Drexel Culinary Collaborations and First Place Finishes — Philly News

With so much news happening in Philly business schools, it’s understandable if you need a hand catching up. Here’s your Philly news brief.

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Drexel EMBA Class Spurs Culinary Collaboration — LeBow News

Thanks to his Drexel LeBow College of Business EMBA class, chef and restaurateur Kevin Sbraga has found a way back into the kitchen. Sbraga, a chef with prior business experience in the Philadelphia area, came up with the idea for a one-day pop-up kitchen in a Business Problem Solving class taught by associate clinical professor of management Suresh Chandran.

According to a news story on the Drexel website:

“We were talking about innovation as a disrupter, and that made me start to think about how the real estate landscape is changing for retail as well as restaurants,” Sbraga says. “I reached out to a hospitality buddy of mine who has some experience in the tech field. I asked him, ‘How can we create a virtual restaurant? A restaurant experience without the brick and mortar,’ and his response was ‘delivery’.”

Sbraga was one of the first restaurateurs in the city to adopt the now-popular food delivery app Caviar, helping deliver the first batches of Nashville hot chicken to Philly for a special one-day event. “The Hot Chicken was far and away the best-selling dish from The Fat Ham’s menu on Caviar. It was widely regarded as some of the best hot chicken outside of Nashville, so featuring it was an easy choice,” a Caviar spokesperson said.

You can read more about Sbraga’s food and pop-up concept here.

Penn State Smeal MBAs place first in Fisher Invitational Big Ten+ MBA Case Competition — Penn State Smeal News

Four Penn State Smeal MBAs recently took first place in the Fisher Invitational Big Ten+ MBA Case Competition at Ohio State. The team of first-year students were coached by Nancy Mahon, clinical associate professor of business communication.

Teams had 24 hours to develop a comprehensive pitch outlining concrete recommendations to address the challenges facing Bob Evans restaurant chain. Competition judges included key Bob Evans senior leadership as well as executives from other corporations. The Smeal squad defeated teams from Illinois and Wisconsin in first round before beating second-place Purdue and third-place Michigan State in the finals.

“I’m extremely impressed with our team’s efforts and professionalism,” Mahon said. “I’m especially proud of our students’ representation of Smeal.”

You can read more about the recent Penn State Smeal event here.

Is It Possible to Change Bad Behavior – Permanently? – Knowledge@Wharton

The recently-created Behavior Change for Good Initiative course at The Wharton School, taught by celebrated UPenn professor Angela Duckworth and Wharton’s own Katherine Milkman, looks at the quality of daily living in a broad and curious way.

In the most recent Knowledge@Wharton podcast episode, the two discuss the program’s vast social experiment angles, asking how people can change bad or not-well-liked behavior on a permanent scale. This includes the launch of the StepUp program with fitness chain 24 Hour Fitness. “Duckworth and Milkman are hoping to recruit hundreds of thousands of current and new members of the chain to sign up for the program,” they explain “Those who do will become part of a large-scale tournament in which scientists have developed 57 different paths they hope will lead to positive behavior change.”

“We want to see which ideas truly yield the biggest changes in behavior, not just during the course of the program, which is 28 days, but also in the year following it.”

You can check out the most recent podcast episode here.

regions: Philadelphia

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