• Ethan Mollick, Lilach Mollick, Natalie Bach, LJ Ciccarelli, Ben Przystanski, Daniel Ravipinto, AI Agents and Education: Simulated Practice at Scale. Abstract

  This paper explores the potential of generative AI in creating adaptive educational simulations. By leveraging a system of multiple AI agents, simulations can provide personalized learning experiences, offering students the opportunity to practice skills in scenarios with AI-generated mentors, role-players, and instructor-facing evaluators. We describe a prototype, PitchQuest, a venture capital pitching simulator that showcases the capabilities of AI in delivering instruction, facilitating practice, and providing tailored feedback. The paper discusses the pedagogy behind the simulation, the technology powering it, and the ethical considerations in using AI for education. While acknowledging the limitations and need for rigorous testing, we propose that generative AI can significantly lower the barriers to creating effective, engaging simulations, opening up new possibilities for experiential learning at scale.

• Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick, Instructors as Innovators: a Future-focused Approach to New AI Learning Opportunities, With Prompts. Abstract

  This paper explores how instructors can leverage generative AI to create personalized learning experiences for students that transform teaching and learning. We present a range of AI-based exercises that enable novel forms of practice and application including simulations, mentoring, coaching, and co-creation. For each type of exercise, we provide prompts that instructors can customize, along with guidance on classroom implementation, assessment, and risks to consider. We also provide blueprints, prompts that help instructors create their own original prompts. Instructors can leverage their content and pedagogical expertise to design these experiences, putting them in the role of builders and innovators. We argue that this instructor-driven approach has the potential to democratize the development of educational technology by enabling individual instructors to create AI exercises and tools tailored to their students’ needs. While the exercises in this paper are a starting point, not a definitive solutions, they demonstrate AI’s potential to expand what is possible in teaching and learning.

• Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI (: Penguin Portfolio, 2024) Abstract
  Something new entered our world in November 2022 — the first general purpose AI that could pass for a human and do the kinds of creative, innovative work that only humans could do previously. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick immediately understood what ChatGPT meant: after millions of years on our own, humans had developed a kind of co-intelligence that could augment, or even replace, human thinking. Through his writing, speaking, and teaching, Mollick has become one of the most prominent and provocative explainers of AI, focusing on the practical aspects of how these new tools for thought can transform our world.In Co-Intelligence, Mollick urges us to engage with AI as co-worker, co-teacher, and coach. He assesses its profound impact on business and education, using dozens of real-time examples of AI in action. Co-Intelligence shows what it means to think and work together with smart machines, and why it’s imperative that we master that skill.

  Mollick challenges us to utilize AI’s enormous power without losing our identity, to learn from it without being misled, and to harness its gifts to create a better human future. Wide ranging, hugely thought-provoking, optimistic, and lucid, Co-Intelligence reveals the promise and power of this new era.
• Lennart Meincke, Ethan Mollick, Christian Terwiesch, Prompting Diverse Ideas: Increasing AI Idea Variance. Abstract

  Unlike routine tasks where consistency is prized, in creativity and innovation the goal is to
  create a diverse set of ideas. This paper delves into the burgeoning interest in employing
  Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the productivity and quality of the idea generation process.
  While previous studies have found that the average quality of AI ideas is quite high, prior
  research also has pointed to the inability of AI-based brainstorming to create sufficient
  dispersion of ideas, which limits novelty and the quality of the overall best idea. Our research
  investigates methods to increase the dispersion in AI-generated ideas. Using GPT-4, we explore
  the effect of different prompting methods on Cosine Similarity, the number of unique ideas, and
  the speed with which the idea space gets exhausted. We do this in the domain of developing a
  new product development for college students, priced under $50. In this context, we find that (1)
  pools of ideas generated by GPT-4 with various plausible prompts are less diverse than ideas
  generated by groups of human subjects (2) the diversity of AI generated ideas can be
  substantially improved using prompt engineering (3) Chain-of-Thought (CoT) prompting leads to
  the highest diversity of ideas of all prompts we evaluated and was able to come close to what is
  achieved by groups of human subjects. It also was capable of generating the highest number of
  unique ideas of any prompt we studied.

• Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick, Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts. Abstract

  This paper examines the transformative role of Large Language Models (LLMs) in education and their potential as learning tools, despite their inherent risks and limitations. The authors propose seven approaches for utilizing AI in classrooms: AI-tutor, AI-coach, AI-mentor, AI-teammate, AI-tool, AI-simulator, and AI-student, each with distinct pedagogical benefits and risks. Prompts are included for each of these approaches. The aim is to help students learn with and about AI, with practical strategies designed to mitigate risks such as complacency about the AI’s output, errors, and biases. These strategies promote active oversight, critical assessment of AI outputs, and complementarity of AI’s capabilities with the students’ unique insights. By challenging students to remain the “human in the loop,” the authors aim to enhance learning outcomes while ensuring that AI serves as a supportive tool rather than a replacement. The proposed framework offers a guide for educators navigating the integration of AI-assisted learning in classrooms.

   

  Description
     
• Fabrizio Dell'Acqua, Edward McFowland, Ethan Mollick... et al. (Working), Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality. Abstract

  The public release of Large Language Models (LLMs) has sparked tremendous interest in how humans will use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accomplish a variety of tasks. In our study conducted with Boston Consulting Group, a global management consulting firm, we examine the performance implications of AI on realistic, complex, and knowledge-intensive tasks. The pre-registered experiment involved 758 consultants comprising about 7% of the individual contributor-level consultants at the company. After establishing a performance baseline on a similar task, subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no AI access, GPT-4 AI access, or GPT-4 AI access with a prompt engineering overview. We suggest that the capabilities of AI create a “jagged technological frontier” where some tasks are easily done by AI, while others, though seemingly similar in difficulty level, are outside the current capability of AI. For each one of a set of 18 realistic consulting tasks within the frontier of AI capabilities, consultants using AI were significantly more productive (they completed 12.2% more tasks on average, and completed task 25.1% more quickly), and produced significantly higher quality results (more than 40% higher quality compared to a control group). Consultants across the skills distribution benefited significantly from having AI augmentation, with those below the average performance threshold increasing by 43% and those above increasing by 17% compared to their own scores. For a task selected to be outside the frontier, however, consultants using AI were 19 percentage points less likely to produce correct solutions compared to those without AI. Further, our analysis shows the emergence of two distinctive patterns of successful AI use by humans along a spectrum of human-AI integration. One set of consultants acted as “Centaurs,” like the mythical halfhorse/half-human creature, dividing and delegating their solution-creation activities to the AI or to themselves. Another set of consultants acted more like “Cyborgs,” completely integrating their task flow with the AI and continually interacting with the technology.

   

   

  Description
       
• Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick (Working), Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts. Abstract

  This paper provides guidance for using AI to quickly and easily implement evidence-based teaching strategies that instructors can integrate into their teaching. We discuss five teaching strategies that have proven value but are hard to implement in practice due to time and effort constraints. We show how AI can help instructors create material that supports these strategies and improve student learning. The strategies include providing multiple examples and explanations; uncovering and addressing student misconceptions; frequent low-stakes testing; assessing student learning; and distributed practice. The paper provides guidelines for how AI can support each strategy, and discusses both the promises and perils of this approach, arguing that AI may act as a “force multiplier” for instructors if implemented cautiously and thoughtfully in service of evidence-based teaching practices.

  Related
  Links
• Valentina Assenova and Ethan Mollick (Working), Tipping Points in Gender Representation: Evidence from the Startup Game. Abstract

  Startups founded by women consistently receive less funding and lower valuations compared to those founded by men, particularly from male investors. A common remediation technique to reduce this gender inequality has been to increase women’s representation in powerful resource-controlling roles, though in some cases, this appears to exacerbate backlash and stereotyping effects. We examine whether and how shifts in the gender composition of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs might affect the emergence of a critical mass to remediate gender inequality. We propose that a central driver of this inequality is homophily preferences among men and suggest that these preferences become weaker as women’s representation increases. This mechanism results in a nonlinear “Goldilocks” effect: gender inequality dips for median levels of women’s representation but is amplified below and above these thresholds. We examine the evidence for the Goldilocks effect using data from 27,082 participants in a live-play simulation of fundraising in Silicon Valley, in which we randomized players to the roles of founders of early-stage companies and partners of venture capital firms. We found that gender inequality was lowest at median thresholds of critical mass in women’s representation but increased below and above these thresholds. Our findings suggest that increasing gender diversity in venture capital firms holds the key to mitigating gender inequality in startup funding and valuation.

