MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
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New management ideas and research to help thoughtful executives capitalize on the opportunities generated by rapid organizational, technological, and societal change. At MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) we explore how leadership and management are transforming in a disruptive world.
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
2d ago
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
The influence of politics on where workers want to live now has key implications for a company’s talent strategy. A survey of 500 U.S. real estate agents shows 32% of agents had at least one client who relocated in 2023 due to political fit. My research examining the personal stories of 1,300 U.S. individuals who moved gives context to how local politics can drive workers to relocate — whether it’s people saying they are “tired of a whacky left-wing agenda,” prefer “to live in a more liberal, fact-based environment” or simply want to escape “incom ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
2d ago
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
People are often unsure why artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms work. More importantly, people can’t always anticipate when they won’t work. Ali Rahimi, an AI researcher at Google, received a standing ovation at a 2017 conference when he referred to much of what is done in AI as “alchemy,” meaning that developers don’t have solid grounds for predicting which algorithms will work and which won’t, or for choosing one AI architecture over another. To put it succinctly, AI lacks a basis for inference: a solid foundation on which to ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
2d ago
Jeff Cooper parlayed his interest in neuroscience and human behavior into a career in data science and today works as a senior data science director for online retail subscription service Stitch Fix. Jeff joins the Me, Myself, and AI podcast to share how the company pairs human employees with intelligent technologies to keep up with customer preferences while realizing operational efficiencies. He also talks about how the company sustains extremely high feedback rates from consumers and how humans are training models, as well as vice versa, leading to interesting feedback loops.
Jeff Cooper, S ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
5d ago
Sjoerd van Leeuwen/theispot.com
Imagine a product that millions of people find frustrating to use because of a design choice that could have easily been avoided. If it were your product, wouldn’t you want to know who was frustrated by it and why, how to fix the problem, and how your organization could avoid making similar mistakes in the future?
Obviously, letting a customer down is bad for business. Yet some products do this every day, unintentionally.
Consider, for instance, how marketers and designers use color to create a distinct visual identity for their products and brands. Decisions a ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
1w ago
It can be difficult to replace a former company leader who was beloved and respected. What do you do when you’re constantly hearing “You have big shoes to fill”? It’s crucial to understand your specific superpowers and what you bring to the role that’s unique. It’s also important to understand that the challenges faced by your predecessor are likely quite different from the ones you’re confronting today.
In this short video, MIT Sloan Management Review columnist Sanyin Siang offers three straightforward tips on what you can do to step out of a former leader’s shadow and make your new position ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
1w ago
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR
A senior manager at a call center in a large bank must promote one of two customer associates to shift manager. Both Martin and Seth have similar tenures and training. The major difference is in their productivity levels, determined by the index of calls made and customer satisfaction ratings. While both associates perform well above average, Martin’s productivity level is higher than Seth’s. Given Martin’s higher numbers, promoting him might seem clearly fairer.
If this is your intuition, it is based on the ideal of equity — that is, the idea that fairness is a ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
1w ago
Patrick George / Ikon Images
From content creation to software coding and customer segmentation, artificial intelligence deployment fever is real. But amid a great deal of media, analyst, and executive speculation about how AI will impact enterprises, it’s still not easy to see where organizations are reaping the results. To get new insights into what is currently happening with AI deployments in marketing and the associated payoffs, The CMO Survey asked a sample of 316 marketing leaders at for-profit U.S. companies to rate how the use of AI in marketing has affected outcomes. The marketing l ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
1w ago
Alice Mollon / Ikon Images
Executives need to have an understanding of information technology in order to derive business value from it and to productively interact with IT professionals. Nevertheless, IT experts have long lamented many executives’ limited knowledge of IT’s underlying functionality. In turn, many executives have (often unconsciously) declined to develop such IT literacy, preferring instead to focus their time and attention on domain and business matters.
However, recent evidence indicates that organizations that successfully unlock the strategic potential of artificial intell ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
1w ago
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The divergent fates of two rival condiment businesses — the best of times for McIlhenny Company, maker of well-known Tabasco-brand hot sauces, and the worst of times for Huy Fong Foods, originator of the U.S. version of the popular Sriracha pepper sauce — highlight the power and perils of diversification. While McIlhenny took strategic steps to diversify with future performance and risk in mind, Huy Fong failed to capitalize on its wild initial success, making missteps that ultimately rendered t ..read more
MIT Sloan Management Review Magazine
2w ago
Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images
The battle to get companies to take sustainability seriously is essentially over. Even in the face of the “anti-ESG” movement — a very American phenomenon — there are vanishingly few large organizations around the world that really question the need to address environmental and social issues. (Even ExxonMobil, a company that has spent decades muddying the science on climate change, wrote in a recent report: “[On] a list of the biggest challenges facing humankind ... addressing poverty and climate change would be at the top.”)
And yet, the question ..read more