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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. South Africa's Nedbank is a leader in its market - but to stay in that position, it needed to identify new ways to serve its existing business clientele as well as attract new customers. Its solution: use the extensive transaction data the bank collects to help customers improve their service.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Organizations across the business spectrum are awakening to the transformative power of data and analytics. They are also coming to grips with the daunting difficulty of the task that lies before them. It's tough enough for many organizations to catalog and categorize the data at their disposal and devise the rules and processes for using it. It's even tougher to translate that data into tangible value. But it's not impossible, and many organizations, in both the private and public sectors, are learning how.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Emerging markets such as China and India have become the growth drivers of corporate research and development initiatives from all around the world. Although there is growing evidence that Chinese companies are shifting their innovation focus from cost saving to knowledge-based research, the view by many in the West remains that companies based in emerging markets are not ready to take over the role of leading innovators from their Western competitors. As a result, Chinese multinationals have been at a competitive disadvantage, particularly in strategic technology industries. What can Chinese multinationals do to overcome Western barriers to entry in strategically important technology industries in which "Made in China" or "Designed in China" are viewed as negatives? What dynamic innovation capabilities - or, put another way, what culturally specific processes - should companies focus on to gain acceptance in the competitive global marketplace? To answer these questions, the author studied Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the Chinese telecommunications company that has recently made significant inroads in Europe's mature and strategically important telecommunications industry, making it a potential role model for companies in China and other parts of Asia hoping to make a similar transition. In Europe, the author notes, Huawei has typically relied on the same strategy it used to build its market position in China. It has (1) offered customized technologies that meet the practical needs and resource constraints of target customers; (2) built customer loyalty by enhancing practical innovation with longer-term joint innovation partnerships; and (3) enlisted the support of governments, universities, and other industry stakeholders by customizing further innovation investments to their priorities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. For large global companies, forging effective partnerships with high-potential startups is easier said than done. The very traits that make such startups potentially complementary as partners also make it difficult for large companies to engage with them in the first place. Multinational corporations often struggle even to identify promising potential startup partners; startups, for their part, find it difficult to identify and reach the relevant decision makers within the often-confusing hierarchies of gigantic multinational companies. The challenge, for both sides, is all the more vexing in emerging markets. Furthermore, most academic studies of the challenges that large companies and entrepreneurial ventures face in partnering - and the solutions the studies suggest - focus on mature markets, such as the United States and Europe. Far less is known about how multinational corporations should engage with startups in emerging markets such as China and India. To understand how multinational companies have partnered successfully with startups in emerging markets, the authors undertook a study in three major emerging market economies: India, China, and South Africa. Their research uncovered four key factors, and they suggest a strategy for addressing each factor. The first key factor, the authors say, is the immaturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Specifically, most emerging markets are afflicted by constraints and "voids" in their institutions. The authors recommend that multinational companies address this factor through programs that compensate for the immaturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and they provide examples such as an IBM Corp. program that provides training, mentoring, and events for startups in China.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Blockchain technology has the potential to transform how businesses are organized and managed. It allows companies to eliminate transaction costs and use outside resources as easily as internal resources. The implications for areas such as accounting, contract negotiation and enforcement, sales and marketing, and capital investment are myriad. Companies should start exploring how this technology could impact their industry and processes.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. As companies recognize how important a digital strategy has become, they find themselves torn between different strategic options. The first decision is to choose between a customer engagement or a digital solutions strategy. Which to pursue depends on existing capabilities and competitive direction - but companies should avoid trying to do both.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Companies have yet to apply analytics to human resources - but that's about to change. And lessons learned in applying analytics to customer-focused areas can help avoid mistakes in strategic workforce decisions.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Multinational companies have invested heavily in emerging economies - over $3 trillion since 1998, by one estimate. Many of these companies, however, have not adapted their products and operations sufficiently to succeed in these markets, and returns have often been mediocre. Even when managers think they are performing well in emerging markets, they often are not because they have set low expectations. Adapting products and operations requires obtaining and using good market intelligence, which is difficult in emerging markets due to the paucity and unreliability of information. Another factor is the wide heterogeneity of emerging markets compared to developed markets. A third common problem is a lack of shared responsibility for market intelligence between headquarters and country managers, so market intelligence that is collected either is dismissed as not credible or is not updated often enough to keep pace with the rate of change in emerging markets. The authors argue that companies can overcome these difficulties by (1) treating market intelligence as a strategic asset; (2) organizing differently for market intelligence in emerging markets; and (3) using a wide range of sources and methods for market intelligence in emerging markets. They also recommend that market intelligence be organized as a shared responsibility between the corporate office and emerging-market business executives, with shared decision rights and shared resources. The article includes examples illustrating how companies such as Wrigley, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble obtain market intelligence in emerging markets.