• Ethan Mollick, The Unicorn\’s Shadow: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors (: Wharton University Press, 2020)
• Jason Greenberg and Ethan Mollick (Working), Sole Survivors: Solo Ventures Versus Founding Teams. Abstract

  A widespread scholarly and popular consensus suggests that new ventures perform better when launched by teams, rather than individuals. This view has become so pervasive that many of the foremost investors rarely, if ever, fund startups founded by a solo entrepreneur. Despite this belief in the superiority of teams in the startup process, little empirical evidence has been used to examine this key question. In this paper, we examine the implications of founding alone versus as a group by using a unique dataset of crowdfunded companies that together generated approximately $358 million in total revenue. We show that companies started by solo founders survive longer than those started by teams. Further, organizations started by solo founders generate more revenue than organizations started by founder pairs, and do not perform significantly different than larger teams. This suggests that the taken-for-granted assumption among scholars that entrepreneurship is best performed by teams should be reevaluated, with implications for theories of team performance and entrepreneurial strategy.

• All Research from Ethan Mollick »

Past Courses

• EDEN5080 - Technology Strategy

  Technology Strategy is designed to meet the needs of future managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors who must analyze and develop business strategies in technology-based industries. The emphasis is on learning conceptual models and frameworks to help navigate the complexity and dynamism in such industries. This is not a course in new product development or in using technology to improve business processes and offerings. The class will take a perspective of both established and emerging firms competing through technological innovations, and study the key strategic drivers of value creation and appropriation in the context of business ecosystems. Prerequisite: Enrollment in Education Entrepreneurship program.

• EDEN6020 - Technology Strategy: 2

  Technology Strategy is designed to meet the needs of future managers, entrepreneurs, consultants and investors who must analyze and develop business strategies in technology-based industries. The emphasis is on learning conceptual models and frameworks to help navigate the complexity and dynamism in such industries. This is not a course in new product development or in using technology to improve business processes and offerings. The class will take a perspective of both established and emerging firms competing through technological innovations, and study the key strategic drivers of value creation and appropriation in the context of business ecosystems. Prerequisite: Enrollment in Education Entrepreneurship program.

• MGMT1980 - Special Topics in MGMT

  Courses offered of various topics and points of focus, ranging across multiple concentrations of Management, (i.e., Entrepreneurial, Strategy, Organizational Effectiveness, etc.).

• MGMT2300 - Entrepreneurship

  How do you take a good idea and turn it into a successful venture? Whether you plan to become a founder, investor, mentor, partner, or early employee of a startup company, this course will take you through the entire journey of new venture creation and development. MGMT 230 is a project-based survey course designed to provide an overview of the entrepreneurial process and give you practical hands-on experience with new venture development. You and a team will have the chance to ideate, test, and develop a pitch for an early-stage startup by incorporating material from class lectures, simulations, labs, and class discussions. By the end of the course, you will have a better understanding of what it takes to create a successful startup, as well as proven techniques for identifying and testing new market opportunities, acquiring resources, bringing new products and services to market, scaling, and exiting new ventures.

• MGMT2310 - Entrepreneurship Launchpad

  This advanced course on entrepreneurship focuses on taking your venture from a good idea to a fundable business. Participants need to come to the class with a validated idea that they are committed to pursuing commercially. The course is entirely oriented toward applying concepts and frameworks to advance your venture and provides practical guidance for testing the product or service, forming the entity, establishing partnerships, and engaging with investors. Students must have successfully completed MGMT 801 before enrolling (or obtain the permission of the instructor). Format: Highly interactive Requirements: Class participation, interim assignments.

• MGMT2360 - Innovation, Change, and Entrep

  Designed for students with a serious interest in entrepreneurship and being entrepreneurial, this course is based around action. Building on the skills of Management 2300, every class session is built around an experience where you have to put learning into practice, including the multiple simulations and by using AI. The goal is to constantly challenge you to deal with entrepreneurial or innovative experiences, as you learn to navigate complex and changing environments on the fly, applying what you learned to a variety of scenarios. This class is built to be challenging and will require a desire to deal with ambiguous and shifting circumstances, where the meaning is not always clear upfront. MGMT 2300 is recommended but not required.

• MGMT7990 - Special Topics MGMT

  Courses offered of various topics and points of focus, ranging across multiple concentrations of Management, (i.e., Entrepreneurial, Strategy, Organizational Business, etc.).

