From the Knowledge@Wharton today blog.

A strong wave of investments has flowed into Europe over the last couple of months, offering some observers hope that it’s a precursor of a sustained economic recovery and an end to the long-standing euro crisis. On the surface, it appears to be good news, particularly given that the eurozone recently slipped back into recession. But despite the injection of more than $135 billion in private investment towards the end of 2012, the latest economic indicators offer more cause for pessimism than optimism.

The split between what financial markets and the economic fundamentals are telegraphing about the future is confusing many observers. On the financial side, equity and bond markets, buttressed by the moves of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the fall to support government debt markets, have seen two very positive developments. One development is falling government bond interest rates, which is key because that makes it easier for some of the more desperately strapped governments to finance their large debts. The second development is rising equity markets. That suggests some companies may become more optimistic and could start to hire new workers in countries that have devastating unemployment rates.

As for why the stock markets are doing so well while real economies are doing so badly: “I think that quantitative easing is a big part of the explanation,” says Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen. “[Central banks] are buying up huge amounts of debt securities globally, and at least part of the money is going into equities and driving their prices up.”

Wharton management professor Mauro Guillen notes that bond markets have improved significantly in the eurozone because Spain and Italy have had de facto bailouts. “A bailout is needed if there is a problem with selling government bonds at an affordable interest rate. From this point of view, the ECB’s action in the summer to support the euro at all costs has made a difference. The risk premiums have come down – the ECB has been buying Italian and Spanish debt. So, in a way, they have already been rescuing Italy and Spain without going through a formal bailout.”

Last July, Mario Draghi, the ECB president, said his institution would do “whatever it takes” to avoid countries leaving the eurozone. Some countries wanted to exit in order to be able to create their own home currency, which they could then devalue to spark exports and get out from under crushing debt. The bank said it would ensure with financial underwriting that Italy and Spain could issue as much new debt as needed in order to finance the strict deficit-reduction programs now underway.

Ordinarily, the positive developments seen recently in financial markets might be viewed as leading indicators pointing to better days ahead. But these are not ordinary times. The problem is that these developments come against a worsening economic performance and not a stabilizing outlook. The best recent example is Italy, which takes on outsized importance given that it is probably too big for the eurozone to bail out if that were required, particularly after the huge bailout measures directed at Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland. Here are some notable recent economic indicators for Italy:

• The Bank of Italy now forecasts a continuation, through much of this year, of the recession that started late in 2011. This month it cut its GDP growth forecast for 2013 from -0.2% to -1.0%.
• Industrial production dropped by 7.6% in November compared with a year earlier, and was down 1% from the previous month.
• In the first 11 months of 2012, production declined 6.6% below the 11-month period in 2011.
• Demand for fuel fell for the January-November 2012 period by 12% compared with 2011.
• This year will mark the 15th year in a row that Italy has recorded a decline in industrial production.

For Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, the story is similarly grim. Unemployment hit a new record at 26%, and youth unemployment – which is decimating an entire generation of workers’ chances at securing good careers – is now above 55%. Industrial production slumped 1.8% in the final quarter of 2012 from the same 2011 period. The economic contraction in Spain (as in Italy) is a direct result of strict austerity policies. The Spanish government is slashing government spending in order to reach eurozone-imposed, deficit-reduction goals. Spain’s budget deficit ratio, which was 9.4% of GDP in 2011, dropped to 6.3% in 2012, and the aim is to hit 4.5% this year and 2.8% in 2014.

The data for Spain and Italy highlight the problems. “The financial markets are signalling a bright outlook, but the reality in terms of growth currently is far from that,” says Allen. Eurozone growth forecasts call for recession for the next six months to a year, then a switch over to growth. “The problem is that these growth forecasts have been drastically wrong. Greece is the classic example. When they started with the bailout program, the projections were that there would be a similar trajectory. That, of course, is not what happened, and we have had five years of contraction.”

Italy could “well get into a downward spiral like Greece,” Allen says. The ECB’s Fiscal Compact Treaty, as in the case with Spain, will be a long-term drag on growth because it requires Italy to slash its debt by more than 3% of GDP for many years. As the country’s economy and thus revenues shrink, it then has to cut even more, “and this will be problematic. The recent problems and the bailout of Monte di Pascua di Siena [an Italian bank] illustrate there are a lot pitfalls along the way as the economy starts shrinking. Italy hasn’t grown significantly for a long time. It’s not clear what policies will create growth.”