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. When faced with an emerging technology, many companies have trouble responding - not because they don't recognize how it impacts their business, but because they have difficulty managing the uncertainty around the new technology's competitive viability. And when the technology significantly disrupts the company's existing business, it can create structural impediments to pursuing opportunities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. The current corporate sustainability movement is unsustainable, the authors argue. Not because companies are pursuing the wrong goals - but because they are going about them the wrong way. Never before have companies been more conscious of the need to run their businesses in an environmentally, socially, and economically responsible fashion. Yet never before have theory and practice been wider apart. When it comes to practicing and not just preaching sustainability, many companies struggle and most flounder in developing and implementing a sustainable business model. Many executives know and feel the importance of making their businesses sustainable. But many of them can't make the transformation occur. Worse still, many don't even know they're failing. Based on their experience and observations, the authors identify key roadblocks to embedding sustainable business models and offer a roadmap to circumvent them. According to the authors, companies need to recognize that sustainability is not just another change initiative. Change-management initiatives are usually driven by some external factors or by lack of internal performance and are typically directed at increasing profitability and shareholder value. Sustainability, on the other hand, is about people and planet as well, not just profit. Sustainability involves creating value for all stakeholders in the ecosystem and viewing profits as a consequence of such value creation. Sustainability also requires a business to look at its entire value chain. A company's sustainability initiative, the authors argue, should be led by the CEO and should become a priority for the board. Business executives should also strive to attract the support of the company's middle management.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. The global appetite for Korean entertainment - movies, TV shows, and music videos - has exploded in recent years. For non-Korean-speaking viewers, subtitles are crucial to the experience. Enter Viki Inc., a company that hosts content for streaming and provides subtitles and closed captions. Viki both eliminates language barriers and introduces the content to an otherwise unserved audience. Traditionally, subtitles are created by a bilingual translator hired by the producer or broadcaster. But the process is expensive and slow to scale. To overcome these challenges, Viki developed a business model leveraging a community of more than 150,000 volunteers. This model allows Viki to crowdsource subtitles for Asian content in numerous languages. Viki rewards volunteers with gamified badges, the ability to view videos not otherwise available in their region, early access to new shows, and an advertising-free, high-definition experience of the content. The combination of rapidly increasing internet video adoption rates and a greater appetite for foreign content - both in Asia and globally - has become a big opportunity for Viki, which was acquired by Tokyo-based Rakuten Inc. for a reported price of $200 million in 2013. The authors argue that Viki's story exemplifies a larger trend playing out in Asia. They see Viki as an archetype of a new generation of companies leveraging business model innovation to drive growth in Asia. But to understand this type of business model innovation in its proper context, it's important to understand Viki's forerunners. The authors describe two distinct, yet overlapping, waves of business innovation from emerging markets in Asia in recent years: one decades old and still going, and another that is newer and includes companies like Viki.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. More than 2 billion people worldwide are users of social media, making it a logical platform for companies seeking to attract potential employees and engage consumers with their brands. In addition to sharing information on brand activities through official social media pages or accounts, employees share brand-related information, make comments endorsing the organization's brand, and display behaviors that are consistent (or at odds) with the brand values and promise. For companies, the social media behavior of employees represents both an opportunity and a risk. Some companies encourage employees to become brand ambassadors to consumers and job candidates on social networks such as LinkedIn and share the company culture on Facebook and Twitter. However, the authors found that in the companies they studied, employees on the whole displayed very low brand engagement on social media. Management was surprised to learn that their employees were not following the company on Facebook or other popular social media sites. When employees are not fans or supporters of the company's products, the authors noted, this can send an ambiguous message to employees' contacts and deprive the company of potential supporters. So what can companies do? From their research, the authors developed a set of recommendations for encouraging effective employee branding on social media. The first recommendation is to empower a stable of employee advocates. The authors say employees born in the era of the internet (so-called "digital natives") tend to be more active on social media and are more likely to become brand ambassadors for the company.