The Executive Briefings for the Summer 2019 issue of MIT SMR give a snapshot of the issue’s close look at the challenges, culture shifts, and opportunities that adopting AI will bring to businesses. Plus: How to make M&A successful; does management style change with age?

Thoughtful adoption of intelligent technologies will be essential to survival for many companies. But simply implementing the latest technologies and automation tools won’t be enough. Success will depend on whether organizations use them to innovate in their operations and in their products and services—and whether they acquire and develop the human capital to do so.

Renowned social psychologist Edgar Schein and his colleagues defined how we thought about organizations and leadership in the 1950s. But in the digital era, Schein — working with his son, Silicon Valley executive Peter Schein — has developed a new perspective, one that advocates combining culture, change, and leadership into an integrated process, rather than viewing them as three separate topics of importance.

For legacy companies, culture change is often the biggest challenge of digital transformation. How can they become more agile and innovative without alienating their best employees or wrecking their best existing practices? This article provides a framework for leaders in any industry. The process begins with understanding four key values of digital culture: impact, speed, openness, and autonomy. It then involves adopting or refining a set of digital-ready practices, grounded in these values.

The critical software and technical systems we rely on daily are like invisible skyscrapers all around us — yet we often don’t know who designed them, how they were constructed, or whether they hide defects that could lead to massive inconvenience, financial chaos, or catastrophic failures.

To make gender equality a reality, organizations need to shift their thinking about what it means to them — that is, to make it part of their company’s values and a permanent driver of culture rather than a mere priority that might change in time. Lessons can be learned from the energy sector, which saw a cultural shift take place around another crucial workplace issue: safety.

Nine fast-moving megatrends are shaping where our world will be in 11 years. From demographics to urbanization to the big one — climate change — and more, the directions we’re heading and choices we make in the next decade will have enormous impacts on our careers, businesses, and lives.

Many leaders lack the skills and mindset to thrive in the digital economy, and mindset gaps create blind spots. It’s difficult to be a great leader when you don’t know what you don’t know.

Hoping a jack-of-all-trades can lead your organization’s digital transition is unrealistic. We found four distinct types of successful digital executives who can best provide vision and purpose for digital. Crucially, each type has unique strengths and performs best in different contexts.

Getting buy-in on a large digital transformation project is hard enough when it’s happening within an existing team. Managing a cross-functional project that requires contributions from multiple units is an even bigger challenge — but it can be done effectively if project leaders focus on three key steps.

Most of us know Moore’s law, that the power of semiconductor chips grows exponentially, not linearly, over time. Moore’s law, though, is only part of the technology equation. There’s another critical law that needs more attention. It’s this: While technology changes quickly, organizations change much more slowly. That means digital transformation is as much a leadership challenge as a technical one.

When it comes to salary transparency, one widely held belief is that women have a harder time collecting salary information than men. While some research suggests this may be true in some cases, collective research has not tackled a fundamental question: Are female employees truly less informed about salaries, or is this just a stereotype?

High-skilled immigration is dramatically transforming the tech sector in the United States. U.S. tech workers over age 40 have good reasons to be concerned. In addition to competing with greater numbers of skilled foreign workers, older tech workers are now also more likely than younger workers to lose their jobs when technical work moves overseas.

The rise of digital giants in the gig economy has brought new scrutiny to how companies should manage contingent workers. This new landscape offers new flexibility and opportunity, but workers also face unpredictability, with inconsistent incomes and scant benefits. Companies and managers can take three practical measures to help support these workers in the future.

Recent efforts and concerns to protect the privacy of users’ data, while admirable, do not go far enough. Innovators and leaders must consider how new technology will be monitored to protect against potential harmful and irreversible effects.

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?

Many of us assume that the leadership handbook must be completely rewritten for the digital age. Is this true? Or are we overly focused on what’s changing and thus neglecting the fundamentals? There is something to be said for both arguments. While many core leadership skills remain the same, the demands of digital disruption call for certain new ones, as well. This article explores which are which and what we can learn from organizations that are digitally maturing.

When it comes to the complex hiring processes of corporate America, women often face not only glass ceilings but “glass walls.” Recent MIT Sloan Management Review articles provide insights and research into some of today’s leading issues for women in the workforce and steps managers can take to lead change.

How can companies and employees find common ground when it comes to skill development and investment in AI capabilities? To start, senior executives should seek clarity around capability gaps and determine which skills their people need. From there, leaders should take an approach that advances those skills for human-AI collaboration.

At the 2019 gathering of the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about the need for re-skilling and inclusive education, and the ongoing gender gap in the world of technology. Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School, attended the Davos conference as a steward of the World Economic Forum Council on Work, Education and Gender, and shares her insights from the meeting.