Big data is proving difficult to translate into useful knowledge, the authors write. That's in part because a company's knowledge assets involve so much more: core competencies, areas of expertise, intellectual property, and deep pools of talent. Large-scale, sustainable growth is generally made possible when people take insights from one knowledge domain and apply them in another--when deep technical expertise in one business unit is applied in a different business unit, for example, or when a best-in-class marketing group pulls a product development unit into the 21st century by sharing market insights gleaned from customer data. The authors describe how to map your organization's strategic knowledge and identify where it can help you create value and growth. When knowledge assets are placed in a grid along two dimensions--"unstructured" (tacit) versus "structured" (explicit) and "undiffused" (proprietary) versus "diffused" (shared)--it becomes easier to manage them for future competitive advantage.

People are highly social animals. Most of us belong to many social groups, each with its own identity. These identities guide our actions, but they shift from moment to moment. That has important implications for marketers: Someone who, say, encounters a brand of cologne will have one response to it when he sees himself as a dutiful son and another when he sees himself as an available single man. For five years the authors have been studying how social identity affects customer behavior in a wide range of industries. They have seen that companies can trigger more-favorable reactions in customers by subtly influencing which identities they tap into. This is something firms should take into account when doing market research or designing experiences. The first step is to focus on the customer's social self and surface the range of his possible identities. If a customer's identity encourages targeted behaviors, marketers can help reinforce it. If an offering clashes with the customer's chosen identity, however, a company can reframe product messages. Marketers can also work to add a desired behavior to those that customers associate with an identity, prime different identities in customers, and even create new identities that deepen relationships with existing customers and attract new ones.

Though it's been over a decade since the first wave of post-Enron governance reforms, boards are still failing to provide strong oversight and strategic support for management's efforts to create long-term value. Consider these damning results from a recent McKinsey survey: A mere 34% of directors believe that the boards they serve on fully comprehend their companies' strategies, and just 16% think that their boards have a strong understanding of the dynamics of their firms' industries. Another survey asked directors and C-suite executives where the greatest pressure to deliver short-term results came from. The most frequent response? Boards. In this article the global managing director of McKinsey and the CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board propose measures to strengthen boards and encourage their members to focus more on long-term opportunities and strategy. Companies can start by recruiting independent thinkers and people with the right expertise as directors, fostering high-quality strategic conversations, and instituting key nonfinancial metrics. Engaging deeply with major long-term shareholders, especially about growth strategies, would also alleviate a lot of the pressure to maximize short-term results. And board compensation needs to be rethought: Directors should be paid more (but serve on fewer boards), and the mix of rewards should be retooled to emphasize long-term performance.

All too often, when we think we're projecting a certain image to others, they perceive us very differently. This happens in part because people tend to make judgments unconsciously and automatically, influenced by various biases. But research from social psychologists can help us understand the flaws in human perception and make sure we're judged fairly. According to the author, someone meeting you for the first time--or reassessing you later--is likely to be viewing you through various lenses: the "trust lens," to decide if you are friend or foe, the "power lens," to assess your usefulness, and the "ego lens," to confirm a sense of superiority. Halvorson suggests specific ways you can use this information to put your best foot forward. To be trusted, project warmth and competence. To appeal to someone more powerful, demonstrate your instrumentality in reaching his or her goals. And to be seen positively through another person's ego lens, be modest and inclusive. If you need to overcome a bad impression, you can complement these strategies with others that will make people want to revise their opinions of you. By thinking strategically about how we all form our impressions, you'll find it much easier to come across as you intend and be seen in a favorable light.

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

The Australian-born industrial designer likes to have direct access to clients' CEOs and needs to shut himself away for his creative work. His extensive travels have taught him that "design is a borderless occupation."