The austerity policies being vigorously pursued in much of the eurozone increasingly are being questioned, including by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which recently acknowledged in this Working, titled “Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers,” that too much austerity can damage GDP growth during a debt-deflation recession such as we have now by a factor of two or three times more than previously thought.

This is a huge concession and suggests that the current approach of using austerity for debt reduction may be self-defeating. In its most recent update of its World Economic Outlook, released January 23, the IMF forecast that while the world economy overall was likely to grow by about 2% this year, the “euro area continues to pose a large downside risk to the global outlook,” as does “excessive near-term fiscal consolidation in the United States.”

Guillen agrees that austerity policies have outlived their usefulness. “Germany seems fixated on this idea [of austerity]. They are balancing their own budget, although the markets are not demanding that. In the periphery, austerity means a prolonged recession and high unemployment for a longer period of time. I’ve said many times there is a middle-of-the-road solution that doesn’t negate the need for fiscal rebalancing while avoiding a long slump.” Germany should raise wages, which would stimulate troubled euro economies; the ECB should raise its inflation target, which would help to alleviate debt burdens more generally; and the surplus economies should engage in fiscal stimulus.

Italy’s current economic indicators, which help clarify what is happening in the eurozone more generally, are “very worrying,” says Allen. “It’s not clear they are on a sustainable path. They may well follow Greece. If that happens … the EU can’t bail them out.” So while it is possible that the ECB “may start monetizing the debt, this will require a large increase in their balance sheet. Not only will they effectively need to finance the Italian government but also the Italian banks. The other options will be to default or to leave the eurozone or both. None of these outcomes is good. ”

Many observers now think the ECB ultimately will weaken the euro considerably in order to stimulate the economy, Allen says. But such measures involve big risks. “We don’t know the possible long-term effects of these kinds of policies. My own view is still that the eurozone needs an exit mechanism for extreme problems. They avoided setting it up with Greece because they could fudge the numbers. But this was a mistake because if Italy has to leave, there will probably be significant contagion.”

If it is true, as more and more observers believe, that austerity now is causing more problems in Europe than it is solving, why can’t Europe’s leaders see that?

Politics and pride are preventing a clear view, says Allen. “The systems they have put in place haven’t worked, and they don’t want to admit this. They may muddle through. But the human cost is tremendous. Unemployment will probably go up significantly in Italy going forward. It is already unacceptably high in Spain and Greece, particularly youth unemployment.”

These societies are already undergoing tremendous social unrest under today’s stark economic conditions. How long can Europe go before there is a major political or economic breakdown, something far worse than we’ve observed so far? “We will see how much people will take,” Allen says. “The extreme parties are losing votes at the moment. But if growth doesn’t happen soon, this could change quickly.”

This post was previously posted in Knowledge@Wharton Today Blog: Europe’s Fundamentals Sink Despite Investment Surge

From the Knowledge@Wharton today blog.

“Men have become more egalitarian, but women are more realistic.” That’s how Stew Friedman, Wharton practice professor of management, describes some of the preliminary results of a 20-year study on careers and family life based on data collected from Wharton undergraduates in both 1992 and 2012.

As part of his work with Wharton’s Work/Life Integration Project, Friedman surveyed members of the graduating classes from both years and then compared the results. He also checked back in with the 1992 graduates to see how their attitudes had changed after 20 years in the working world.

Among his findings: In 1992, nearly 80% of men and women responded “yes” to a question about whether or not they planned to have children. That number dropped to 42% for men and women in the graduating class of 2012. “This result speaks to a number of important trends, one of which surely is the challenges today’s young people anticipate in raising children and having productive work about which they feel good, proud, and successful,” Friedman says. While the survey did not ask for all of the reasons that students responded in the ways that they did, Friedman notes that one of the study’s other findings was that while graduates in 1992 expected to work an average of 53 hours per week, the class of 2012 anticipated spending about 70 hours a week on the clock — nearly two work days more than their peers from 20 years earlier.

