Author Joshua S. Gans concedes that disruption is a possibility, but he contends that the link between disruption and failure may not be as strong as many managers believe. In particular, Gans argues that disruption can be averted. "Many businesses find ways of managing through it, and this can weaken any relationship between a disruptive event and the actual disruption,"he writes. The question, Gans says, is whether companies facing disruption are able to counter its effects. He describes three approaches to dealing with market entrants: beating them; joining them; and waiting them out. Beating Them: The first approach involves investing aggressively in new innovations after entrants bring them to market. Although Gans says managers may not know right away whether an entrant's innovation will become a threat, when the situation becomes clear, they must act to protect their market position. He uses the example of Microsoft Corp., which introduced its Internet Explorer in the mid-1990s to compete against Netscape Navigator, which at the time was the dominant product in the browser market. Microsoft created a new division dedicated to defusing the Netscape threat. Joining Them: The idea here is for established businesses to "wait and see"whether a market entrant's innovation improves and becomes a competitive threat. Then, instead of waging war, the existing player can acquire the entrant's business and its products, thereby averting disruption. When disruption is upon them, Gans explains, incumbents realize they will face stiffer competition in the future, so they have an incentive to neutralize the threat. But there are also advantages to disrupters in avoiding a long period of intense competition with an established incumbent. Waiting Them Out: Gans suggests that established players should assess what they have that entrants lack -- entrants rarely have every element of a value chain.

market share, net promoter score, the value of a "like,"customer lifetime value, and return on investment. They conducted interviews with marketers and administered formal surveys to managers. They found that popular marketing metrics are regularly misunderstood and misused. The authors'goal is to encourage appropriate and consistent use of popular marketing metrics. Market Share: If the aim is to maximize the returns to shareholders, the authors argue, increased market share offers no benefit unless it eventually generates profits. Still, in a survey the authors conducted, they found that more marketing managers prioritized maximizing market share than prioritized maximizing profitability. Although, they note, companies with superior products tend to have high market share and high profitability, this does not necessarily mean that increasing market share will increase profits. Using market share as a metric of success simply because other marketers do it can be counterproductive. Net Promoter Score: Companies in a variety of industries have embraced net promoter score as a way to monitor their customer service operations. One of NPS's strongest selling points, the authors write, is its simplicity: It's easy for managers and employees to understand the goal of having more promoters and fewer detractors. However, they note weaknesses in how the theory has been presented to managers. Value of a "Like"The authors caution that managers shouldn't automatically assume that differences in value between social media fans and nonfans are caused by social media marketing activity. When there are differences, managers need to investigate whether they existed prior to the social media marketing effort. Customer Lifetime Value: Marketers often use CLV to help them decide whom to target in acquisition campaigns.

What's important in product development, the authors say, isn't just following the right steps -- it's how the work is done. Until organizations fundamentally view people as central and leaders act accordingly, the risk of development process improvement efforts not actually improving anything is frighteningly high. In practice, the authors contend, most companies invest very little in people development in comparison to other investments they make. The underlying concepts of lean product development have been around since the 1980s, the authors note, when an MIT study found that Japanese automotive companies followed practices that were profoundly different from those of other auto manufacturers. In new product development, lean is about advancing the skills of individuals through technical training and methods of collaboration so that each developer is able to design, develop, and deliver better products and services. Companies can promote individual mastery, in the authors'view, by asking three questions: (1) What do we need to learn about our customers, products, and production processes to design better products? (2) How do we learn this? (3) And what kinds of organizational structures and routines will best support learning? The authors outline several steps companies should take to advance the development of their people. These include making technical mastery an expectation and building it into the reward system and how people work every day, and developing standards and using them.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For more than a decade, multinational enterprises from developed countries have moved a substantial part of their R&D activity to emerging markets such as India and China. The location of R&D in developing countries was initially driven largely by the availability of skilled personnel at low cost. At first, these R&D centers in emerging markets operated primarily as extended arms of R&D in the home country, executing well-defined projects under close supervision from headquarters. However, the dynamics of multinationals'R&D centers are rapidly changing. Emerging markets are new growth drivers of the global economy, and their unique bundle of opportunities and challenges can be a wellspring of innovation for a multinational company. Simultaneously, many R&D centers in emerging markets have evolved to accumulate advanced technical capabilities, leading their employees to clamor for higher-value-added work and to seek responsibility for a complete product or technology. Given these trends, R&D subsidiaries in emerging markets are uniquely positioned to play an important role in multinational companies'innovation strategy. However, this thinking is often at odds with the dominant innovation mindset, structures, and processes within multinational companies based in developed countries. This article advances a framework that can be used by managers in multinational companies to support the key decisions on innovating for emerging markets. The framework is based on learnings gleaned from the successful development of the ASR 901 aggregation services routers, a product family that was conceptualized and developed by Cisco's India R&D center for emerging-market customers but was also adopted by global customers.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Too often, great products fail because customers do not recognize the value that they create. Although we now have ample insight into how customers evaluate new products, many companies focus primarily on creating value -- without enough regard to how customers recognize innovations and evaluate new products. There are only two ways consumers can collect information, the author notes: They can search, or they can infer. Knowing when consumers will search or infer will help you determine which of your innovations customers will recognize. The Internet has had a profound impact on the way customers evaluate many products. First, it has lowered the cost of search by making information more accessible. Second, the Internet has broadened what is searchable by including customer reviews as well as product features on standard spec sheets. To ensure that customers will recognize the value your products offer, the author recommends focusing on three questions: Are customers motivated to search? Are they able to search effectively? What cues will customers use to infer value?