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

Good strategic thinking and decision making often require a shift in perspective, particularly in environments characterized by significant uncertainty and change. What worked before may not apply in the future. The authors acknowledge that asking "what if"questions about the future may create discomfort. Asking such questions forces people to step back and challenge current assumptions. In the authors'view, the questions leaders pose can prevent them from solving the right problem or seeing more innovative solutions. Leaders are often too narrow or overly protective of the current business or assume that the old habits, business models and regulations will remain intact. This article builds on the authors'new book, Winning the Long Game: How Strategic Leaders Shape the Future. It encourages leaders to examine their businesses from multiple perspectives: to think "outside in"; to explore future scenarios; to be contrarian; to look for patterns; to create new options; and to learn from failure. Drawing on examples from companies including Google, Tesla Motors, Pixar, Netflix and DuPont, the authors discuss six questions: How well do you understand the implications of broad market trends and less visible undercurrents for your business and for upcoming strategic choices? How thoroughly have you analyzed major external uncertainties and future scenarios that could significantly impact your business decisions? Do you regularly seek out diverse views to see multiple sides of complex issues, and do you purposely explore important problems from several angles? Do you deploy multiple lenses to connect dots from diverse sources and stakeholders, and do you delve deep to see important connections that others miss? Do you generate and evaluate multiple options when making a strategic decision, and do you consider the risks of each, including unintended consequences? Do you encourage experiments and "failing fast"as a source of innovation and quick learning?

In an increasingly complex economic and social environment, access to vast amounts of data and information can help organizations and governments make better policies, predictions and decisions. Indeed, more and more decision makers rely on statistical findings and data-based decision models when tackling problems and forming strategies. So far, discussions of data-based decision making have centered mainly on analysis: data collection, technological infrastructures and statistical methods. Yet another vital issue receives far less scrutiny: how analytical results are communicated to decision makers. Data science, like medical diagnostics or scientific research, lies in the hands of expert analysts who must explain their findings to executive decision makers who are often less knowledgeable about formal, statistical reasoning. Yet many behavioral experiments have shown that when the same statistical information is conveyed in different ways, people make drastically different decisions. Description, the authors note, is the default mode of presenting statistical information. This typically involves a verbal statement or a written report, which might feature one or more tables summarizing the findings. But the authors'own research suggests that descriptions can mislead even the most knowledgeable decision makers. In a recent experiment, they asked 257 economics scholars to make judgments and predictions based on a simple regression analysis. To the authors'surprise, most of these experts had a hard time accurately deciphering and acting on the results of the kind of analysis they themselves frequently conduct. In particular, the authors found that their description of the findings, which mimicked the industry standard, led to an illusion of predictability -- an erroneous belief that the analyzed outcomes were more predictable than they actually were. The authors argue that simulated experience enables intuitive interpretation of statistical information,

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How do people process different inputs and make complicated decisions? Researchers have long sought to shed increased light on the inner workings of the human brain and how people process different inputs and make complicated decisions. The topic is of particular interest to managers. This article reviews a selection of recent articles from academic journals. The researchers examined the following topics related to decision making: •How "psychological distancing"can mitigate the negative effects of information overload; •How greater ambidexterity -- the ability to switch between practices supporting "exploitation"of familiar options and "exploration"of new ones -- can lead to better decision-making performance; •How well-designed decision default rules can lead to desirable outcomes; •How allowing one's mind to wander can lead to as much satisfaction with one's choices as controlled methods; •How seeking advice affects perceptions about competence; •And how people tend to overemphasize past performance in creating expectations for the future.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Category labels are not the same as company brand. Brands create unique relationships between customers and your particular company. Category labels, however, are a way to identify a product's commonality with others of its type. For example, Tesla Motors markets and maintains its distinctive "Tesla"brand, but the category label the company uses to introduce its products is "electric cars."Categories, like brands, matter in ways that are subtle and profound. New industries are characterized by an early period of confusion and uncertainty about product use and meaning. The industry that we know today as "cloud computing"started decades ago under labels such as "utility computing,""time sharing,""application services provider,"and "software as a service."While the category label "smartphone"is ubiquitous today, in the late 1990s, Samsung once called a product of that type a "camera phone,"others called it a "PDA phone"and Nokia called it a "gaming deck." Contrary to popular opinion in the business press, the first-mover advantage of entering a new market very early can be a disadvantage. But when should companies launch a product in a nascent industry? In a nascent industry or sector, the introduction of the dominant category label marks the start point of the ideal window of opportunity for entry. Before the introduction of the dominant category label, most consumers are reluctant to commit, which often results in a difficult time period for early-entry producers, who must try to convince customers to try their products. The end point of the ideal window for entry is the introduction of a dominant product design into the market; after that, companies need to conform to customers'expectations for the product category.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How do consumers access, buy and use their favorite products and services? While individuals traditionally have seen ownership as the most desirable way, increasing numbers of consumers are paying to temporarily access or share products and services rather than buy or own them. This so-called "sharing economy"is growing rapidly, although estimates for the current size of the nascent market vary substantially. Well-known examples of successful startups built on collaborative consumption systems include Airbnb Inc. Growth in sharing systems has been particularly fueled by the Internet with its rise of social media systems, which facilitate connections between peers eager to share their possessions. The central conceit of collaborative consumption is simple: obtain value from untapped potential residing in goods that are not entirely exploited by their owners. The sharing economy might represent a serious threat to established industries. However, the authors' research suggests six ways in which companies can respond: (1) by selling use of a product rather than ownership, (2) by supporting customers in their desire to resell goods, (3) by exploiting unused resources and capacities, (4) by providing repair and maintenance services, (5) by using collaborative consumption to target new customers, and (6) by developing entirely new business models enabled by collaborative consumption.