“Think about … that perception of work demands just in terms of raw time,” Friedman says. “I’m not surprised that people are thinking, ‘I’m not going to be able to have children, or I will have fewer children.’ And the reduced likelihood of having children held true for men and women, which speaks to how the attitudes of men and women have evolved over the last two decades.”

The survey also asked the graduates to weigh in on whether two-career relationships are better able to thrive when one partner is less involved with his or her career. Men in 2012 were less likely to agree with that statement than men in 1992. But women were actually more likely to agree with this view. Two-career relationships are much more prevalent today than they were 20 years ago, when male survey respondents likely expected that they would advance while their female partners slowed down to accommodate a family, Friedman notes. “Men’s attitudes now are increasingly more like women’s,” he adds. “It reflects that more male graduates now expect to be in dual-career relationships, and they want their partners to be pursuing their careers. Over the last couple of decades, we have set the cultural norm more clearly that women’s careers matter, and the advancement of women in society is something we can all expect and should support.”

But what about the reactions from women in 2012? Were they simply more realistic about the realities of integrating work and family than female graduates in 1992 — or more pessimistic? “Twenty years ago, Wharton women graduates were thinking they wouldn’t have to sacrifice career for family, but given the experience of the last two decades, the models they’ve seen and the education they’ve gotten about what they will have to do to be successful, today’s 22-year-old women are more likely to see that someone is going to have to make some sacrifices,” Friedman says.

While there’s no way to know just yet how the 2012 graduates’ attitudes will change, Friedman notes that the definition of career success did evolve for a group of survey participants from 1992 who were queried again last year. “Flexibility was a lot more important to them as 42 year-olds than it was at 22. Where they lived mattered more, but prestige, power and influence, and even enjoyment in work didn’t matter as much as it did when they first started out.”

As attitudes toward work continue to evolve, Friedman says there are numerous possibilities for progress in the area of fully integrating career with family and personal life. “The combination of radical changes in technology and the changing values of men and women with respect to the place of work in their lives indicate that we’re going to see a lot more experimentation and creative alternatives for what work looks like and what families look like and how the two look together,” he notes. “I’m hopeful as a result that there will be new models and solutions that make it possible for people to have more of what they think is ‘having it all.’”

From 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday, January 29, Knowledge@Wharton and Friedman will host a Twitter chat to further discuss the changing nature of work/life integration:

Q1 How has your definition of “having it all” changed over the course of your career?

Q2 What life- or work-related factor most influences how you define “having it all”?

Q3 How is the changing nature of work affected your ability to integrate career and the rest of life?

Q4 If you could change one thing about your work that would make life easier, what would it be?

Q5 For whom is “having it all” easier – men or women?

To read the chat, follow @knowledgwharton and @StewFriedman on Twitter and the hashtag #kwchat.

This post was previously posted in Knowledge@Wharton Today Blog: The Changing Nature of ‘Having It All’

From the Knowledge@Wharton today blog.

The IT-BPO industry in India, which established the country firmly on the global map with its outsourcing and offshoring capabilities, is also the largest employer of women in the corporate sector in the country. Of its total pool of around three million direct employees, 30% are women. Pointing this out at the recent Diversity and Inclusion Summit 2013 organized in Bangalore by the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), industry leaders and other speakers stressed the business imperative for companies to ensure a fair and equitable environment for their women employees.

At the same time, they were also emphatic that the concept of diversity needs to be all-inclusive and move beyond gender to aspects like differences in physical capabilities, culture, lifestyle, age, religion, economic status and sexual orientation. “We started with a focus on gender inclusion in a formal way in 2007, and much of our attention is still on gender diversity because a lot more still needs to be done on this front. But we are now also focusing on the many other aspects of inclusivity because we realize that a diverse customer base cannot possibly be served well by homogenous organizations,” said Som Mittal, president of Nasscom.

According to Therace Risch, vice president, delivery services technology at Target Corporation, there are two key reasons to drive diversity and inclusiveness in any organization. “One, when an organization has a diverse workforce, it understands the needs of its customers better and makes better decisions for them. Two, when people feel included in their organizations, they produce better results.”

Avinash Vashistha, chairman and manager of Accenture India, pointed out that it is important that organizations put in specific metrics to measure the outcomes of various inclusivity initiatives. “Measurements,” he suggested, “are important because they help us to know what is working.” Target’s Risch, however, added a note of caution. She pointed out that mindset and cultural changes take many years to create a visible impact, and sometimes leaders are disappointed if the results are not quick enough. “There is then a danger that the initiative may get neglected.”

