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Within any large organization, some employee teams always perform better than others—but the reasons are often murky. In 2010 then doctoral student Ben Waber embedded himself in the offices of Travelco, an online travel agency, to figure out what factors make a team productive. He noted that all the employees worked in the same headquarters, sat in the same meeting rooms, and enjoyed the same snacks and Foosball tables. But when he observed certain interactions among them, he says, “there was something really weird”: he saw members of the most effective teams tended to eat in groups of 12, while employees from lower-performing teams usually ate in groups of four.

Drink less, lease less; use pot, lease a lot — could that become a real estate axiom for our times? A new trend could reduce demand for commercial real estate, leased or owned, from warehouse to distribution to retail space: Not drinking. Or at least drinking less.

Cleveland resident Gina Simpson enjoys sipping coffee while her children munch pastries at Ocoee Coffee on Ocoee Street in Cleveland. While it may not be unusual for a young mom and her kids to enjoy some time together at a local café, they had arrived at the destination while riding their bicycles along the Cleveland/Bradley County Greenway and system of sidewalks.

Syngenta and the Analytics Society of INFORMS today launched the 2020 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics, a competition that seeks analytical approaches to improve complex crop breeding processes. Data analytics, mathematics and statistics students, as well as professionals worldwide are invited to enter by Jan. 21, 2020. Using real-world crop data, entrants are tasked to develop models that can predict the performance of potential corn products.

If you end up needing to go to the hospital, often times you re hoping to get a bed without having to wait hours, but a new study shows you may want to wait a little longer, so that you are placed in the best ward for your needs. New research in the upcoming INFORMS journal Management Science shows that among patients admitted to the hospital, 19.6% are placed in beds in a ward outside the area of care they require. These patients who are placed off service end up experiencing a 23% longer hospital stay and a higher chance of being readmitted within a month.