Smartphones make up an increasing share of mobile devices, and mobile apps are among smartphones' most popular features. The all-time cumulative total of mobile app downloads stood at 37 billion at the end of 2011, and showed dramatic growth in 2012. Mobile app downloads more than doubled that year, resulting in a new cumulative total of 83 billion mobile app downloads. For companies, apps provide ample revenue opportunities. Mobile advertising has seen triple-digit percentage growth each year since PricewaterhouseCoopers began capturing this data in 2010. Yet some people have doubts about the effectiveness and viability of mobile advertising and believe that apps are a better medium. Authors Glen L. Urban and Fareena Sultan think one of the most effective uses of mobile media will be apps that are designed to build trust. These are "benevolent"apps because the apps' value is directly tied not to selling products but rather to advancing consumers' interests and helping them solve problems or make decisions. One example is the Sea Tow app, offered by Sea Tow Service International, headquartered in Southold, New York, which provides emergency towing and rescue services for boaters in the United States, the Caribbean and Europe. The free app supports boaters' navigation needs by providing information about local tide tables, detailed marine weather forecasts, GPS coordinates and bearing, and speed. Urban and Sultan observe that a growing number of organizations, including well-known companies, have come forth with their own benevolent apps in which selling products takes a backseat to providing information and gaining trust. The authors present findings from two studies (one at Liberty Mutual Insurance and the other at Suruga Bank in Japan) showing that benevolent mobile apps that try to help consumers in decision making can positively impact consumers' perception of a brand, as well as their willingness to consider the brand and their preference for it.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Information technology has in recent years been viewed as a major contributor to productivity growth. However, in 14 studies that examined the IT use of more than 3,100 employees in 28 organizations in the United States, the authors found a dark side to IT use. Employees can experience "technostress"for a number of reasons. They feel forced to multitask rapidly on simultaneous streams of information from different devices simply because information feeds come at them in real time; remote work and flextime can tether them round the clock to their devices and workplaces; and short technology cycles and pressures from IT vendors mean constantly changing interfaces, screens and functionalities. Ironically, even as they dream of escaping from IT, many employees also confess to feeling "addicted"to some of these stress-causing technologies. Another aspect of the dark side of IT is the threat of employees misusing organizational IT resources and triggering "attacks"of different kinds. To mitigate these problems, the authors suggest that senior executives should encourage employees to be mindful about how they use IT and to develop a deeper understanding of the IT they use at work. The authors also argue that a company's IT leaders have a special responsibility to instruct their organization about pertinent aspects of IT systems and applications that could either exacerbate or mitigate their more negative effects. HR leaders, meanwhile, should start to assess the extent to which employees are experiencing "technostress"or technology addiction and develop programs that encourage responsible IT use. Fortunately, the authors note, a holistic and integrated approach by a company's senior executives, IT leaders and HR leaders can help mitigate the most damaging consequences of the dark side of information technology.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Globalization has made anticipating disruptions and managing them when they occur more challenging. Although companies originally moved production offshore to countries such as India and China to take advantage of lower labor costs, events such as Iceland's 2010 volcanic eruption and the Japanese tsunami in 2011 have shown that the vulnerabilities of extended supply chains are real and serious. Lean supply-chain practices, designed to keep costs low in a stable business environment, can increase risk levels during disruptions due to the lack of buffer capacity. While companies tend to focus on the supply side of their supply chains when scanning for potential risk factors, they also need to pay attention to the customer side. Approaches to risk management such as enterprise risk management (ERM) and business continuity management (BCM) can help companies avoid supply-chain disruptions and recover normal operations quickly. But in the authors'view, they rely too heavily on risk identification when many of the risks are unpredictable or unknowable before the fact. They also depend on statistical information that may not exist and address each risk independently. Finally, they are predicated on the goal of returning to a stable operating condition. Based on their work with a number of companies, including fashion retailer L Brands Inc. (formerly known as Limited Brands), Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson and Unilever, the authors present a comprehensive framework for assessing supply-chain vulnerabilities and addressing them through enhanced resilience capabilities. The framework, which they call Supply Chain Resilience Assessment and Management (SCRAM), is based on an explicit characterization and prioritization of the vulnerabilities that make an organization susceptible to disruptions, and the capabilities that help an organization anticipate and overcome disruptions.

