Bryan Routledge, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, cautioned that the Beige Book contains anecdotal information about business trends, not hard numbers.

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Amazon focuses its campus recruitment on schools with analytics and entrepreneurship programs, including Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business.

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At the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, MBA students mentor teenagers, volunteer at soup kitchens or help the elderly.

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