MIT Sloan Management Review

Results from the fourth year of MIT SMR’s research collaboration with the Boston Consulting Group have found that managers who say sustainability has caused their organization to change its business model are also more likely to say that the organization’s sustainability activities have added to profits. Respondents to the survey who changed their business model also generated profits from their sustainability-related activities.

Too many executives confuse what an innovation is with what an innovation would do for them if they had one. The solution? Think of innovation as an if-then argument.

Companies are increasingly turning toward business model innovation as an alternative or complement to product or process innovation. Changes to business model design can be subtle; even when they might not have the potential to disrupt an industry, they can still yield important benefits to the innovator. The article offers a number of examples of business model innovation and poses six questions for executives to consider when thinking about business model innovation.

Energy sector innovation faces an important hurdle, according to MIT’s Ernest Moniz. How do we reconcile the cultural mismatch between innovators and the establishment?

Many companies are taking the first incremental steps toward sustainability, such as energy conservation and recycling. That’s a good start — but going further can yield significant competitive advantage.

Should external innovators be organized in collaborative communities or competitive markets? The answer depends on three crucial issues.

Nurturing a new and lasting idea doesn’t result from analyzing market data. Aspiring creators must act on what nonprofits already know: you get the best answers by burying yourself in the questions.

Bhaskar Chakravorti of Harvard Business School offers insights about entrepreneurship and innovation during a downturn,

Information markets, wikis and other applications that tap into the collective intelligence of groups have recently generated tremendous interest. But what”s the reality behind the hype?

New research reveals the surprising power of ancient — and largely unconscious — forms of human communication.

As health care costs continue to skyrocket, companies must aggressively seek ways to work with employees and providers to reduce costs, while improving quality.

A four-year study of Japanese business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce initiatives reveals the innovative ways Japanese corporations exploit traditional aspects of Japanese business and consumer retailing — specifically, the consumer’s preference for paying with cash and the willingness of corporations to form cooperative alliances (the keiretsu model) — to further develop the

It’s not the size of the budget but how it is used that determines success or failure of the enterprise.