Meizhou Dongpo is a large catering group in China. On June 6, 1996, the first Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant was opened in Beijing. The enterprise entered the stage of rapid development in 2000, and set up Beijing Meizhou Restaurant Management Co., Ltd. In June 2003 the business mainly covers restaurant management, catering services, food processing and sales, with its headquarters in Beijing including logistics center and central kitchen. By the end of 2013, Meizhou Dongpo Group covered six business types. Meizhou Dongpo Group has annual operating revenue of over RMB 1.8 billion, accumulative consumers of over 20 million persons-times and more than 8,000 employees. This case focuses on the starting-up process of Meizhou Dongpo Group by Wang Gang. Meizhou Dongpo has grown from a small restaurant into one of top 100 catering companies in China. This simple and arduous entrepreneurship story has been happening over the past decade in the highly competitive traditional catering industry. High technology, well-educated talent, employed manager, brand-new business model and financial support from bank or venture capital institutions cannot be found in the entrepreneurship history of Meizhou Dongpo. The case is a good attempt to analyze how did Wang Gang create and rule a catering empire by his unique leadership?

Since the establishment of the first Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant in Beijing in 1996, Wang Gang and his wife Liang Di have opened more than 100 chain restaurants in China and foreign countries, and set up the group headquarters, logistics center, R&D center and central kitchen. Meizhou Dongpo has grown into one of the most stable large catering enterprises in China. The enterprise entered the stage of rapid development in 2000. Meizhou Dongpo Group has annual operating revenue of over RMB 1.8 billion, accumulative consumers of over 20 million persons-times and more than 8,000 employees. Meizhou Dongpo has transformed its small-restaurant operation model at beginning into present operation model of large catering group chain. Wang Gang believed Meizhou Dongpo must take the path of standardization to become a large-scale Chinese cuisine chain enterprise. Standardized management has always been the most important development strategy at Meizhou Dongpo. Wang Gang accelerated the standardized management of Meizhou Dongpo after 2000, realizing production and processing standardization, management standardization and service standardization. The year 2013 was important to Meizhou Dongpo. On December 18, 2013, Meizhou Dongpo Beverly Restaurant in Los Angeles was opened, and "Wangjiadu" series products of Meizhou Dongpo were also sold at various supermarkets in the U.S., marking a step of internationalization taken by Meizhou Dongpo. Regular chain, standardization strategy and international development are priorities of this case.

This note describes the history of Argentina agriculture and how it has been affected by government policies and new technologies.

This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company's state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal's flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal's leaders knew that upholding the business's legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution. Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company's inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal's business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business's long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.