This month’s MIT SMR Strategy Forum poll looks at whether recent stock market volatility is here for the long-term and what global factors organizations should be thinking about.

Each month, the MIT SMR Strategy Forum poses a single question to our panel of experts in the fields of business, economics, and management. This month’s question asks our panel whether, in the next five years, blockchain technology will have a transformative effect on emerging markets in the global economy.

Banks and financial startups were some of the earliest adopters of mobile-first strategies and now they continue to innovate with AI. Learn about the four pillars driving change and AI adoption in banking and how these strategies can apply to organizations across any industry.

Although traditional financial services companies now offer mass-market financial advice via “robo-advisers,” average U.S. customers seeking investment advice are still underserved — and platform-based digital powerhouses like Amazon are taking notice.

As demographic changes and technological advances upend the marketplace, MetLife has responded by making digital transformation the heart of its business model.

A case study by MIT Sloan Management Review, “A Data-Driven Approach to Customer Relationships,” details how the South African bank Nedbank is using its rich access to a trove of transactional data from credit card use — from the time of transactions and size of purchases to retailer locations, and even specific details like the age, gender, race, marital status, and income bracket of some users — to help merchants make strategic decisions to better serve those customers.

In a conversation with MIT SMR’s David Kiron and Sam Ransbotham, associate professor of information systems at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College and guest editor for the Data and Analytics Big Idea Initiative for the MIT Sloan Management Review, Jeffrey Bohn, chief science officer at State Street Global Exchange discusses how he is developing better trading and risk strategies for clients using State Street’s proprietary data and analytics.

The Bank of England, one of the world’s oldest and most influential central banks, has made analytics excellence a key pillar of its mission to promote economic stability within the United Kingdom. Like other central banks, the Bank has relied on data and analytics to formulate policy recommendations. But, since 2008 when it regained its status as a regulator, the Bank has begun using its access to new forms of data to increase its insights and forecasting abilities about the British economy.

Kenyan mobile money pioneer M-Pesa is just one of many companies in developing economies that build virtuous cycles where solving ecological problems and building resilient communities opens new opportunities. Adopting an abundant perspective, argues author Jay Friedlander, provides concrete economic, social, and environmental objectives that unleash new possibilities.

Most people recognize their data as an asset — yet few regard it as a liquid asset. But a chance meeting opened up an opportunity for using data assets in a different way to support R&D — and uncovered a whole new path for financing of science and tech research. SVB Analytics head Steve Allan explains how using analytics “allows us to ask if we need to look at the data a different way.”

Do you know how much data is being collected about you at any given time by any given organization? Concerns about privacy in the new era of big data are making the rounds at many companies and being discussed by universities, governments and global institutions. This blogpost discusses some of the major privacy concerns about big data, how to address them and has a special focus on Equifax, the credit company that has 800 billion records with details on 500 million consumers and 81 million businesses in 17 countries.

Most executives naturally gravitate toward one of these two approaches. The challenge is that companies need both.

What’s one of the challenges to successful management or process innovation in an existing business? The array of organizational structures that are designed to keep current processes running smoothly.

The bleak labor market for finance professionals may create an unexpected opportunity — for environmental sustainability efforts.

The bleak labor market facing finance professionals may create an unexpected opportunity — for environmental sustainability efforts.

MIT Sloan School professor Simon Johnson offers an unsettling interpretation of the financial crisis. Also: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke about the relationship between financial innovation and consumer protection.

Harvard’s Martin Feldstein and MIT’s Simon Johnson offer insights on the economy and the banking system.

The global financial crisis that occurred in 2008 can be viewed as a systems accident that was fueled, in part, by innovations in the financial sector.