N. Krishnakumar, co-founder, CEO and managing director of consulting firm MindTree, noted: “Organizations must take care that they don’t end up recruiting certain candidates only to meet their diversity targets. At the end of the day, what is important is to assess the potential of every employee and create an enabling environment for them to deliver their best.” Padmaja Alaganandan, executive director, people and change at PricewaterhouseCoopers, added another perspective. She pointed out that it was critical that any measures towards inclusivity should not be misunderstood as preferential treatment. “It is important for [a] business to get the most suitable person for a specific job. What is needed is a performance-based inclusive workplace.”

This post was previously posted in Knowledge@Wharton Today Blog: Indian IT Firms Focus on the Business Case for Diversity

From the Knowledge@Wharton today blog.

A lower-end iPhone could prove to be a smart move for Apple, Wharton experts say, but the company has to proceed carefully.

Following reports that Apple is at work on a lower-priced iPhone expected to be in stores by the end of the year, Wharton operations and information management professor Eric Clemons notes that versioning is nothing new for tech products: Adobe Photoshop has a lower-end “kid sister” in Photoshop Elements, for example, and many database software programs offer scaled-down applications intended for student use.

“Luxury goods manufacturers often need to protect their image: A cheap Bentley or a cheap Mercedes would be a bad idea — the original G20 Infiniti sedan was an awful idea,” for example, Clemons says. “But, if done properly, a lower-end version can work well — the new Infiniti G37 is a wonderful car. So Apple needs to make sure that a starter iPhone increases sales, does not cannibalize sales excessively from the full iPhone and does not damage the exclusive image of the iPhone.”

While Apple is known for developing cutting-edge devices, “sometimes it also makes sense to fill the lower end of the product line as well,” according to Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader. Although some critics suggest that news of a lower-priced iPhone indicates that the company is no longer focusing on product innovation as it once did, Fader takes an opposing view. “Developing a low-end device doesn’t necessarily prevent or distract them from simultaneously pushing ahead at the high end,” Fader notes. “Furthermore, there are a lot of valuable commercial opportunities to be gained at the low end.”

Apple has long been known to stick to its guns about charging a premium price for its products and, for the most part, a critical mass of customers has been more than willing to pay it. Kendall Whitehouse, Knowledge@Wharton’s technology and media editor, recalls that back in the 1970s, the company’s Apple II personal computer was competing for market share with products from Atari and Commodore. While the latter two became embroiled in a price war that dropped their respective systems’ price to a fraction of the Apple II, “Apple remained above the fray, held onto its high price — and large margin — and did very well,” Whitehouse notes. “In the next decade, Apple continued to charge a premium for their Macintosh systems when confronted with competition from lower-priced PC clones, even if it hurt their market share.”

After launching the iPod in 2001, however, Apple gradually introduced a line of lower-priced models. “But this was driven largely by the falling prices of flash memory and Apple’s desire to drive revenue through iTunes,” says Whitehouse, noting that while Amazon.com has based its strategy for the Kindle around selling the device at cost — or even at a loss — and making its primary revenue through content for the tablets and e-readers, Apple has done the opposite.

“While songs and apps sold through iTunes generate a strong revenue stream, iTunes’ main function is to drive sales of Apple hardware: iPods, iPhones and Macs,” Whitehouse points out. “Of course, getting iPhones and iPods into people’s hands produces a halo effect for their laptop and desktop computers, so [a lower-end iPhone] may make sense if they see greater revenue through these upselling opportunities.”

This post was previously posted in Knowledge@Wharton Today Blog: Advice for Apple: Strategizing a Lower-end iPhone

Dale Boccabella

The essence of the legal relationship known as a trust is the separation of legal ownership of assets from beneficial ownership of those assets. The trustee is the legal owner and beneficiaries are beneficial owners. Because of this separation, the law imposes strict obligations on trustees: for instance, the trustee must act in good faith and for the benefit of beneficiaries.

