The Best of This Week
The week’s must-reads for managing in the digital age, curated by the MIT SMR editors.
Topics
Weekly Recap
Entrepreneurial Identity Must Adapt to Disruption
Many entrepreneurs launch companies or product lines as expressions of who they are — but this identity can prove to be an Achilles’ heel if it is too inflexible to adapt to changing times. Leaders may need to reassess who they are to respond to disruption and grow their businesses.
Three Approaches to Value-Based Selling
Value-based selling can boost margins and competitiveness, but vendors must first advance beyond the prevailing one-size-fits-all approach.
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Show Me the Data!
Who should get vaccine booster shots and when? Can vaccinated people with a breakthrough infection transmit the virus as easily as unvaccinated people? How many people with breakthrough infections die or get seriously ill? We’re drowning in data, yet we’re still in a pandemic fog, in which inadequate data hinders a clear understanding of how to fight a stealthy enemy.
One Leader’s Experimental Approach to Advancing AI
A leader’s willingness to experiment, even when it results in short-term failure, is critical to the effective adoption of a new technology. Piyush Gupta, the group CEO of DBS Bank, has managed to create not only a banking and customer service powerhouse out of an organization once known as “Damn Bloody Slow,” but also a highly aggressive adopter of artificial intelligence.
Big Tech Faces a Legal Challenge to App-Store Dominance
A bill passed this week by South Korea’s National Assembly is the first in the world to dent the tech giants’ dominance over how apps on their platforms sell their digital goods. Korea’s Communications Commission chairman Han Sang-hyuk said, “As bills with similar implications are being proposed in the U.S. and Europe, South Korea’s bill will become a cornerstone for legislating app market platform regulations worldwide.”
What Else We’re Reading This Week
- The financial industry’s diversity measures are “insufficient statistics” (Source: MIT SMR)
- How three small companies strengthened their culture and kept employees connected while working from home (Source: The New York Times)
- Why are so many knowledge workers quitting their jobs? (Source: The New Yorker)
- Next week, El Salvador is due to become the first country to adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender, but economists are sounding warnings over risks (Source: The Guardian)
Quote of the Week:
“I wish when shoppers see our product they give it a kiss when they realize how difficult it was just to get it to the shelf.”
— Sunny Tan, deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, in “The World Economy’s Supply Chain Problem Keeps Getting Worse”