• MGMT8010 - Entrepreneurship

  MGMT 801 is the foundation coures in the Entrepeurial Management program. The purpose of this course is to explore the many dimensions of new venture creation and growth. While most of the examples in class will be drawn from new venture formation, the principles also apply to entrepreneurship in corporate settings and to non-profit entrepreneurship. We will be concerned with content and process questions as well as with formulation and implementation issues that relate to conceptualizing, developing, and managing successful new ventures. The emphasis in this course is on applying and synthesizing concepts and techniques from functional areas of strategic management, finance, accounting, managerial economics, marketing, operations management, and organizational behavior in the context of new venture development. The class serves as both a stand alone class and as a preparatory course to those interested in writing and venture implementation (the subject of the semester-long course, MGMT 806). Format: Lectures and case discussions

• MGMT8020 - Innov, Chg and Ent

  Designed for students with a serious interest in entrepreneurship, this course will provide you with an advanced theoretical foundation and a set of practical tools for the management of startups and entrepreneurial teams in fast-changing and innovative environments. Building on the skills of MGMT 801, every class session is built around an experience where you have to put learning into practice, including the award-winning Looking Glass entrepreneurial simulation, role-playing exercises, and a variety of other games and simulations. The goal is to constantly challenge you to deal with entrepreneurial or innovative experiences, as you learn to navigate complex and changing environments on the fly, applying what you learned to a variety of scenarios. MGMT 802 is built to be challenging and will require a desire to deal with ambiguous and shifting circumstances. It is recommended students take MGMT 801 before enrolling in this course. Format: Lectures, discussion, interim reports, class participation, readings report, and presentations, and an innovation assessment in PowerPoint format.

• MGMT8900 - Advanced Study-Ind

• WH2970 - Wh Industry Exploration

  WIEP features short-term courses that focus on various industries and feature visits to businesses, lectures, extracurricular activities, and networking opportunities with alumni. Students must apply online: https://undergrad-inside.wharton.upenn.edu/wiep/

• ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution, 2024
• Greif Research Impact Award, 2020
• Lazaridis Institute Award for Best Paper in JBV, 2019
• Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior, 2017
• Schultze Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship, 2016
• McGraw-Hill/Academy of Management Innovation in Entrepreneurship Pedagogy Award, 2016
• Reimagine Education Silver Award for MBA Education, 2015
• AOM-TIM Emerging Scholar Award, 2015
• AOM Careers Division Best Paper Award, 2014
• The 40 Most Outstanding B-School Profs Under 40 In The World, 2014
• Top 30 Influencers in Crowdfunding, 2014
• Thinkers 50 Future Thinker Award Shortlist, 2013
• Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research, 2013
• SMS Best Paper Award Nomination, 2012
• Teaching Commitment and Curricular Innovation Award, 2011
• Heizer Award for Best Dissertation in Entrepreneurship, Finalist, 2011
• Graduate Management Council Ideas to Innovation Challenge, 3rd Place, 2011
• American Library Association’s “Top Ten Business Books of 2009”, 2009
• Kauffman Dissertation Fellow, 2007

