The 20 Most Popular MIT Sloan Management Review Articles of 2016

In 2016, MIT Sloan Management Review website visitors gravitated toward new articles about the management implications of technology-driven trends such as the internet of things, analytics, and artificial intelligence. They also showed significant interest in articles related to setting strategy in times of rapid change. But the most popular new article by far was about a timeless topic: meaning in work.

1. What Makes Work Meaningful — Or Meaningless
   New research offers insights into what gives work meaning — as well as into common management mistakes that can leave employees feeling that their work is meaningless.
2. GE’s Big Bet on Data and Analytics
   This case study focuses on GE’s “industrial internet” strategy.
3. Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future
   In this report, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte explore how digitally savvy executives are aligning their people, processes, and culture with an eye toward long-term digital success.
4. Data Sharing and Analytics Drive Success with IoT
   This MIT Sloan Management Review study concluded that obtaining business value from the internet of things depends on companies’ willingness to share data with other organizations.
5. Beyond the Hype: The Hard Work Behind Analytics Success
   This report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS found that few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics.
6. The Hard Truth About Business Model Innovation
   Clayton M. Christensen, Thomas Bartman, and Derek van Bever offer a framework they developed at Harvard Business School that explains why business model innovation can be so challenging — and how executives can make better decisions about it.
7. Investing for a Sustainable Future
   Investors, according to this report by MIT Sloan Management Review and the Boston Consulting Group, care more about sustainability than many executives believe.
8. The Lost Art of Thinking in Large Organizations
   Many executives in big companies attained their positions by excelling at getting things done. Unfortunately, argues MIT Sloan School of Management professor Duncan Simester, a bias for doing rather than thinking can leave these executives ill-equipped for the strategic thinking their new roles require.
9. Using Artificial Intelligence to Set Information Free
   LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman describes his vision of how AI will transform management in the coming years.
10. Data-Driven City Management
    This case study takes a close look at Amsterdam’s Smart City Initiative.

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11. Rise of the Strategy Machines
    While humans may be ahead of computers in the ability to create strategy today, we shouldn’t be complacent about our dominance, according to Babson College professor Thomas H. Davenport.
12. A Data-Driven Approach to Customer Relationships
    This case study examines data practices at Nedbank in South Africa.
13. When Strategy Walks Out the Door
    Teppo Felin of the University of Oxford makes the case that it’s ironic that companies often spend significant resources on external strategy advice while ignoring one the most fruitful sources of strategic insights: their own employees. What’s more, employees whose ideas about strategy aren’t listened to may quit — and take their ideas with them.
14. Managing the Bots That Are Managing the Business
    We are just at the beginning of the transformation from an economy dominated by human workers to one dominated by electronic workers, argues Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media.
15. The Real Lessons From Kodak’s Decline
    Willy Shih, a Harvard Business School professor who was also an executive at Eastman Kodak Co., analyzes the challenges Kodak faced.
16. Rethinking the Manager’s Role
    Technology will not render managers obsolete — but they will need to be more skilled than ever before, according to Lynda Gratton of London Business School.
17. Why Great New Products Fail
    Many innovative new products don’t succeed in the marketplace. One common reason, suggests MIT Sloan School of Management professor Duncan Simester: Companies don’t focus enough on understanding how customers evaluate products and make purchase decisions.
18. How to Develop a Great Digital Strategy
    To succeed today, companies need a unique value proposition that incorporates digital technologies in a way that is difficult for competitors to replicate.
19. Just How Smart Are Smart Machines?
    Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby, coauthors of the book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, explain what today’s cognitive technologies can — and can’t — do for businesses.
20. Keep Calm and Manage Disruption
    Just whisper the word “disruption” if you want to scare the life out of many business leaders. But contrary to some claims, Joshua S. Gans of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School finds that disruption can be averted, and many businesses find ways of managing through it.