxic, relationship, with your supervisor, that. Bad work environment, is much more bearable, and much less likely to diminish, performance. When, you spend, less time in it so basically, working, remotely, helps, people who are in bad. Work environments. Kind of managed their work some. Other of the benefits, are that, there is greater autonomy, greater, job satisfaction, lower. Work family, conflict, and that's two different kinds of work family conflict.
Work, Interfering. With family, and family, interfering. With work and it. Ends up report, people report better relationships. With their supervisors. When their remote, several. Of these effects are stronger, for women than they are for men but. We're seeing consistent. With what Francis highlighted, we're seeing some evidence of women. Suffering. From these. Effects, under kovetz, so many of these benefits, may not apply, to, the. Current crisis. There. Are a number of downsides, of working remotely probably. One of the big ones that has. Been reported extensively, is. That sense of isolation and, that has been true even before kovat, times, some. Other costs. Are the socialization, of new employees, people. Who are hired remotely, tend to be less committed, more, likely to leave and perceive. That they have less knowledge of what's going on in the organization. Professional. Development, definitely, takes a hit when people work remotely and for, female professionals. Working remotely when, females, aren't a disproportionate. Share working. Remotely does seem to lower wages, some. Of the benefits, of remote. Work are actually. Dependent on being the, exception the fact that other, people aren't doing this so this is really problematic in, kovat times so. Things like improve job satisfaction and, autonomy, those. Benefits, are eliminated. When others are also remote and it seems like what happens, is when some people are remote and other people are in the office the, coordination. And collaboration where. It gets delegated. To the folks in the office so, the remote workers suffer when everyone. Is remote. Happens when your managers, remote well then in office, workers tend to be less satisfied, feel like they get less professional, development, are more likely to want to leave than, those whose managers, are in the office but the, remote workers, benefit, from having a remote supervisor. Sorry. So, basically. What many organization. Is have created, to respond, to kovat is something, like a minimally, Viable, Product, the equivalent, of just a skateboard, to get us from here to there to kind of triage. In this crisis, but what we need now is to actually start. Iterating. On. That model, and, iterating. With a number, of different, models that are going to figure that are going to kind of work, for, the broad set of organizations. And. Industries. That we have now and jobs. So as we reopen. There are a few things to, highlight. Number. One we. Have to recognize, that there's, an easier way to manage, the easiest, way to manage, is actually through direct monitoring, it requires, a lot less managerial.
Skill And a lot less planning, for managers, but. It doesn't, work as well in remote, work what. We need to do to manage remote, workers, better is we need to create that sense of task. Independent. Sense of control, and independence and, that means managing, by objectives and. Not by watching their processes, so, contact, with your employees, is really good but for information. Sharing and not for monetary, not looking over their shoulder, a. Way to manage them is to create, clear. Quantifiable. And objective, performance criteria. And use, performance. As a basis, for promotion. But, that requires, a fair amount of, managerial. Skill and planning, in advance we. Also have to not ignore the, non remote, employees. So. Distribute, the work of collaboration. To avoid burdening them, and. And. Recognize, that certain kinds, of employees, especially. As we reopen, are far, more likely to, wish, to return to work sooner, what, the prior. Evidence. Suggests, is that we're gonna see that happening, more with single, than married employees, with, male than female employees. With younger than older, employees. And a host of other. Distribution. Concerns. Now, that raises a bunch of diversity, and inclusion issues. That Francis, had highlighted and. Possibly. One of the things we need to do is reduce some, of the incentive. Or reward to, returning by encouraging managers. To stay home so you have, less visibility, benefit. From. That return, and there, are opportunities opportunities. Of. Reducing. Barriers to growth you. Know for sort of having a finite, finite office, spaces. Wider. Labor force participation. Possibly. And maybe, some of these lower costs, so, now I'm gonna stop sharing and I'm going to highlight. Sort. Of bring everyone. Together. To. Highlight, some of the questions, that we have gotten in, I'm. Gonna start with the questions that we've gotten from our colleagues, and then I'll move on to some of you. Know sort of fill in with some of the questions that I have. That. I have for, you folks, so. First. Of all the, first question actually comes from a ninja and it's a question for Rob and. The. Medium-term, and long-term impacts. On innovation. May, also be confounded. By, immigration. And the. Current administration's. Perspective. On. Immigration. And I wonder if you would, be willing to speak to that feels a little bit different from remote work though. Related because obviously, if you can collaborate, remotely. Then. Perhaps, some of this collaboration, can happen. From. Abroad. So, first of all thank you bhatia and I always learned so much when I see my colleagues present so thanks also Aquila and Francis, and India, thanks for the question, yeah. I agree. That it you know there's are three things going on so there's. The, pandemic, which has forced us all now to work from home there's the recession, now, which is as a result, of the pandemic then, they're sort of a bunch of policy responses, and there many different types of policy responses, and, one of which unfortunately, has, been.
