A key driver of AI’s role in the global economy will be how cities deal with technological developments. Many cities plan to become “smart cities” armed with AI-driven processes, like AI-based traffic control systems. But simply adopting these new technologies won’t be enough to guarantee their success. Like organizations and education experts, cities need to assess and prepare for AI-related skills gaps.

This month’s MIT SMR Strategy Forum poll looks at whether a hard Brexit will be felt for businesses outside of the U.K. and Europe. Our panel of strategy experts weigh in on possible impacts, from supply chain disruption to disrupted labor supplies and worldwide recession.

This month’s MIT SMR Strategy Forum poll looks at whether China remains an integral growth opportunity for Western multinational companies — or whether other emerging markets or technology ventures have become more attractive in the face of increasing competition and trade issues.

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.

It’s remarkable how many people line up either for or against globalization and then dismiss the other side. Who’s right? Neither. We should all be lining up for and against globalization, to retain what is constructive about it while challenging what has become destructive. We need to keep globalization in its place — the marketplace, where it creates value — while keeping it out of the public space, where it has become increasingly destructive.

The accelerating pace of technology, fueled by hyperspecialization, digitization, and the ability to control these new environments, has been quietly ushering in a new economy set to disrupt every industry — the coherence economy.

With tough new EU regulations on data security coming in 2018, global companies will soon be faced with a choice: Protect consumers’ data and reap the rewards of having access to it, or face the competitive consequences of consumer distrust. But companies caught unprepared for the change may lose the privilege of keeping consumers’ data altogether.

Leaders need a new mental model to better understand the complex interplay between companies, economies, and societies. To do so, they must shift their focus to the broader business and social ecosystems in which their companies are embedded.

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.

Environmental sustainability has moved into the limelight when it comes to supply chains. Companies look closely at how their goods are produced and sourced. But a gap exists when it comes to the finance and insurance industries. ECOFACT’s Olivier Jaeggi and Gina Santos take a closer look at how the enablers of global trade — the banks and insurers who finance it — are starting to become accountable for their part in sustainable economic growth.

August 29, 2014, MIT Sloan School faculty with expertise in Latin America, China, energy and the global economy present their research and engage in discussion with business leaders about the business challenges and growth opportunities in Latin America and China in 2014 and future. The presenters look at economic and political uncertainty, risks of deflation, fluctuating commodities prices and energy issues. They also compare and contrast the ways of doing business in both marketplaces.

MIT SMR has launched a Chinese edition of its magazine and website, in partnership with local publishing firm Shanghai Li Han Technology Information Management Co. Ltd. Building on MIT SMR’s English language content, translated into Simplified Chinese, the publication will be enhanced by localized content relevant to business leaders and academics in China. The Chinese edition will bring MIT SMR’s premier content to the Chinese management and business community.

As vice president for sustainability at Kraft Foods, Chris McGrath has been pivotal at guiding the company’s sustainability efforts. With its global reach and massive market shares, the company is setting new standards on how to source through sustainable agriculture and keep packaging out of landfills.

It seems pretty obvious that droughts and hot weather hurt agricultural output and growth, but MIT professor of economics Benjamin Olken asserts that even localized hot spells can significantly damage long-term economic growth in developing countries. In a recent paper published in the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Olken and his colleagues found that every 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature in a poor country reduces economic growth by around 1.3 percentage points, and that higher temperatures also may reduce the rate of growth.

The planet’s focus today should be on resiliency rather than on sustainability, says Dennis Meadows, one of the original authors of the 1972 book Limits to Growth. That book was one of the first scholarly works to recognize that the world was approaching its sustainable limits.

MIT Sloan’s Andrew McAfee reflects on “the amazingly bad design and execution of customer-facing processes among financial services firms.” He wonders if they’ll only get better “when competitors appear who take process design and execution seriously, and digitize them to the maximum extent possible.”

How have strategies for supply chain design changed in recent years? What are the forces most profoundly shaping them now? What kinds of models have emerged for companies to consider, choose among or learn from? MIT professor and entrepreneur David Simchi-Levi and MIT professor Charles Fine — two of the world’s leading thinkers on supply chain and value chain design — offer answers to those questions and others.