Imagine a future where 3-D printing is done in the back of a truck instead of a factory or a lab. The same truck is driverless, eliminating the risk of drivers getting tired and causing delays or accidents en route. The truck custom prints the product for each of the many customers on the truck route at the exact time when it arrives at each customer site. Companies are now at the forefront of testing such ventures, according to a new article by Maryland Smith’s Zhi-Long Chen.

Imagine a world where your deliveries are always on time and your food is never cold. Restaurants are able to coordinate when to cook orders and apps are able to efficiently assign drivers multiple orders or even ask customers picking up an order if they would be willing to drop off an order with their neighbor on the way back.

Running into a one-way or no-left-turn street can be pretty frustrating as a driver. It’s an even bigger problem for vehicles responsible for mapping streets as well. But new research from Maryland Smith has a solution.

In the workplace, success sometimes comes down to how competitive you are. And sometimes it comes down to how competitive the people are who are advocating on your behalf.

Firms are more likely to face accounting-related lawsuits for overstating their earnings or assets than for understating them because it’s easier to demonstrate investor harm with overstatements. So erring on the conservative side can reduce a firm’s legal costs.

“People analytics” – traceable to 1911’s The Principles of Scientific Management, which sought to apply engineering methods to managing people – has exploded with advances in computer power, statistical methods and artificial intelligence (AI).

As the world struggles to contain the spread of COVID-19, many countries grapple with the possibility of imposing more lockdown measures, like those widely used in the spring of 2020. But how well do lockdowns work at keeping people home? New research from Maryland Smith’s Yogesh Joshi finds they are effective – but for limited periods of time.

In a new Journal of Marketing special issue, “New Technologies in Marketing,” Maryland Smith’s Michel Wedel co-authors an editorial that outlines how academics can support marketers to deliver data-driven growth.

Even the most powerful manager sometimes cleans up dishes in the breakroom, and even the least powerful employees in organizations sometimes get to make important decisions. These examples indicate that power is a dynamic state – we often feel both powerful and powerless at work on any given day. New research from Maryland Smith’s Trevor Foulk suggests that this fluctuating sense of power can have surprising effects on our well-being.

Can you revel in happy moments now, to soak them in and store them up to help you through future sadness? New research from Maryland Smith’s Ali Faraji-Rad finds that many people actively try to bank their happiness so they can draw on it later to cope with a sad event.