Changes. To the immigration, laws that we have in this country and so sort of disentangling all of those is going to be is going to be tricky there's. Plenty of research including. Research by colleagues, that we have here at NYU Stern such as petrol Moser and Mike. Wah who have who have looked who has spent a lot of time sort of looking at the link between, immigration. And innovation. And there's, a there's a positive, link there right as you increase immigration, particularly. Of high-skilled immigrants. You see positive effects, to, innovation, positive, effects to productivity, and so we're going to be missing out on that of course as, I think disentangling, that from some of the other things that are going on it's, gonna be difficult I. Want. To turn I think this question which was posed by Maria Patterson, is very, relevant, for both Francis, and and definitely, for HeLa and so, Maria's, question, is about. What. Is the impact of group, size on. This. On innovation. And collaboration, remotely. We. Certainly have seen it you know when you're zooming, that. Is there an impact, of being. Able to kind of in this zoom world, collaborate. When you when, you can't see everyone on your screen and. Kela, you certainly were, working, with sort of large scale. Francis. Brought in the expertise, of these, speaking, up in these groups so wondered if the two of you might have a perspective. On. On, that question maybe we could start with HeLa and then move to Francis. Sure. So. Indeed. I worked. Now with a EU, versus virus and hackathon, we've had a crazy amount, of people but still even, in this large scale of more than 20,000. Individuals. They, made sure that, when there was work, sessions, of the teams they did not exceed the usual, it's a recommended size of a team group which is usually between four to six, individuals. So, the way they did it was dividing. I would say that the ecology, tools so zooming, was.
This Kind of good size of four to six people slack. Was. Constantly, the place where the action happened so basically everything lived, on slack so for those three days which. Happened every two weeks we all lived on slack and which. Was an interesting experience because I'm used to regular, physical, you know hackathons, and events when you go into and so the first thing I felt was where. Is the event happening, how do we know how do you get 20,000, people feeling. Connected, that they're in the same environment so, slack was their home so I would say it's important, to try to think as, a company or some manager like, how do you create what is the home. Because so he's not enough and then when he do the team work then, it went to zoom and those collaborative, students that we kind, of all know from Google you know presentations. To Doc etc, but, slack was leverage. To its maximum I would say. Francis. So. You, know what we know from research on teams, prior. To working remotely, is that, the optimal, size is somewhere between, four. And seven, for, communication. So. It sounds like HeLa that in your hackathon. They sort of got that idea, and they, broke out people, into smaller groups and I, think that that's you know, going. To be similar on zoom I suspect, that the coordination. Problems. In. Larger, groups on zoom will be even greater than. The coordination. Problems, in large groups face to face and the, reason I would say that is because of. The. Problem with the nonverbal, cues trying. To figure out like, who wants to speak for example, in, a very large zoom, group can. Create problems, can create coordination, challenges and, then sometimes. When people experience those challenges. They. Might decide that they, it's. Just too difficult to, speak up or to make their contribution than they and they may not speak so I think bottom. Line I think team size will matter a lot in. Remote groups. Now. I'd like to turn it to more our moni's question. And I feel like it's actually relevant, to, across the board so each one of us touched on an issue of inequality in. Various. Different ways and more. Is asking, what, impacts. Will these changes, you know a variety of these changes, I think, what. Impact, will it have on inequality. In the u.s. maybe we can start with Rob because you, shared. With us some of the demographic. Data. You. Know thank you for the question and I bought, you a completely agree I think we can all speak to sort of different dimensions of this. More. I think, you our intuition, is correct that um, that. There's you. Know the fact, that it's. Really important to be connected to the Internet right now and, googled. With the fact that there are many people that actually don't, have great access to the Internet or no or no connection at all means, that there's going to be if that this will likely lead to an increase in income. Inequality. Absent. Any type of policy response right so that's sort of the additional thing we have to add you know it's likely but, policymakers, are aware that there is a big digital divide. Policymakers. Have been considering, policies, to address this and so, it wouldn't surprise me if there's at least some, attempt to try to address this a little bit in terms of taking care of some, of these spatial inequalities.