However, for many families, the discretionary trust largely owes its existence to suspicion of — and mistrust of — those associated with the trust creator’s family and/or parties dealing with the trust. Structuring the discretionary trust to deal with these suspicions and mistrust is a major pre-occupation of financial planners, accountants and lawyers that advise on and arrange for the creation of discretionary trusts.

A discretionary trust is a trust, much like a fixed trust. However, unlike a fixed trust, no beneficiary (or potential beneficiary) obtains an income or capital distribution/allocation unless the trustee exercises the discretion they have in favour of a beneficiary. And generally, the size of the distribution is also at the complete discretion of the trustee. This means that even if a beneficiary has been assured of income and capital distributions by the promoter or controller of a trust, or has a legitimate expectation of getting a distribution, that assurance or expectation is worth little should the trustee not make a distribution to them. In legal terms, a potential beneficiary of a discretionary trust only has a right to be considered for distributions.

And while it sounds strange, assets and property held in a discretionary trust are not beneficially owned by anyone. While discretionary trust assets are legally owned by the trustee, the trustee does not beneficially own the assets. The trustee must, however, manage and safeguard the assets for the general body of potential beneficiaries, but no beneficiary can demand an asset or income from the trustee.

Suspicion and mistrust can be manifested in a number of ways and at various levels.

Resentment or suspicion can flourish when the trustee makes “unequal allocations” of income between beneficiaries and/or the allocations made do not meet expectations of all beneficiaries. The same point can be made in regard to capital distributions from the trust fund, although capital distributions are usually deferred towards the end of the life of the trust.

The seeds of mistrust (or the need for protection) are also manifest in the area of the office of “appointer”. Most modern discretionary trusts will have an appointer or even joint appointers. An appointer will have the power to remove a trustee and appoint a new trustee. Appointers are usually the promoter or the controller of the trust. While it is prudent to have an appointer who can deal quickly with a trustee who is breaching their obligations, the appointer can also use their power to remove a trustee should the trustee make “unsatisfactory” allocations of income (or capital) where there is no breach of trust.

Mistrust can also fester in a more recent addition to the actors associated with the modern discretionary trust: the so-called “guardian” or “protector”. The role of this person is to provide an extra check on the otherwise wide powers of the trustee. This person can be given the power to veto certain trustee distribution decisions. This is important because the removal of a trustee by an appointer after the trustee has made an unsatisfactory allocation of income (or capital) will not prevent the allocation from being valid. In other words, the guardian or protector can provide protection against a circumstance that an appointer may not be able to protect against.

Mistrust also stems from the nature of potential beneficiaries’ interests. As noted earlier, beneficiaries of a discretionary trust do not beneficially (or legally) own the trust’s assets before the trustee makes an allocation to them. This means that a creditor of the potential beneficiary cannot get access to the assets in the discretionary trust to help satisfy a debt owed to them by the beneficiary. This also means the trustee in bankruptcy of a beneficiary usually cannot access assets in a discretionary trust.

Another concern is relationship breakdown. The assets held in a discretionary trust will not automatically be included in the property of the potential beneficiary. However, family law legislation also does not automatically rule out the property held in a discretionary trust from being counted as “property of the marriage” for the purpose of the property division on relationship breakdown. Whether or not the trust’s assets form part of property of the marriage will largely depend on whether the trust is the alter ego of the beneficiary. In spite of these contentious, case-by-case rules, there appears to be a perception that housing assets in a discretionary trust provides a safeguard against “gold-diggers”.

Furthermore, the legal principle that permits creditors of a trust (lenders, suppliers of goods on credit) to access the assets of beneficiaries of the trust in certain circumstances does not apply in a discretionary trust situation. This means that those providing credit to a discretionary trust are very likely to want guarantees for repayment of their debt.

Another area of mistrust is the “spendthrift children”. In short, if instead of “housing” or “parking” assets in a discretionary trust, the assets were distributed immediately to children, there is always the risk that some of the children may spend the funds on “wasteful things”.

Furthermore, by housing assets in a discretionary trust, there is a much greater safeguard (virtually guaranteed) that the children will not realise the assets to switch to another investment or another asset class. Apparently, this is one of the attractions of the discretionary trust to farming families as it provides greater assurance that the farm will not be transferred outside the family.

Even from this brief outline, it is clear that distrust is not a stranger to a discretionary trust.