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Not long ago, companies had to rely in large part on surveys and focus groups to understand what customers liked and didn't like about their products. In recent years, social media and online ratings have given businesses new ways to learn about customers'opinions about their products. Today, however, some of the products themselves -- at least those devices that are part of the connected world of the Internet of Things -- are starting to provide unprecedented levels of information that can be used to improve both the products and the customer experience. In particular, information from connected devices offers companies three tremendously important core pieces of contextual information that were previously unavailable: where the products are being used, how they are being used, and which customers are using them at any given time. Going forward, the authors expect that companies that manufacture smart, connected products will have an advantage in the market. For instance, a company does not have to wait until a customer calls with a complaint to know that a product connected to the Internet of Things is not working correctly; the product has already communicated the information. With this advance knowledge, the company can report an issue to a customer and seek to address it before it becomes a bigger problem. This service call could also turn into a sales call if the company adds a new feature that gives the product additional capabilities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. GE has bet big on the Industrial Internet - the convergence of industrial machines, data, and the Internet. The company is putting sensors on gas turbines, jet engines, and other machines; connecting them to the cloud; and analyzing the resulting flow of data. The goal: identify ways to improve machine productivity and reliability. This MIT Sloan Management Review case study looks at how this traditional manufacturer is remaking itself into a modern digital business.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The 2016 Data & Analytics Report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS finds that analytics is now a mainstream idea, but not a mainstream practice. Few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics. Organizations achieving the greatest benefits from analytics ensure the right data is being captured, and blend information and experience in making decisions.

Following the path of companies such as Apple and Amazon, more and more firms are trying to become not just product purveyors but also platform providers, facilitating direct connections between customers and other groups. Although launching a platform can generate new revenue, success is not automatic. After studying more than 20 companies that have tried to move from products to platforms, the authors point to four practices that can separate winners from losers: (1) Start with a defensible product and a critical mass of users. A strong product and a loyal customer base will attract third parties to your platform. (2) Apply a hybrid business model. Instead of operating with a "product mindset" or a "platform mindset" alone, combine the two in order to discover new opportunities for creating value. (3) Drive rapid conversion to the platform. Existing customers are likely to flock to a platform if it provides enough new value, if the additional products and services offered are consistent with your brand, and if users have opportunities to improve both the products and the platform. (4) Deter competitive imitation. Make it tough for rivals to copy your product-to-platform strategy: Consider creating proprietary standards, using exclusivity contracts, and erecting other barriers to competition.