That I was talking, about in my presentation. Maybe. Francis, or HeLa. So. The inequalities, that I think about are maybe. You. Know within, the, set of people who are working remotely where as Rob is thinking about the. Inequalities. In access to, technology, and the capability. To to, work remotely. But within organizations. Where people are working remotely, I suspect, that. Inequality. Will increase. And. The reason why is the, the. Lack of this. Kind of casual, contact, between, people, that might occur for example in hallway conversations. Or. In. The elevator, or you, know yeah. In the kitchen. So. These things are not occurring, and those are times, when, people have the opportunity to interact with people who are very different from, themselves. Perhaps. You know different hierarchical, levels. Or. More interaction, possibly. Across. Racial lines and across gender lines so. This, piece, of research I was describing earlier suggests. That what's happening, in the Xoom world is that people are talking a lot to. People they already know of what are called strong ties in. The research on fund networks and what. Has been reduced, is the communication. To people, that. You don't know as well and that's the weak ties well. But weak ties are really, really important, to creativity, and innovation, past research has suggested. And. Weak ties would. Be more, probably, peak connections. To people who are different from, yourself. Whether. That's on gender, or race, or in hierarchical, level in an organization. So. I would have concerns about increased. Inequality. In, organizations. As a result, of remote, work. If. I can anthony inequality, I do. Not know enough about within. The u.s. inequality. And its impact but I have experienced. In these last couple of months the global, inequality, since this was a global. Effort. That we did then it was very clear to see the. Difference specifically. With Africa. And, I think, it was also because from what Rob suggested, around the technology and the broadband, and the infrastructure, so. The digital divide is very clear so we had to first of all from a creative, perspective we. Have to think of very different solutions, how do you educate, and. Get. Medical. Education. And training to, physicians, when. You do not have why I would you know do not have actually, broadband so all the telemedicine, that we have talked about in the u.s. is very different, and less relevant in, some places because they lack the technological, infrastructure, so I would say in that case we were actually, feeling on the, side that can help so NYU was one of the most insurance. Pacifica was one of the most contributors. Actually, to. Countries. That needed more so in. Those hard days I think we feel a lot of problems. Within the US and maybe it helps to broaden, the scope and see that in some cases on the global scale we are better. Off with those technologies in your election, to help other countries that are still struggling with, Govan. And whether the lack of technologies. In the infrastructure. These. Are great insights, I want to add just. One point that I think that there could be contingent. On what Rob highlighted. And and other technologies.
