MIT Sloan Management Review

Technology use, diverse networks and access to new information all enhance productivity. Multitasking also can offer productivity benefits — but only in moderation.

Do stock options for outside directors encourage bolder decision making? Or could such financial incentives actually inhibit risk taking?

The concept of “co-opetition” — particularly collaboration with rivals involving jointly developing technologies — is inherently paradoxical.

Foreign competition has become a fact of life in industrialized countries. But the nature of that competition is changing, as new entrants increasingly arrive from countries with dramatically lower costs.

There is a time and a place when corporate governance has little influence over performance, say two researchers at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, because competitive forces cut away at management fat.

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U.S. patent law says that you can’t patent an invention that is “obvious.” However, in the 2007 case KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. et. al., the Supreme Court raised the standard for showing that an invention is not obvious and is therefore worthy of a patent.

In today’s world, it seems, people want to characterize every utterance and action as strategic — as if the simple addition of the adjective elevates the importance and quality of the thinking.

Many large multinational corporations are hardly a model of organizational efficiency, with the right hand frequently not knowing what the left is doing. A valuable solution developed at one location fails to spread to other sites struggling with a similar problem, so they continually have to reinvent the wheel.

Process improvements don’t grow on trees, say three business school professors, but they might be native to cities.Take productivity-boosting intranets, for example, the private Internet capabilities that enable companies to improve information sharing and collaboration within a company.

In most large organizations, CEOs and senior management get the best technology and the best technology support, but this practice may actually put revenue at risk, according to two Unisys Corp. studies conducted over the last year.

Dual accountability between a buyer and its strategic suppliers, through tools such as a Two-Way Scorecard, is a new and tangible approach to improving supply chain relationships.

A CEO’s new vision often blurs into an indistinct image once the initial blitz is over. To ensure that the vision is more than just a daydream, companies should follow a five-phase model that some organizations have used successfully to avoid disaster or complacency.

Awareness of peer influence helps managers orchestrate the actions of others — and interpret their own behaviors.

The Genre Model can help in evaluating how a new communication technology may fit into your specific corporate environment.

Building an engine that produces a steady stream of innovative growth businesses is difficult, but companies that are able to do it differentiate themselves from competitors.

For any breakthrough innovation project, specific objectives are often unclear or highly malleable, and the paths to them are murky. Rather than feign a certainty that doesn’t exist, project managers need a systematic, disciplined framework for turning uncertainty into useful learning that keeps the project tacking on a successful course.

Surprisingly often, executives with impressive track records are mysteriously transformed into corrupt and tyrannical monsters once they become CEOs. What danger signals do these individuals exhibit, and what measures can be taken to reduce the likelihood of hiring them?

Under the right circumstances, companies of any size can grow to become platform leaders. And particular business and technology decisions can help platform-leader wannabes achieve their goals.

Many executives talk about corporate reputation and brand as if they are one and the same. They are not, and confusing the two can lead to costly mistakes.

New research indicates that there are five steps that can help business leaders increase CSR’s effectiveness as a lever for talent management.