K@W - A Conversation with Executive Director/Editor-in-Chief Mukul Pandya

By: Smita Jain (WG '10) Contributing Writer

Posted: 4/13/09

Where did the idea for Knowledge@Wharton spring from?

Knowledge@Wharton's mission is to deliver knowledge from Wharton and other sources to people who need it. The idea underlying our journal sprang from the fact that Wharton - like other business schools - faces the challenge of keeping people up to date with the latest research. Much of Wharton's faculty research is meant for academic publication and typically not available in a form that business executives can digest easily. We decided to create an online journal to present business research in plain language so that executives could use these insights in the practice of management. In addition to research papers, we cover conferences, books, visits by CEOs and other business leaders who come to Wharton, and current news events. As Knowledge@Wharton has grown, it has helped build the school's brand worldwide, but that is the effect rather than the purpose of what we do.

How has the publication evolved over the last 10 years?

When we launched the online journal 10 years ago, it was a leap in the dark. Since no other business school I knew of had this model of knowledge dissemination, I had no clue how Knowledge@Wharton would perform. I expected that during our first year, we would probably sign up some 3,000 subscribers. Much to my surprise, in the first 48 hours we signed up 1,000 subscribers in 33 countries. In three weeks we crossed our annual target of 3,000. We ended our first year with 33,000 subscribers. Today, 10 years later, we have evolved into a network of sites with more than 1.3 million subscribers... and the numbers keep growing every day.

In addition to the growth in readership, the ways in which we disseminate knowledge have changed. Back in 1999, almost all our content was text based. A few years later, as we saw the emergence of podcasts, we launched Knowledge@Wharton podcasts - and our audio content now has hundreds of thousands of downloads each month. Much of this is distributed through our K@W channel on iTunes. In addition, we now produce video content, which is distributed through the K@W channel on YouTube. For example, you can watch Wharton professors analyzing the financial crisis through K@W's YouTube channel.

More recently, more users have begun to access our content through Facebook and Twitter. In India, Knowledge@Wharton content is distributed via SMS text messages to mobile phones. A decade ago I had never imagined these possibilities. It has been exciting to explore and employ these new channels of knowledge dissemination.

How long have you been Editor of K@W?

I proposed the concept of an online portal to the school back in 1998. Fortunately, Wharton is such an entrepreneurial school that it recognized the potential and provided some resources. Armed with these, I oversaw the creation and launch of Knowledge@Wharton on May 27, 1999.

But this does not make K@W an individual achievement by any means. Credit for K@W belongs to the school's leadership - which has always supported K@ W; to the faculty, whose research insights give our content its strength; and most importantly, to the K@W team. Kudos go to my colleagues Robbie Shell, David Siedell, Steve Guglielmi, Lucia Zapatero, Sanjay Modi, Tony Gnoffo, Steve Sherre tta, Bruce Brownstein, Rebecca Stone Alig, Deb Sorge, Stacey Shelle, Wayne Davis, Peter Winicov and Kendall Whitehouse. It was gratifying to see Penn recognize this collective achievement when the K@W team last year won the university's Models of Excellence Award. We work with lots of people across the school and, increasingly, the university and they have all helped make K@W what it is.

What has differentiated K@W from other business school publications?

Several U.S. business schools -- including Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia and Kellogg -- have created similar online portals, which is fl attering. Overseas, schools like INSEAD, London Business School, etc. have followed a similar model.

One thing that makes Knowledge@Wharton stand apart is that we have evolved from a single portal into a network of websites. We publish Knowledge@Wharton every two weeks in four languages - English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese. Universa Knowledge@Wharton, our Spanish and Portuguese site, was launched in January 2003; the Chinese site (which is published in simplified and traditional Chinese) was launched in March 2005; and our India site was launched in November 2006.

Another difference is our size; as I said before, our network has 1.3 million registered users and is growing rapidly. The Economist has referred to K@W as an online journal that is "the envy of every other school." More recently, the London Times wrote: "Despite the proliferation of portals...Knowledge@Wharton remains the benchmark."

What is the most controversial article that K@W has published?

I would not call our articles "controversial" per se, but we have certainly published our share of articles that have rocked the boat, as it were. For example, long before off shore outsourcing became a controversial issue, we began covering the phenomenon in K@W, based on the research of Ravi Aron, then on the faculty in the OPIM department and now a senior fellow at the Mack Center.

Another example is an opinion piece written by Richard Shell of the Business Ethics and Legal Studies department, in which he argued against the practice of music companies suing consumers who downloaded music off Napster. That was our first experience being "slashdotted" (i.e., featured on the popular tech website Slashdot.com) and our web traffic went through the roof.

More recently, we wrote an article about the role of real estate brokers in the subprime mess, and the wrath of several Realtors descended on us. Still, I believe we have a responsibility to our readers to write about such issues. Shining the light of Wharton's knowledge on crucial, contentious issues is what makes K@W tick.

As a business school publication, how would you characterize your coverage of the financial crisis? How has it been different from the coverage in mainstream newspapers?

K@W began sounding the alarm about the financial crisis long before it started hitting the headlines, and at a time when the economy still seemed to be strong. For example, in early 2007 we published an article titled, "Could Tremors in the Subprime Mortgage Market be the First Signs of an Earthquake?" (http:// knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1664). As the problems deepened, we continued our coverage. In the summer of 2008 we published an indepth special report about the subprime mortgage mess. It featured an interactive timeline, a short video documentary about the roots of the crisis, and several video interviews with Wharton faculty. In September we followed up with another special report on Wall Street's day of reckoning, analyzing the takeover of AIG, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, etc. We also published an interview by management professor Mike Useem with Citi CEO Vikram Pandit. We regularly produce podcasts with finance professors like Jeremy Siegel, Franklin Allen, Richard Herring and Richard Marston on twists and turns in the markets and the global economy. Paradoxically, as the crisis has worsened, the need for thoughtful explanations has increased, and our readership has soared.

Unlike mainstream newspapers, our editorial approach is not simply to write about what is happening. As an academic publication, we aren't really equipped to do that; instead, we seek to explain why it is happening. Newspapers exist to communicate information; our mission is to communicate insight. Newspapers exist to report the news; our mission is to provide the knowledge behind the news.

Editors' note:
The Wharton Journal would like to congratulate Knowledge@Wharton on their first ten very successful years - looking forward to many more.