Like 5g, actually, I, think there could be a real opportunity going. Forward for diminishing some, forms, of inequality so. One of the things about remote, work is that, that. It, does make it possible for. For. Moms, to come back to work earlier it, makes it possible, for, it's. Very good for Americans. With Disabilities. It, is it. Turns, out that there are a host of people for, example the, LGBTQ. Community is. More likely to be represented, among remote workers, and it. Creates. Much, more opportunity. For them and I think that one, of the things that we realized is that there's so much inequality, as a function, of honestly, housing. And the, concentration. Of opportunities. In, certain, regions particularly. Around major metropolitan, regions, and if. Remote. Work enables. That broader, participation. Then. It could actually be a, tool, for reducing, inequality. In the US but, again and I just feel like I'm reflecting exactly, what Rob Kela and Francis, said it's, all contingent. On sort, of creating, an infrastructure, so this is something that policymakers, and. Corporations. Have to work together to, make sure that we've got the infrastructure, to make, this something that increases. Participation. And diminishes. Inequality. Instead, of exacerbating. It maybe. I'll turn now to dick. Burners. Question. Which actually, relates to something that HeLa, brought up as we were preparing for this. Dick burner raises, that, several. Of our observations. Seem to apply to remote teaching, and collaborative. Research and, I I really, feel like this is the question I was like what's the role of. Researchers. In, this and and what can we learn about this, for academic. You. Know for sort of furthering, academic. Goals, both. Research, and teaching, and, wonder, if any of you I think I want to start with HeLa because. She, she, did think about this, earlier, and. Then have, the. Rest of you weigh in. Sure. So, my candide. Knows that they've become very. Enthusiastic. I would say in this last, period about. Our. Role as academics, and what can we change about it and what are their ademma Qualis implication, as I would say so if we talked about accelerating. Innovation in, the sciences, in technologies. What about the social sciences. What about business. Schools so, few things that I think are kind, of let's say my academic, policy recommendations. And things that I'm still thinking of how to do it and if anyone has examples, that, they see I would love to hear, and learn from them so, one thing is open access so, one way to get our research. Output, faster out of there and with. A broader impact and, to you, know it's also solves a lot of the important, issues that we're talking about since many people do, not have the ability to read. A lot of our research so, open access to anything related, to conflict, to me is a must this is a public good we. Are you know with Elise is something that has to change so many journals, have changed and maybe many publishers, have changed it but, I warmly recommend to, all researchers and myself include, that I had to negotiate in this period Francis when I am doing this special issue with Elsevier. That, it has to be open access because, it's covered related, so it's not still obvious in the social sciences we are behind so the medical sciences in the physical sciences chemistry. Genomics. Name it it's it's they understood, it and their even temporary, opening, it and we, are still behind on that so I that's one way it's kind of in the end of the funnel of our work is kind of to push it out there. So other people can build upon it and really use what we're doing and in, the start. I would say of our work in the data collection, in what we're doing the way we're doing research itself, that's, I think still an open issue how, can we do it in a more open collaborative. Way, and. There are different, ways to go about it but I would say we haven't found a good answer yet and mostly, due to kind, of incentive, structure of academia, I believe. But. I would love to hear it more from my colleagues and what they think about it. Robert. Francis. I'll. Offer a very, quick thought that I think applies both. To the teaching, and research part of the question, take, the u.s. I. You. Know the technology that we're using right now this zoom technology, it's it's pretty good it's I like BA Chia's description. Of this as a Minimum Viable Product. What. I feel like I really miss out on or the, sort. Of happenstance. Interactions. With. Either. Colleagues, around research or around, you know with students around what it is that they're learning in the classroom so, in the case of students you, know if we were teaching at Stern I would be bumping into students in the hallway in the elevator.
There'd Be the chances are deep in relationship, via just some chitchat but also they could ask me about saying that might not be going that they don't understand in class and that that's useful feedback yeah, so there's all about on the teaching side that we're totally missing out on on the. Research side. I was remarking to watiam hila about this on Sunday I so. Many of my research, ideas, have, come from academic, conferences, not from seeing other people present but just from bumping into people in the hallway and starting, up a conversation and, it sparks an idea that then leads to research and, the technology interface. That we're using now, doesn't. Allow, for those sort of happenstance, interactions. Everything is planned yeah you get you, know a Google, invite to, attend a Zoom webinar, right, where you set up your class and that's when you see your students all, of those sort, of little. You. Know happenstance, things are missing and maybe there's a technological. Solution to it or maybe there's sort of a behavioral solution. I'm not sure but but I do really miss that. Anything. You wanted to add Francis. Just. This, is on a slightly different, note. In, some of my zoom conversations. Over the last few months I have been struck by, the. Diversity, of our experiences. And. How, I, guess, this relates to the common ground point I was making earlier. How. We have such minimal. Understanding of. The, circumstances. In which other people are operating now and, I think that definitely applies. When. Thinking of all of our role as teachers, and trying to understand our students, and, trying to understand, how, difficult, is it for them to log in what's going on in their house you know how many people are living in their house. You. Know has anyone in their family gotten. Sick, from. From, kovat there's so much. Information. About, the diversity of people's experiences. That we that we're lacking and. I think that's a real challenge in, teaching, to, try to figure out like how can we somehow. Use, this technology, in some way to connect. Individually. With students to try to understand a bit more about their personal experiences so. That we. Can help them optimize learning. So. A. Question, that we got from more. Is, a, question, about well, what's, the impact, of the. Homeschooling. On. The. On. Kind. Of parents, ability, to innovate. And be creative and. Engage with their work and I. I do think that in. Prior. Research, I mean I'm gonna just try to respond, to that a little and then welcome your comments. But in Prior research, so not so, much focused on innovation, but in prior research. What. What, has. Been demonstrated is. That. Work. That, generally. Working. Remotely. Diminishes. The. Interference. Of work in on, family. And. There's. There's, and that is, especially, true, for women, but. It's kind of across the board for, men and women there aren't any differences, in the role in how much. Interference. Of non. Work. Impacts. Work, but. I think that that's one of the things that we are starting to realize is how that, those, interferences. Are. Much greater and I. Think that we're gonna see, that continue. Because it looks like public. Schools are likely to not you know with social distancing. And all of that for, the foreseeable, future.
