Features Leading Like a Samurai Smith School instructor Kamran Loghman, developer of the Create, Achieve, Lead program at Apple, shares ancient lessons for 21st century warrior sages. Fearless Leadership in Your Words World-class hurdler Landria Buckley, MBA ’15, trained fearlessly for the Rio Olympics. She and other Smith School alumni share keys to fearless leadership. The Negotiation Doctor 6 Tactics for Building Win-Win Partnerships Smith Brain Trust Brief Case: Design Fellow Takes on DC Fashion Week

When it comes to display advertising—especially online—simpler can be better. That’s the finding of new research at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. One theory of advertising holds that display ads need a degree of nuance or visual complexity to capture the viewer’s attention. But that fails to take into account the increasingly cluttered and hectic context in which ads are viewed today.

Amazon does it. So do Jimmy John’s and many other companies. They require new employees to sign noncompete clauses, a practice now being pushed on low-income workers, limiting their freedom in the labor market. In a recent set of projects, Evan Starr, assistant professor of management and organization at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, surveyed some 11,500 workers about their experiences with noncompetes, which companies often hide among routine forms new employees sign during the hiring process.

About one-quarter of jobs today require some kind of licensing by state governments, up from 5 percent in the ’50s. Some of the oversight is crucial for public safety and well-being. You want your doctor to be licensed, and probably your accountant. But a hairdresser? Florists?

How would trained saboteurs, successfully planted on your team by ruthless competitors, proceed to undermine your productivity? If they followed a previously classified World War II field guide used by the predecessor of today’s CIA, they would follow eight rules to sap your momentum. Robert Galford; an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, co-author of Simple Sabotage, facilitator of an open-enrollment course from the Office of Executive Programs; says many people with good intentions do the same things.

Online services such as OpenTable make it easy for consumers to make restaurant reservations and not show up. But higher-end restaurants are countering this. Sotto Sopra, for example, an Italian restaurant in Baltimore that loses up to $150,000 a year from no-shows and canceled reservations, announced in 2016 it would require credit card information for large reservations and charge a fee to diners who don't show.

Ancient Lessons for 21st Century Warrior Sages Samurai warriors in feudal Japan knew how to fight. But the best of these leaders, such as Yamamoto Kansuke, also knew the value of bringing people together and winning without resorting to combat. According to legend, Kansuke offered his military services to feudal lord Takeda Shingen, who required a duel with a notable samurai as part of the job interview. Kansuke was an excellent swordsman, but he had a bad leg and was missing an eye and several fingers.

World-class hurdler Landria Buckley, MBA ’15, trained fearlessly for the Rio Olympics. She packed up her life, moved to Arizona and started hurdling, lifting and sprinting six days a week at an elite training center in the desert. “You have to get into game mode like you’re going to war,” she said before the U.S. Olympic Team Trials July 1-10, 2016, in Eugene, Ore. “Then just run as if it’s the last race of your life.”

6 Tactics for Building Win-Win Partnerships - Wendy R. Sanhai, EMBA ’09 Nanoscience, the study of very small particles, has great potential to improve health care. These tiny molecules can be incorporated into many therapies, such as cancer drugs, which may result in the need for smaller doses for patients, and may decrease negative side effects due to less exposure of toxic chemicals to normal tissue.

Former Terrapin golfer George Bradford, a 1997 graduate of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, had a quick response when people told him to “get a job” after college. “I have a job,” he told the skeptics. “I’m a professional golfer.” Bradford persevered in various mini tours across North America and achieved a milestone in 2004.