MIT Sloan Management Review

Competing in the Age of Omnichannel Retailing

MIT Sloan Management Review — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:52:19 +0000

Download the Article (PDF) Free download brought to you by (Registration Required) Brandon McDonald, of Nashville, Tennessee, visited a local Best Buy to purchase a digital single-lens reflex camera. After browsing through the available products, he decided that he liked the Nikon D5100. To verify the price, he scanned the barcode with the RedLaser app [...]

Big Data and Big Change Management: A Path Forward

Renee Boucher Ferguson — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:43:33 +0000

MIT Sloan School of Management recently held a two-day executive education course, Big Data: Making Complex Things Simpler, designed to provide executives with both an overview of big data and a few techniques to harness some of the elusive power of that data. During the event, MIT researchers Alex “Sandy” Pentland and Erik Brynjolfsson talked [...]

Educating Executives Online in Four Dimensions

Renee Boucher Ferguson — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:09:41 +0000

I am the proud recipient of an MIT Sloan Executive Education Course certification. Or should I say, my avatar is. MIT Sloan’s Big Data 4Dx executive education course, held simultaneously in Cambridge and in the virtual world this April, was the first ever to use a gaming interface. Think Second Life for the professional set. [...]

With 3-D Printing, the Shoe Really Fits

Michael Fitzgerald — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:25:21 +0000

Image courtesy of New Balance. Photography by Scott Zeuhlke. Few new technologies receive more intense interest than 3-D printing. The technology has some predicting that it will revolutionize manufacturing top to bottom, creating new, small-scale manufacturing with little waste. That promise remains emergent. But it is taking shape. Some of the more intriguing examples come [...]

A View from the Peak: Balancing Our Carbon Budget

Nina Kruschwitz — Mon, 13 May 2013 21:30:58 +0000

Is there a credible scenario in which most oil, coal, and gas reserves are left in the ground? Well, yes — if investors and policy makers believe that burning them constitutes a greater risk then leaving them untapped. Earlier this year, the London-based financial services company HSBC (the third largest publicly held bank in the [...]

What is Social Media, Anyway? (And Why Managers Should Care)

Gerald C. Kane — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:50:02 +0000

What is social media? Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? Despite the considerable amount of attention paid to social media by business, the press, and academia, I’d argue that we still don’t have a clear understanding of what social media actually is. When asked to define social media, most people probably rely on something [...]

Sustainability Goals — Thinking About What Works and What Doesn’t

Nina Kruschwitz — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:34:41 +0000

“Wouldn’t you like to do more of what tends to work, and less of what may not work?” That’s the question posed by Dan Aronson in his breakout session on the results of his research on sustainable value chains at the fifth annual MIT Sustainability Summit, held April 27–28 on campus at the MIT Media [...]

The Net Positive Strategy: Where Environmental Stewardship Meets Business Innovation

MIT Sloan Management Review — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:48:20 +0000

Nick Folland, legal and corporate responsibility director at Kingfisher What if companies were to put more resources into the environment than they take out? That’s the question underlying Kingfisher’s Net Positive strategy. The Net Positive plan seeks to change Kingfisher’s business model to practices that produce a net positive environmental impact — and implementing it [...]

Ray Wang Surveys the Evolution of Social Business

Robert Berkman — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:56:16 +0000

Ray Wang, Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, Inc. For a survey of the social business landscape we turned to Ray Wang of Constellation Research. He talks with MIT SMR about the traits of socially networked companies, where leaders are fostering the use of social applications like gamification and, more broadly, changing how employees [...]

The Emergence of Chief Digital Officers

Robert Berkman — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:00:38 +0000

A new force is stepping into the C-suite — an upstart whose arrival signals how a company will manage social media and other digital technologies: the chief digital officer, or CDO. Appearing in many industries, CDOs share a similar mandate: provide oversight and strategy, and create a big-picture view of how social and digital technologies [...]