You Know until, we really have a vaccine, that that, everyone, is going to get we, may not go back to having. All the infrastructure, that we have had and the, question is what can organizations. And. What can, policymakers. Do to. Address. What, definitely, does seem to be a drag, on the. Attentional. Resources of. Our. Workforce. And the, sense, of conflict, and stress, that. Undermine. That we know stress. Generally. Undermines, creativity. I wonder. If Francis. Or HeLa or Rob and we're all kind of living with this I know I've got four kids and a husband all of us competing, for bandwidth, here so. I guess we're all sort of, living. With this wonder if any of you have any reflections, I. Can. Say about accelerating. Innovation so. Unfortunately, I usually like to be optimistic. And I love kids but. Have. They. Or any other distraction. I think as Francis talked about distractions. Have, a negative, effect on accelerating, innovation so. We haven't checked it, that is not me or none of my colleagues in, this period with what we know from before part. Of the magic or the ability, to do, accelerated. Innovation has to do with putting everything, else aside the, lack of, distraction. We are constantly working even, went back then when we used to work in a regular work environment, all those, distractions and, the phone in the meeting that was, bad for innovation, when it needs to happen fast so I actually think, that, negative. Effect and for accelerating, innovation for, some. Longer-term. Creativity. I do not know open, question, maybe maybe. But when we need to do something fast and to find creative solutions for some things that are related to Kovach technological. Scientists, that are working for home and I think that relates to rub first. Slides about the kind. Of negative productivity. Of scientists. Of Engineers. Yeah. That's, not going well with having kids in their house and we do need to think about employers. Co-parenting. As solutions, and I know different countries, by the way have, started, when they started opening up they did not only went from homeschooling to school some of them went to group, in kind of grouping. Of families, and then parenting.
Could Happen you can work for three days and three families, at the parents all kind of interesting I think Europe is really interesting, in this case because you can see they're very nation, across, the policies, in different countries and how they open it differently, so in that sense it's interesting to watch and maybe they can provide data I do not know it is. I'll. Just I know we're we're. Still running out time but but I'll just very, very quickly add I mean I completely agree with everything. That you both have said about, the. You know the likely effects on creativity. And innovation, I think the only thing I would add is just echoing saying that Francis said earlier about not, knowing, what's going on with our with our students and it's the same thing with our colleagues I, would, expect that these effects vary greatly across. You. Know across families, with. Children depending. On of course number of children ages. Of the children the, specific, sort of behavioral, and emotional needs. Of different, children, and. You know maybe number of working, adults in. The house and you know there's so many sort of dimensions, along which this, varies and the experience is very very different for many different folks it'll, be interesting, to study but you know looking for several years in the future what, the effect of kids, in. The household, during this time period is on creativity. And innovation. Okay. I guess we kind, of run out of time. But. But. I just. To reinforce it, it does seem like one, of the things that's happened, with Kovan is that. We've, seen how. Large. Organizations. Rather than the smaller ones seem, to be more agile this, this, is definitely a crisis, that has played to the strengths of those, the strengths, and innovation, capability. Of those large organizations. And a big part of it is being able to provide some, of this to have. Infrastructure. At scale, and I feel like that's address that that, is what's needed. You. Know highlight, some of the things that Rob and Sheila, were both just talking, about so. I want to thank everybody for joining us and we. Will have the video up ready, in. A couple of days thanks, all and see. You next week.
2020-09-08 03:50
