Barbara Goose, CMO at John Hancock, cites thinking like a startup and encouraging employees to pursue “hybrid roles” as key to the organization’s successes at digital transformation.

Lindsay Sutton, AVP and digital strategy lead at John Hancock Financial Services, Inc. talks with MIT SMR guest editor Gerald C. (Jerry) Kane about the mindset required to prioritize digital transformation.

New research looks at the strategies executives use in capturing new growth opportunities. “Resist jumping at the first potential opportunity,” write Christopher B. Bingham (Kenan-Flagler Business School), Nathan R. Furr (Marriott School of Management) and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt (Stanford University). Instead, evaluate whether one opportunity will it set you up for future ones — what the authors call “sequencing opportunities.” They write: “Sustained business success appears to depend not just on capturing one opportunity but also on stringing multiple opportunities together.”

For KLM, social business arose as a spontaneous response to the Icelandic volcanic eruption that spewed ash into Europe’s airspace for days, halting all air travel and stranding thousands of passengers. Since the abrupt birth of the airlines’ social business strategy, e-commerce senior vice president Martijn van der Zee has made the company a model for using social in customer service.

Whether it involves recycling, refurbishing or remanufacturing, product reconstruction can offer attractive consumer prices, high-quality goods and a host of profit opportunities.

A new survey of Indian and Chinese professionals and managers who studied or worked in the U.S. and then returned to their home countries finds that more than half may start their own businesses.

Marketing research must become a model for innovation rather than support the mere incremental administration of brands.

In a world of commoditized products, companies are turning to service offerings for growth. The key to success involves redefining markets in terms of customer activities and outcomes, not products and services.