Platform businesses such as Airbnb and Uber have risen to success partly by sidestepping laws and regulations that encumber their traditional competitors. Such rule flouting is what the authors call "spontaneous private deregulation," and it's happening in a growing number of industries. The authors explain that businesses are most vulnerable to spontaneous deregulation when certain conditions hold. One, for example, is when regulations are excessive or outdated, protecting consumers against unlikely risks--and when platform providers offer other means of shielding consumers from harm. Incumbents facing threats from private deregulation can respond by taking legal action to press for enforcement of existing laws. Alternatively, they can embrace aspects of a new entrant's approach--taxi operators, for example, have developed Uber-style apps for ordering rides. Incumbents can also leverage their own strengths to set themselves apart from upstart competitors--that's the tactic that CitizenM, the Pod Hotel, and Yotel are using to woo guests who might otherwise book with Airbnb. If all else fails, incumbents may have to cease operation. But they stand a good chance of avoiding that fate if they address their vulnerabilities early.

In the knowledge economy, skilled employees are the assets that drive organizational success. Thus companies must learn from them--why they stay, why they leave, and how the organization needs to change. A thoughtful exit interview--whether it be a face-to-face conversation, a questionnaire, a survey, or a combination--can catalyze leaders' listening skills, reveal what does or doesn't work inside the organization, highlight hidden challenges and opportunities, and generate essential competitive intelligence. It can promote engagement and enhance retention by signaling to employees that their views matter. And it can turn departing employees into corporate ambassadors for years to come. Unfortunately, too few leaders pay attention to this tool; their programs fail to either improve retention or produce useful information. The authors believe this is owing to poor data quality and a lack of consensus on best practices. They suggest six overall goals for a strategic exit interview process and describe tactics and techniques to make it successful. Among their recommendations: Have interviews conducted by second- or third-line managers. Make exit interviews mandatory for at least some employees. And because standard interviews enable you to spot trends, but unstructured ones elicit unexpected insights, consider combining the two approaches in semistructured interviews.

When organizations get into big trouble, fixing the culture is usually the prescription. That's what most everyone said GM needed to do after its 2014 recall crisis. Cultural reform has likewise been proposed as the solution to the corrosive bureaucracy at the Veterans' Administration, unethical behavior in banks, and the excessive use of force by police. But interviews with successful change makers, conducted by Harvard Business School's Jay W. Lorsch and Emily McTague, suggest that culture isn't something you "fix." Rather, cultural change is what you get when you put new processes or structures in place to tackle tough business challenges. Organizations are complex systems with many ripple effects--and reworking fundamental practices will inevitably lead to new values and behaviors. In this article, the authors explain how this played out during four major transformations: the remake of Ecolab into a diversified corporation three times its original size; the postbankruptcy merger of Delta and Northwest; the turnaround of Ford; and Novartis's shift to a diversified health care portfolio. Each firm's CEO took a different approach for a different end. Ecolab's Doug Baker pushed decisions down to the front lines to strengthen customer relationships. Delta's Richard Anderson got airline workers on board by focusing on meeting their needs. Ford's Alan Mulally broke down barriers between units to improve collaboration and efficiency. Novartis's Daniel Vasella decentralized to unleash creative energy. But in every case, when the executives used tools such as decision rights, performance measurement, and reward systems to address their particular business challenges, organizational culture evolved as a result, reinforcing the new direction.

"It is almost impossible to progress through a career untouched by incivility," the author writes. Over the past 20 years she has polled thousands of workers: 98% have experienced uncivil behavior, and 99% have witnessed it. In 2011 half said they were treated rudely at least once a week--up from a quarter in 1998. Rude behavior ranged from outright nastiness and undermining to ignoring people's opinions to checking e-mail during meetings. Observing or experiencing rude behavior impairs short-term memory and thus cognitive ability, and has been shown to damage the immune system, put a strain on families, and produce other deleterious effects. Porath has identified some tactics to minimize the effects of rudeness on performance and health. The most effective remedy, she says, is to work holistically on your well-being, rather than trying to change the perpetrator or the relationship. She suggests a two-pronged approach: Take steps to thrive "cognitively," which includes growth, momentum, and continual learning; and take steps to thrive "affectively," which means experiencing passion, excitement, and vitality at work.

The president of RSA Ground, the subsidiary of Rising Sun Airlines responsible for servicing its planes at airports across Japan, goes undercover as a service crew member to discover how and whether his employees can speed up cleaning, checking, restocking, and refueling. Expert commentary comes from Atilla Korkmazoglu, president of ground handling and cargo operations at Celebi Aviation Holding, and Vikram Oberoi, managing director and CEO of EIH Ltd.

