MIT Sloan

Sergio Ingravalle/Ikon Images Every leader eventually faces the moment they dread most: standing before their people to deliver bad news. It’s the test no one asks for, yet it arrives for everyone who leads. When delivered poorly, bad news can drain trust and morale. It can sap the energy of the very people you need

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The idea of meritocracy is under attack: It has been called a “myth,” a “sham,” a “trap,” a “tyranny,” and an “alibi for plutocracy.” While meritocracy, as historically and currently practiced, is clearly in need of reform, it is hard to accept the notion that it is so flawed

What happens when you deploy AI tools to enhance workers’ capabilities instead of replacing people? At Cascade Engineering, a $400 million plastics manufacturer, “physical AI” — the use of intelligent machinery alongside human problem solvers — is giving people more time to innovate. That workforce management tactic dovetails with CEO Christina Keller’s distributed leadership approach,

Chris Gash/theispot.com Creativity is widely recognized as a cornerstone of long-term business success, yet many leaders find it frustratingly elusive. Research confirms the paradox: Nearly all executives view creativity as essential, but few are able to consistently generate and implement new and relevant ideas. How, then, can leaders spark fresh thinking in themselves and their

Getty Images In January, MIT SMR columnists Thomas H. Davenport and Randy Bean predicted that agentic AI would be “a sure bet for 2025’s ‘most trending AI trend.’ ” They called that one correctly. “Agentic AI seems to be on an inevitable rise: Everybody in the tech vendor and analyst worlds is excited about the prospect

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The second Trump administration’s rapid dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and uncertainty regarding the new U.S. foreign aid architecture create a significant shift for U.S. businesses operating in challenging global markets. While these changes provoke profound humanitarian concerns, they also have practical implications for businesses

Vishal Gupta, engineering manager, machine learning at Reddit, joins the Me, Myself, and AI podcast with host Sam Ransbotham to explain how the social media community uses artificial intelligence to improve user experience and ad relevance. Much of the advertising work relies on increasingly sophisticated recommender systems that have evolved from simple collaborative filtering to

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Colin McPherson/Corbis Premium historical via Getty Images When Jane Goodall died in October, the world lost more than a scientist. It lost a moral compass: a woman whose quiet persistence taught humanity to see connection where it once saw hierarchy. Her decades of observing chimpanzees in Tanzania reframed our understanding of

Neil Webb/theispot.com Not long ago, business leaders were under constant pressure to speak up on climate, diversity, or social justice. Making bold commitments and pledges was not only encouraged but demanded and, for a time, seen as a hallmark of good leadership. Today, the mood has shifted dramatically. In the United States, a wave of

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images For much of the 20th century, speaking on the phone across state lines was a luxury good — a conversation that ran a tab by the minute, all controlled by the Bell System in its private fiefdom. Decades later, policy rewired the economics of the communications infrastructure. The AT&T