MIT Sloan Management Review

Researchers at Stanford and Harvard have found that when weighing someone with great achievement versus someone with great potential, we often tilt toward the potential.

In May, 2012, the New Yorker published an 11-page profile of Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor. The article details his fascination with low-end disruptive products (articulated in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma), his Mormon faith, and how good people, like good companies, can lose their way in life. That last topic is the subject of Christensen’s book How Will You Measure Your Life? and his TED talk of the same name.

Executives become isolated if they don’t get on-point coaching and honest feedback. But too often, their “coaches” are people outside the company who don’t seem them in action. Robert S. Kaplan of Harvard Business School says that the better tactic is to get coaching from direct reports.

In these days of uncertain markets – and an uncertain economy – risk can seem almost omnipresent. But how do you manage risk prudently – yet still grow your company? Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Kaplan began exploring risk management in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, after he saw venerable firms such as Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns collapse – despite having risk management functions. Here are a few of his insights on the topic of risk management.

Given the sparkle that environmental rankings lend to high-ranking companies, they should take into account a business’s advocacy activities to influence environmental regulation in addition to the business’s internal operations, argue Auden Schendler of the Aspen Skiing Company and Michael Toffel of Harvard Business School.

Research in innovation and creativity shows that giving employees unstructured time — on company time — pays off.

An analysis of mandatory sustainability reporting and management practices across the world concludes that it does make a difference, leading to the elevation of sustainability to priority, additional board oversight, and a decrease in corruption.

Al Roth, expert in game theory, experimental economics, and market design (and Harvard Business School professor), is one of the big names in the field of matching markets — building efficient systems that match, for instance, new doctors to their first hospital jobs out of medical school.

“The zoom framework offers a dynamic model that can help current and aspiring leaders increase their own range of vision and establish conditions that enable others’ success,” argues Rosabeth Moss Kanter in a new article.

Since Digital Equipment Corp. founder (and MIT alumnus) Ken Olsen died earlier this month at 84, much has been written about him and the computer company he cofounded.
 
The story of Digital Equipment Corp.

If a company is committed to addressing societal problems, can that benefit its business performance? Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter thinks so.

Kanter explained why, in an interview published recently in Business Insight, MIT Sloan Management Review's collaboration with The Wall Street Journal.�

Traditionally, we have tended to think of businesses (or individuals who then start businesses) as the principal source of innovative new products or services in a market economy.  But, in a thought-provoking new working paper, Carliss Y.

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 — can sometimes make sense.

A new study explores the relationship between venture capitalists’ location and their investments — and finds some quite intriguing results.

According to Clayton Christensen, the customer is the wrong unit of analysis for innovators to focus on. Instead, focus on the job that customers are trying to get done when they use your product or service.

In a downturn like this one, every company should — in some sense — think of itself as a new business, according to Harvard Business School’s Lynda Applegate.

How is innovation faring during the economic downturn? The answer depends on whom you ask. Recently, we have seen interesting, but somewhat conflicting, reports on the state of innovation in the U.S. economy.

First, The Wall Street Journal reported some surprising good news last week: Despite the economy, large U.S.

A leading expert on disruptive innovation discusses a range of topics — from health care to innovation in financial markets –in an interview published in MIT Sloan Management Review.

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

Andrew McAfee, who popularized the term “Enterprise 2.0″ in a 2006 MIT Sloan Management Review article, has three criteria for what makes a given technology environment an Enterprise 2.0 one.