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The Sustainability Initiative
- Special Report: The Business of Sustainability
- Interview: Green, Despite the Downturn — Michael S. Hopkins
- Research: For Real, Not Just For Show — Joe Manget, Catherine Roche, and Felix Münnich
Special Report: Design Thinking
Hard skills from a soft scienceBlogs
Ask Michael Watkins What’s Your Next Move
Next week we're going to be interviewing Michael Watkins. He's a cofounder of Genesis Advisors and he's best-known for The First 90 Days, a primer for making sure that your first three months in a new position work out as well as possible. (We've all seen what happens when someone starts a new job and[…]
How This Financial Crisis Isn’t Different
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff gave a fascinating guest lecture at MIT earlier this week -- looking at commonalities in a number of financial crises. Rogoff, who recently coauthored a new book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly with Carmen M. Reinhart, is a former chief economist[…]
Why Twitter Lists Matter
Twitter Lists are an efficient way to find Twitter-people that you don't know, but should. Consider this list of 500 entrepreneurs, founders, startups, CEOs, and influential business people put together by Peter Urbanski. When you subscribe to a list like this, the updates of everyone in the list appear[…]
A New Way To Think About Sustainability
Smart managers are wary of epiphanies. "Suddenly, everything looked different" should be the last line of a short story, not a report from the management front. But sometimes, something makes you look at a matteryou've paid a lot of attention to in a different way. Even if you look at everything differently[…]
The Pile: a New Weekly Feature on Improvisations
Welcome to "The Pile." Inspired by Kedrosky, we're going to try something similar here. Every Sunday evening, just as we're putting on our armor for the work week ahead, we'll share the best of what we're reading in our attempt to understand what's new and important in management. (Warning: Some of[…]
The Dangers of Untested Assumptions
Why do established corporations' new ventures often fail? The new issue of Business Insight, MIT Sloan Management Review's collaboration with The Wall Street Journal, includes an interview with Rita Gunther McGrath about problems traditional business planning processes encounter when dealing with[…]
Obama, at MIT, declares clean energy key to global economic leadership
The nations of the world are in a "peaceful competition" to develop the energy technologies that will power the 21st century -- and the nation that wins that competition will be the nation that will lead the global economy, U.S. President Barack Obama told an audience at MIT today. "And I want[…]
President Obama to Speak on Sustainability at MIT — Watch Live
On October 23, President Barack Obama will deliver at MIT "an address about American leadership on clean energy." This blog will cover the talk, of course, and you can watch it live, October 23 at noon. If there is any problem with the stream, as there sometimes are with live events, MIT World will[…]
Design Thinking: What To Read After Our Special Report
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin is a tough-minded elegant survey of why design thinking shouldn't be considered some soft thing that's nice for business at the edges but not necessary at the core. Martin is the dean of the Rotman School of[…]
How Vulnerable a Leader Should You Be?
When we reported on the BIF-5 Collaboration Innovation Summit earlier this month, we noted how struck we were by a comment from Saul Kaplan, the event’s “founder and chief catalyst,” who said “innovation requires a vulnerability most people are not comfortable with.” Vulnerability, the willingness[…]
The Business of Sustainability: Our Editor Speaks
Next month, MIT Sloan Management Review editor-in-chief Michael S. Hopkins will speak at the Opportunity Green business conference at UCLA. He'll be expanding on our recent special report on the business of sustainability. For a hint of what he'll discuss, there's an interview with him on the conference[…]
Lessons from the Startup Bootcamp at MIT
When you're in those early stages of developing your idea, Robin Chase, founder of the car-sharing company Zipcar, advised entrepreneurs to think of every person you meet as a free consultant -- and pay attention to the questions they ask you about your idea when you explain it to them. "When people[…]
Listening in on the Real-Time Web
The real-time web encompasses social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook: sites that feature an unending stream of messages, status updates, and news alerts. The flow of this conversation has captured attention for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the rapid adoption and expansion[…]
A Great Day for Ideas (#BIF5)
I had the great pleasure of attending the first day of the BIF-5 Collaborative Innovation Summit, held in Providence, Rhode Island, by the Business Innovation Factory. That's a lot of jargon for just the names of a conference and its sponsoring organization, but more to the point is the tag line for[…]
Why Some Companies Benefit More from IT Investments than Others
On average, investments in information technology are associated with greater productivity for companies -- but why do some companies get greater productivity benefits from IT than others? That was one of the questions MIT Sloan Professor Erik Brynjolfsson addressed at a presentation at the MIT Center[…]
The Management Lessons of Las Vegas
In 1972, our neighbors at MIT Press published Learning from Las Vegas, by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steve Izenour. It was a can of gasoline thrown on modernism in architecture, arguing that what "common" people like is more important than the elevated tastes and predilections of architects[…]
Design Thinking About Sustainability
There was other Tim Brown-related news yesterday that's relevant to two of our favorite subjects here: design thinking and sustainability. Turns out Brown's firm, IDEO, launched Living Climate Change, which hopes to be "a clearinghouse for design thinking about the environment." The site is just getting[…]
The Financial Crisis Fallout Explained — on Video
But for a dive into the ethics questions we mentioned, jump to 45:20. There, Fish reads the ethics oath that some Harvard Business School students wrote and more signed, with wide publicity, this past spring. Fish's observation? "I found it fascinating that half of the people didn't sign it! There was[…]
Debating Offshoring’s Impact
Too often, discussions of contemporary economic issues end up either overly simplified for popular consumption -- or too jargony and technical to be followed by anyone but economists. A new book, Offshoring of American Jobs: What Response from U.S. Economic Policy? avoids both extremes -- and instead[…]
Bank Bashing, Courtesy of a Banker
Two of us at MIT Sloan Management Review grabbed good seats at yesterday’s MIT Sloan campus-event headliner: a downwind reflection on fallout from the financial crisis. Featured attraction: a high-level round of bank bashing, with a high-level banker on hand to help do it. OK, it wasn't only banks[…]
Management by Kindle?