The celebrity sex therapist of the 1980s discusses transitioning to a public career, adapting to many different cultures, and "rewiring" rather than retiring.

The president of RSA Ground, the subsidiary of Rising Sun Airlines responsible for servicing its planes at airports across Japan, goes undercover as a service crew member to discover how and whether his employees can speed up cleaning, checking, restocking, and refueling. Expert commentary comes from Atilla Korkmazoglu, president of ground handling and cargo operations at Celebi Aviation Holding, and Vikram Oberoi, managing director and CEO of EIH Ltd.

The president of RSA Ground, the subsidiary of Rising Sun Airlines responsible for servicing its planes at airports across Japan, goes undercover as a service crew member to discover how and whether his employees can speed up cleaning, checking, restocking, and refueling. Expert commentary comes from Atilla Korkmazoglu, president of ground handling and cargo operations at Celebi Aviation Holding, and Vikram Oberoi, managing director and CEO of EIH Ltd.

Today, the author writes, business can be conducted in English almost anywhere in the developed world, possibly excepting Japan. But when you build or grow a global consumer-facing business, you must speak the language of your customers, wherever they are. Booking.com, the Priceline Group's largest global business, strives to meet that goal by employing people who can answer calls in 42 languages. Although Booking.com is a digital company that facilitates online reservations, about 20% of its customers wind up calling for some other reason. Even though many of them are multilingual, when it comes to their personal travel, they want to speak in their native language. When Huston took the reins, in 2011, the company was relatively small, with a hard-to-find customer service number. Now it has 6,000 full-time customer service employees, all of whom speak fluent English plus at least one other language; many speak three or four. When planning how to staff call centers, the company must consider cultural factors (for instance, people in emerging markets such as Brazil and China tend to call more frequently) and nuances (Americans tend to not like speaking with a rep who has a British accent, and vice versa). For future centers, it has prioritized major cities for either their depth in major languages (Tokyo, Shanghai) or their breadth of languages (London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona). Booking.com is now, the author writes, "the largest online accommodations platform in the world, by almost any measure," and has been rated "one of the most international websites on the planet."

Reid Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley's grown-ups. After helping to found PayPal, he moved on to launch LinkedIn in 2002--an endeavor that turned him into a billionaire. He was an early investor in Facebook and now serves as a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock. In this edited interview with Tim Sullivan, of HBR Press, Hoffman explores his idea of "blitzscaling"--the discipline of getting very big very fast. In today's networked landscape, the path to high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship can be chaotic and grueling. It involves rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale. And there's no playbook to guide you, Hoffman notes. "You throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down." Hoffman emphasizes that blitzscaling is not just about growing revenues and the customer base but also about scaling the organization. People naturally focus on the first two, and "if you don't get those right, then nothing else matters." But very few businesses can succeed on those fronts without also building an organization that has the capability and the capacity to execute at a high level in the face of extremely rapid growth. The challenges, risks, and headaches of blitzscaling go beyond the operational; they can take a toll on organizational happiness. "But the thing that keeps these companies together--whether it's PayPal, Google, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter," Hoffman says, "is the sense of excitement about what's happening and the vision of a great future."

For decades, the five-forces model of competition has dominated the thinking about strategy. But it describes competition among traditional "pipeline" businesses, which succeed by optimizing the activities in their value chains--most of which they own or control. "Platform" businesses that bring together consumers and producers, as Uber, Alibaba, and Airbnb do, require a different approach to strategy. The critical asset of a platform is external--the community of members. The focus shifts from controlling resources to orchestrating them, and firms win by facilitating more external interactions and creating "network effects" that increase the value provided to all participants. In this new world, competition can emerge from seemingly unrelated industries and even from within the platform itself. The authors, three platform strategists, walk executives through the choices they must make when building platforms, outlining the different metrics needed to manage them. Businesses that fail to learn the new rules will struggle, they argue. When a platform enters the marketplace of a pure pipeline business, the platform nearly always wins. That's exactly what happened when the iPhone came on the scene in 2007. By 2015, it accounted for 92% of global profits in mobile phones, while most of the giants that once ruled the industry made no profit at all.