• How to talk to an AI, Washington Post - 08/31/2023
• How Ethan and Lilach Mollick are automating their jobs, Vox - 03/07/2023
• 'Everybody is cheating': Why this teacher has adopted an open ChatGPT policy, NPR - 01/26/2023
• Why ChatGPT is a tipping point for AI, HBR - 01/01/2023
• Entrepreneurs Are Better Off Going It Alone, Study Says, Wall Street Journal - 04/28/2019
• A Study of 3,526 Companies Shows 1 Decision Makes Startups More Successful. Most Founders Do the Opposite, Inc. - 04/25/2019
• Are Women Entrepreneurs Catching Up? It's Complicated., Forbes - 06/21/2018
• 10,200 people gave this Kickstarter start-up for 3-D headphones nearly $3 million. They have nothing to show for it., Washington Post - 05/22/2018
• Global Brands, Taking Cue From Tinkerers, Explore Crowdfunding, New York Times - 01/07/2016
• Kiva Sets New Rules for U.S. Borrowers to Get Crowdfunded Loans, Wall Street Journal - 12/16/2015
• Just 9% of successfully funded Kickstarter projects fail to deliver, CNBC - 12/10/2015
• GoFundMe Gone Wild, New York Times - 11/06/2015
• Why are women less likely to be entrepreneurs than men?, NPR - 09/28/2015
• Open Season, The Economist - 06/06/2015
• What to do when a crowdfunded product hits a delay, Chicago Tribune - 05/22/2015
• Inside Kickstarter, CBS This Morning - 05/05/2015
• ZPM Espresso and the Rage of the Jilted Crowdfunder, New York Times - 04/30/2015
• Crowdfunding and Venture Funding: More Alike Than You Think, New York Times - 08/15/2014
• Kickstarting Equal Pay, Time - 08/14/2014
• Women Are More Likely to Secure Kickstarter Funding Than Men, Atlantic - 08/14/2014
• Kickstarter Closes the 'Funding Gap' for Women, Wall Street Journal - 08/13/2014
• How to Crowdfund Without Losing Your Shirt, CNBC - 07/22/2014
• Crowdfunding Tips for Turning Inspiration Into Reality, New York Times - 01/23/2014
• When Work is a Game, Who Wins?, New Yorker - 09/17/2013
• The Kickstarter Phenomenon, NPR - 08/16/2013
• Look After the Suits, Forbes - 08/15/2013
• Some Tech Firms Ask: Who Needs Managers?, Wall Street Journal - 08/06/2013
• Why 84% of Kickstarter's top projects shipped late, CNNMoney - 12/18/2012
• Kickstarter: Dream Maker Or Promise Breaker?, Forbes - 11/30/2012
• Success of Crowdfunding Puts Pressure on Entrepreneurs, The New York Times - 09/17/2012
• When A Kickstarter Campaign Fails, Does Anyone Get The Money Back?, NPR - 09/03/2012
• After Raising Money, Many Kickstarter Projects Fail to Deliver, Bloomberg Businessweek - 08/21/2012
• 4 Keys to a Winning Kickstarter Campaign, Wired - 07/18/2012
• Kickstarter: Crowdfunding Platform Or Reality Show?, Fast Company - 07/18/2012
• 3 Ways to Be a Success on Kickstarter, Inc. - 07/16/2012
• Secrets Of Success Hidden In Kickstarter's Numbers, Forbes - 07/07/2012
• Crammed Into Cheap Bunks, Dreaming of Future Digital Glory, The New York Times - 07/05/2012
• Facebook Dilemma: How Do You Value 900 Million Users?, CNBC - 05/30/2012
• Surviving the startup founder-to-CEO transition, Fortune - 04/21/2012
• In praise of David Brent, The Economist - 08/27/2011
• Groupon, Twitter, other tech firms grapple with hypergrowth, USA Today - 08/10/2011
• Business-school research: Game changers, The Economist - 07/05/2011
• Firms Turn to Online Games for Recruiting, CNBC - 06/07/2011
• Enough With 'Call of Duty,' Answer the Call in Room 417, The Wall Street Journal - 06/06/2011
• Something for the weekend, Financial Times - 06/02/2011
• “Surviving the startup founder-to-CEO transition”, CNN Money - 04/28/2011
• Twenty Top Ideas for a Better MBA, Bloomberg Businessweek - 01/14/2011
• “Financial Games: It Can Pay to Play”, Chicago Tribune - 10/29/2009

Knowledge @ Wharton

• Building Stronger Family Offices by Sharing Knowledge and Securing the Future, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/21/2024
• State of the NBA with Seth Partnow, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/20/2024
• How Are Companies Really Using AI? A New Report Has Answers, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/19/2024
• Impact vs. Time: A Leader’s Guide to Slow Productivity, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/19/2024
• Kevin O’Leary Illustrates the Benefits of Tariffs for U.S. Businesses, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/19/2024
• Boosting Donations Through Self-expressive Choices | Jonah Berger, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/19/2024
• Why Are Hospitals So Expensive?, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/18/2024
• New Phenomena in Behavioral and Social Investing, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/18/2024
• Bigger Hospitals, Better Care? Wharton Research Finds Benefits Are Only at the Operational Level, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/14/2024
• Linda Dow Cash, CEO, Two Chicks Cocktails, Knowledge @ Wharton - 11/14/2024

Gameography

Note: Credits are for primary game design. Game development provided by multiple organizations, including Stoneblade, Wharton Learning Lab, Wharton Interactive, Forio, and Lincoln Loop.

Wharton Interactive (2023) PitchQuest. AI-powered teaching simulator for venture capital pitches.

Wharton Interactive (2022) The Saturn Parable. Simulation teaching crisis management.

Wharton Interactive (2022) The Entrepreneurship Game. Simulation teaching entrepreneurial management.

Ethan Mollick and Justin Gary (2018), The Breakthrough Game. A card/board game for 3-6 people that walks players through the scientific approach to developing new innovations.

Ethan Mollick and Sarah Toms (2018) ARC: Disruption. A Looking Glass/ARC simulation teaching strategy, crisis management, and team optimization.

Ethan Mollick (2016)  ARC: Entrepreneurship. A Looking Glass/ARC simulation teaching entrepreneurial management.

Ethan Mollick (2016)  IdeaMachine. Online student engagement tool for building interactive learning communities and applying active learning pedagogical techniques.

Ethan Mollick (2014) The Startup Game. Entrepreneurship simulation for 20-86 players, played by over 20,000 students from around the world.