Predicting the Performance of Analytics Talent

Renee Boucher Ferguson — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:00:51 +0000

Fifty-five percent of big data analytics projects are abandoned. This surprising finding comes from a recent survey of 300 IT professionals, conducted by a company called InfoChimps. The most significant challenge with analytics projects, according to the survey? Finding talent. Most (80%) of the respondents said that the top two reasons analytics projects fail are [...]

Reimagining the Possible with Data Analytics? Some Answers to Your Questions

Renee Boucher Ferguson — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:00:19 +0000

In mid-March my colleagues David Kiron, Executive Editor at MIT Sloan Management Review, Pamela Kirk Prentice, Research Director at SAS Institute, and I conducted a webinar discussing the findings of our recent research report, From Value to Vision: Reimagining the Possible with Data Analytics In

Video: The Digital Transformation of Health Care

Michael Fitzgerald — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 09:00:18 +0000

As the U.S. health-care industry goes through the most significant change it has faced in decades, one of the country’s largest health insurers, WellPoint, is responding by using technology to change how the company operates. Lori Beer, WellPoint’s executive vice president of specialty businesses and information technology, talks about how technology lowers costs and helps [...]

What Can Managers Learn about Social Media from the Boston Marathon Bombing?

Gerald C. Kane — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:00:57 +0000

Image courtesy of Flickr user Tostie14 Last week witnessed a series of surreal events in the city of Boston, with the Marathon bombings and the subsequent identification and apprehension of the suspects. Now that the crisis and chaos of the bombings and the hunt for the suspects have passed, we can reflect on the events [...]

How Analytics Can Transform Business Models

Renee Boucher Ferguson — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:49 +0000

Franklin Rios, President of Luminar Insights There are 52 million Latinos in the United States, with $1.5 trillion of purchasing power. Entravision Communications Corporation a Spanish-language media company, reaches about 96% of that U.S. Latino audience through its numerous television and radio stations and digital platforms. It uses that extraordinary reach to provide media solutions [...]

Caesars Entertainment: Betting on Sustainability

David Kiron — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:02 +0000

In early January 2013, Gary Loveman, chairman and CEO of Caesars Entertainment, the world’s most geographically diversified gaming company, listened closely as Hilary Fagan, an employee from one of the company’s Las Vegas casinos, presented her latest analysis on how customers felt about Caesars’ green programs. She had sorted through survey data from guests who [...]

Managing Risks, Creating Opportunities from Ecosystem Change

Nina Kruschwitz — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Image courtesy of Flickr user Gavin Fordham The health of the world’s ecosystems is in rapid decline, jeopardizing both biodiversity and bottom lines. Business depends on the services that nature provides — in fact, all organizations depend on ecosystem services somewhere in their value chain. The good news? There are new, comprehensive tools and methods [...]

Lessons From Analytical Innovators

MIT Sloan Management Review — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:30:49 +0000

The webinar provides an in-depth look at Analytical Innovators. Viewers get tips on: engendering the beliefs, practices, and outcomes characteristic of Analytical Innovators; enabling the success factors required to excel in today’s analytics revolution; creating a framework that shows how your company — regardless of analytical sophistication — can become more like Analytical Innovators; and [...]

Can CIOs Step Up and Be Leaders in Social Media?

Robert Berkman — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:54 +0000

A convergence of research data, analyst forecasts and commentary from authorities on social enterprise like Dion Hinchcliffe together may paint a worrisome picture when it comes to the future of CIOs and social business. In previous installments, we’ve highlighted the fact that CFOs are more reluctant to support social business than their C-suite colleagues. We’ve [...]

How Pharmaceuticals Can Avoid the Side Effects of Social Media

Nina Kruschwitz — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:00:36 +0000

Dr. Ed Tucker, VP Janssen Research & Development, a Johnson & Johnson company Dr. Ed Tucker is vice president and head of pharmacovigilance operations, Global Medical Safety for Janssen Research & Development LLC, which is part of Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson and Johnson subsidiary. Janssen Pharmaceuticals itself produces pharmaceuticals for treating a wide range of [...]