cooked." I wish I had the version he seems to have. In mine, which seems to be the standard model, the screen isn't bright enough, the lack of a touch screen makes it quite unbooklike, you can't download any Saul Bellow, and don't get me started on the digital rights restrictions it locks you into.[…]
We read The Economist so you don’t have to
We here at MIT Sloan Management Review are voracious readers. After all, part of our service is to read management literature so you don't have to read all of it. But it's not only academic journals that are full of smart management ideas you can act on. This week's issue of The Economist has a pair[…]
Customers and service innovation
A new working paper looks at customers' role in innovation in a service industry: banking.
California’s green legal battleground
The New York Times reports that the US Chamber of Commerce and National Automobile Dealers Association is trying to block the state from regulating its greenhouse gas emissions.
Cell phone ratings from an unusual source
Companies face reviews and critiques all the time -- but in the case of cell phones, an environmental group is raising the bar by rating cell phones based on radiation emissions.
A new look at older technologies
Conventional wisdom has it that companies whose markets are being transformed by disruptive new technologies need to figure out how to switch to the new dominant technology. But two researchers argue that an alternative strategy --one that involves rethinking opportunities for the old technology --[…]
China pumps up green development
A new report says that China leads in the race to go green, with government supporting Chinese businesses in low carbon vehicles, energy efficiency, renewable energy and low carbon buildings.
Khosla raises $1 billion for clean energy funds
Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has raised more than $1 billion for clean energy funds, with state pension funds making big commitments, according to Bloomberg News. It's the first time Khosla has raised money from outside investors.
Climate change and rising fire risk
As fires sweep through the hills outside Los Angeles, the question arises: Are wildfires with us for the foreseeable future? Tom Kenworthy of the Center for American Progress says yes, spurred by climate change.
Is oil peaking?
On the 150th anniversary of the first oil well, the NY Times Green Inc. blog has a nice round up of recent commentary, including this Op-Ed that argued against the entire concept of peak oil.
What is the definition of a ‘Smart Grid’?
Terms get bandied about often in the world of sustainability, but there aren't always firm definitions in a young field. That's a risk, because without definitions, standards are impossible. And without standards, a new industry will never take off.
Developing an optimal innovation strategy
If one innovation approach is helpful, you might think using more than one approach to innovation would be even more productive. Not necessarily, write Frank T. Rothaermel and Andrew M. Hess in the new issue of Business Insight, MIT Sloan Management Review's collaboration with The Wall Street Journal[…]
Industrial apocalypse? Two futurists debate
Over at the Guardian, two environmental writers debate the fate of the world, which might be summed up as apocalyptic v. work like hell to prevent it.
Will Wal-Mart sustainability program lead to sticker shock?
Stephen Stokes of AMR Research has an interesting post over at Climate Progress on the impact of Wal-Mart's sustainability program.
Overcoming innovation hurdles
What's one of the challenges to successful management or process innovation in an existing business? The array of organizational structures that are designed to keep current processes running smoothly.
Wind lowering cost of power in Texas
Texas currently ranks as the sixth largest wind producer in the world (if it were a country) and that is having the effect of lowering electricity prices in Texas, an analysis by Bernstein Research finds.
The Coal-Capture Conundrum
The WaPo has a good read on the effort to capture the greenhouse gasses emitted by coal fired electricity plants. The article points out that such capture will be necessary, if carbon emissions are going to fall, because coal-fired plants account for so much Co2.
Asia, the U.S., and innovation
There's plenty of optimism to be heard about Asia's innovation future -- but less optimism about the U.S.'s ability to maintain its historical innovation leadership in the 21st century.
Explore Ideas
corporate planning technology entrepreneurs Ken Zolot Benjamin M. Friedman Ron Adner Jagdish Bhagwati offshoring of service jobs Daniel Snow Adam Saunders Startup Bootcamp Robin Chase discovery-driven growth technological change clean energy Ian Macmillan Erik Brynolfsson Tuck School of Business high-tech startups technology startups business plans Carmen Reinhart corporate new ventures Alan Blinder digital organization Wired for Innovation