MIT Sloan

Matt Harrison Clough / Ikon Images In an age where innovation reigns supreme, it’s easy for leaders to believe that a novel business model equals a ticket to success. The logic is appealing: Be the first to offer something new, or something familiar in a new way, and the profits will follow. This idea becomes

When a top performer confided that she was experiencing an intolerable level of burnout and was job hunting, it was a wake-up call about team leadership for Lauren Dreyer. The 20-year veteran of Fidelity Investments had had no idea that burnout was an issue for anyone on her team. And only later did Dreyer realize

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The amount of change coming at leaders right now may feel unprecedented, given today’s political and technical landscape. But amid significant disruptions, such as artificial intelligence tools, deep-tech innovations, novel fintech platforms, and geopolitical shifts, an organization’s capacity to grow depends on its capacity to change constantly. Success also

A chemical engineer by training, Angela Nakalembe worked in the sciences and management consulting before landing at YouTube as the company’s engineering program manager for trust and safety. At YouTube, Angela explains, AI has become a first line of defense against harmful content. The technology not only accelerates content moderation tasks but makes the process

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The pressure to “do more with less” is wearing people out. Burnout affects at least half of us: In a 2024 survey of 1,500 full-time employees of U.S. companies, 51% said they’d suffered burnout in the past year. Nearly two-thirds cited mental and emotional stress as the top cause.

Related Reading A. Tomaselli and O.A. Acar, “How GenAI Changes Creative Work,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Sept. 19, 2024. A. Gvirtz and O.A. Acar, “Why Text-to-Image AI Requires a New Branding Mindset,” MIT Sloan Management Review, Oct. 26, 2023. Many marketing leaders recognize the opportunity of using generative AI for marketing but struggle with a

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images There’s a quiet crisis in strategy today. Most executives assume that if they scan hard enough, analyze deeply enough, or plan thoroughly enough, a path forward will reveal itself. But that’s an illusion left over from a more stable era. I’ve spent years working with Fortune 100 leaders, founders,

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images In my work at MIT Sloan School of Management, I have taught the basics of how large language models (LLMs) work to many executives during the past two years. Some people posit that business leaders neither want to nor need to know how LLMs and the generative AI tools

Matt Harrison Clough In collaborative organizations, where teams are matrixed, workers are multi-allocated, and the work itself is often fluid, exploratory, or evolving, managers face a major challenge: Cooperation is often messy and opaque, and it rarely follows a linear path. Today’s joint work products and multiproject environments don’t have the simple measurability of, say,

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images To compete and survive, companies need to adopt innovative ways of working, but new options seem to be emerging more frequently than ever before. Fortunately, not all innovative practices need to be invented anew. Many — such as lean management, digitization, and agile approaches — have already been conceptualized