Dale Boccabella is an Associate Professor of Taxation Law at the Australian School of Business. This opinion piece was previously published on The Conversation under “Beware the pitfalls of the discretionary family trust“.

Martin Bliemel

Australia Post has survived more than a hundred years of shipping information and goods. Then came the internet, which massively shrunk hard copy mail, bills, brochures and so on.

But with the rise of the internet also came the boom in sourcing “stuff” from almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime – and have it delivered to your doorstep. Australians are now globally ranked 2nd for online shopping and want the convenience of the process to end with a parcel, not a fake delivery notice.

Depending on where you live, the fake delivery notice may be a familiar story: using an online parcel tracking code, you see your parcel has arrived at a shop. You then dash off to pick it up. A day or two later, you receive the delivery attempt notice regarding the parcel you already picked up, demonstrating that they are not even trying to deliver parcels to your door. Can you blame them? Not at all. Parcels do not fit mailboxes, people are often away during delivery times, and no postal worker wants to drag around heaps of heavy parcels that probably only end up being returned to the shop. Delivering is just not as efficient as faking delivery.

To address this problem, Australia Post is experimenting with 24 hour smart lockers. One aspect Australia Post can intentionally experiment with is the location. However, the first generation lockers are co-located with Australia Post outlets. Why not place some smart lockers in between shops and closer to you? After all, Australia Post is in the business of delivery, not storage. Placing lockers closer to final destinations would also mean they are emptied faster.

Given their aversion to experimenting with location, my bet is that Australia Post sees unexpected outcomes as risks that need to be systematically avoided. They have probably already devised contingency plans in case parcels contain perishable items that are not picked up until the recipient comes home from holidays. Hopefully they will also have considered that many people (such as the elderly) may not want to be required to own a smart phone and GPS enabled app to pick up their parcels.

Perhaps a Christmas season in Vancouver, Canada best illustrates the dilemma of completing the delivery process. Within one evening, a few centimetres of snow caused chaos. Because of the snow, parcels (and delivery notices) could not be delivered beyond main streets, and instantly piled up from floor to ceiling at many shops. Those who knew (via the internet) that their parcel had arrived had to line up outside while postal workers dug through the mountain of parcels.

In Sydney, the experience is not quite as extreme, but I routinely see long lines of people waiting to do nothing else than pick up their parcel from one of five very busy staff. Clearly, there is more room to innovate the process of final delivery.

Well, Australia Post isn’t the only one who knows customers want more. Mark Bouris and James Packer have just teamed up to challenge Australia Post with their own smart lockers. The image in the report suggest the lockers will be indoors, so those Christmas chocolates from your gran won’t melt away, too.

The expected outcome of this competition is convenience from order to delivery: order your items anytime online, pick them up anytime, too.

What interests me more are the unexpected outcomes of smart lockers. Unexpected outcomes are seen as lucky and can lead to entirely new business opportunities. For example, instead of being seen as too impersonal, smart lockers may be appreciated for their anonymity and cause a surge in ordering potentially embarrassing parcels.

If Australia Post were open to cultivating lucky outcomes, they might intentionally vary how the smart lockers at each location work, and treat each location as a separate experiment. For example, they might enable some lockers to entirely replace the shop by letting individuals pay at the locker to place their own parcels in the locker for a specified recipient to pick the parcel up.

Such an experiment may work for many Gumtree or eBay users, to avoid having to coordinate schedules around each other or the post office.

Managing for unexpected outcomes, including having the right location, technology or business model is a topic I discuss in an upcoming conference paper on the role of luck in innovation.

I completely understand if Australia Post is avoiding unexpected outcomes with most of their billion-dollar infrastructure upgrade. As for the smart lockers, I hope Australia Post and Bouris get a little creative, experiment a bit, and are receptive to unexpected outcomes. For now, I’m hoping the timing and outcome of the smart lockers means we’ll all get our prezzies under our trees, not fake delivery notices.

Martin Bliemel is a Lecturer in Innovation and Entrepreneurship with the School of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the Australian School of Business. He is also the Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), which administers the Diploma in Innovation Management, a multi-disciplinary undergraduate diploma, unique to UNSW. This opinion piece was previously published on The Conversation under “Smart locker competition may also deliver unexpected outcomes“.