The Spring 2019 issue of MIT SMR takes a close look at market evolution and growth. Does a disruptive industry’s success necessarily come at the expense of another entity? Or are there mechanisms to business growth that can expand opportunities without (necessarily) spelling doom to existing systems?

In the digital age, the competitive landscape can be transformed in the blink of an eye. Companies can use weak digital signals to help redefine their offerings and the scale and scope of how they compete. Companies that can’t do this in a timely manner put themselves at a competitive disadvantage because they must invest in additional resources to catch up.

Examining childhood traits such as boldness, experimentation, and resilience may help leaders access these qualities in service of their leadership roles. Rather than trying to learn how to be more creative or innovative, learning how not to lose the innate creativity and curiosity within us is more effective.

Properly navigating strategic business migrations by applying successful animal migration principles can help your company arrive at the right place and at the right time for marketplace success.

Considering the increasing pace of technological change and volatility in many industries, the need for corporate transformation is rising. Unfortunately, the chance of successfully achieving it is falling.

Once bastions of command-and-control management style, U.S. military institutions have moved to the forefront of organizational and leadership agility. Today’s military leadership emphasizes efficient movement through four decision cycles — observe, orient, decide, and act — to speed up its response to external threats. It’s also investing significant resources to become more agile and experimenting with innovative solutions.

There was once a time when middlemen were indispensable. Intermediaries facilitated transactions between makers and buyers; they closed the gaps between disconnected entities that required one another for survival; and, within organizations, they interpreted high-level corporate strategy and connected it to front-line execution. But one by one, such intermediaries are being made obsolete by technology.

It’s not smart to base any part of your strategy on what you see in the rear-view mirror — and that’s particularly true when you develop strategies for navigating modern, thorny environmental and social challenges. The norms and expectations about how companies manage sustainability issues are shifting fast: Just six years ago, only 20% of the S&P 500 companies produced sustainability reports, while by 2016, 82% did. Change is coming to business — and executives need to adjust.

Just when you have your data collection and analysis systems in place, technology changes mean that your company needs new, updated systems. This is a problem for many companies — but it can also be an opportunity. Organizations that work with data from old and new equipment can learn more about the shortcomings that modern techniques have in this context and can gain advantage in developing tools that no one else has.

The key problem facing organizations with respect to digital disruption is the different rates at which people, organizations, and policy respond to technological advances. The gaps between innovations and their adoption — and organizations’ ability to adapt — pose a challenge for companies.

What does it take to keep pace in today’s environment, one in which we are expected to pivot repeatedly toward new ways of working? I think of the challenge along three dimensions, each of which can be captured as a personal trait: will, skill, and velocity.

We’re nowhere near the end of the disruption digital technologies will have on business. Claiming that “we’re not a digital company” is no longer an option; failing to pay attention and develop a working knowledge of the present state of digital technologies all but guarantees obsolescence.

Tom Davenport speaks at the 2017 MIT CIO Symposium, sharing the three ways businesses use artificial intelligence.

The MIT Sloan School of Management 14th annual CIO Symposium discusses the impact artificial intelligence will have on the jobs of the future.

For tech giants and startups alike, Silicon Valley success is grounded in core business values and processes rather than technological know-how — with a unique twist. Tech businesses have made a commitment to flexibility that allows them to reshape their business models to the needs of an ever-changing digital environment, which gives them an advantage over less-adaptable traditional companies.

Accelerating compression of both revenues and profits may rapidly prove fatal to traditional businesses. Consider the accelerating decline of voice calls as a means of communicating via mobile telephone: From 2013 to 2015, average mobile voice revenue per user declined globally by 19%, and a further decline of 26% is expected through 2020. To stave off disaster, incumbents must transform and renew their core operations — while also growing into new businesses and industries.

Before you adopt any popular new management approach, it pays to analyze the implicit values embedded in it. Then ask yourself: How well will those values fit our existing organizational culture?

Global, social, and marketplace shifts are doing much more to transform the nature of work, how we work, and how organizations in both the private and public sector can best adapt to rapid global change. So how can organizations find new ways to avoid becoming saddled with legacy processes, technologies, and ways of thinking?

Research shows that successful digital transformation does not require secret digital knowledge; it simply requires the boldness to recognize that digital transformation is occurring and to begin trying to adapt your business to account for and capitalize on these trends.

The business literature is full of references to “agile” processes, but what are they? Agility refers to an organization’s ability to make timely, effective, and sustained changes that maintain superior performance. Agile organizations continuously adjust to changing circumstances by changing product offerings, entering or exiting markets, or building new capabilities. This strategy requires management processes that can support adaptability over time.