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Companies must make important decisions about which features to include in the goods and services they offer to customers. Understanding the return on investment for a feature is essential to increasing profitability. Although tadding features increases costs, it may also increase revenues, either by attracting new customers or retaining existing customers. Yet the features that retain customers, the authors argue, may be different from the features that initially attract them. The authors provide insights from their research on how to calculate the return on investment for features. Working with a global hotel company, the authors developed a model to assess how features produce financial returns by attracting new customers and/or by retaining existing customers. The model integrates three kinds of data: the revenue increase due to the effect the feature has on attracting new customers; the revenue increase due to the effect the feature has on retaining existing customers; and the costs associated with adding the feature. They tested the model using three features, or "amenities of interest," in the hotel industry: bottled water, free internet access, and a fitness center. Not surprisingly, the authors found that free wireless internet was much more likely to attract customers than free bottled water. However, the picture changed when the authors switched from looking at features that attracted guests to features that retained them. Offering free bottled water during a stay led to a bigger boost in customer retention than offering wireless internet access.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. As "big data" becomes increasingly integrated into many aspects of our lives, we are hearing more calls for revolutionary changes in how researchers work. To save time in understanding the behavior of complex systems or in predicting outcomes, some analysts say it should now be possible to let the data "tell the story" rather than having to develop a hypothesis and go through painstaking steps to prove it. The success of companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., which have transformed the advertising and social media worlds by applying data mining and mathematics, has led many to believe that traditional methodologies based on models and theories may no longer be necessary. Among young professionals (and many MBA students), there is almost a blind faith that sophisticated algorithms can be used to explore huge databases and find interesting relationships independent of any theories or prior beliefs. The assumption is: The bigger the data, the more powerful the findings. As appealing as this viewpoint may be, authors Sen Chai and Willy Shih think it's misguided - and potentially risky for businesses that involve scientific research or technological innovation. For example, the data might appear to support a new drug design or a new scientific approach when there isn't actually a causal relationship. Although the authors acknowledge that data mining has enabled tremendous advances in business intelligence and in the understanding of consumer behavior - think of how Amazon.com Inc. figures out what you might want to buy, or how content recommendation engines such as those used by Netflix Inc. work - applying this approach to technical disciplines, they argue, is different. The authors studied several fields where massive amounts of data are available and collected:

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. When it comes to putting data to use, communication - or rather, lack of it - between the data scientists and the executive decision makers can cause problems. The two sides often don't speak the same language and may differ in their approach to and respect for data-based decisions. Given these challenges, organizations may need to call upon a "data translator" to improve how data is incorporated into decision making processes.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Competition for digitally savvy talent has never been higher, but companies' methods for acquiring and keeping the skilled employees they need are outmoded. Whether they want to develop capabilities in employees or tap on-demand talent markets - or some mix of both - human resources directors need to experiment with new talent management models.

When he joined T-Mobile, in September 2012, the author writes, the most important thing he recognized wasn't specific to T-Mobile; it was true for the wireless industry in general: People hated it. He saw that the best way to succeed in this industry was to do things as differently as possible from the existing carriers. T-Mobile got rid of long-term contracts and replaced them with a transparent pricing model, made it easier to upgrade to a new smartphone, and eliminated charges for global roaming. Legere also began criticizing rivals Verizon and AT&T Wireless, which he dubbed "dumb and dumber," at press events and on Twitter. The result: T-Mobile has grown subscribers from 33 million when Legere came on board to nearly 69 million at the end of the third quarter in 2016.

In pursuit of double-digit top-line growth, many retailers relentlessly open new stores, even when doing so destroys the profitability of their businesses. This addiction is fueled by Wall Street and a capitalist culture that's obsessed with growth. It's hard to kick, primarily because companies don't know when or how to turn off the growth machine--or what to replace it with. To explore the problem, the authors studied the financial data of 37 U.S. retailers with recent sales of at least $1 billion whose growth rate had faltered. They found that the less successful retailers had continued to chase growth by opening new stores far past the point of diminishing returns. By contrast, the more successful retailers had drastically curtailed expansion and instead relied on operational improvements at their existing stores to drive additional sales. This allowed them to increase revenues faster than expenses, which had a powerful positive impact on earnings. This article lays out a framework for determining when to switch to a low-growth strategy and how to put it into practice. If retailers execute well, they can stay in the maturity stage of the life cycle for a very long time, forestalling decline.

In surveys of 106 C-suite executives representing 91 private- and public-sector companies from 17 countries, the author found that a full 85% agreed that their organizations were bad at problem diagnosis, and 87% agreed that this flaw carried significant costs. Fewer than one in 10 said they were unaffected by the issue. What they struggle with, it turns out, is not solving problems but figuring out what the problems are. And creative solutions nearly always come from an alternative explanation for--or a reframing of--your problem. The point of reframing is not to find the "real" problem but, rather, to see if there is a better problem to solve. The author outlines seven practices for effective reframing: (1) Establish legitimacy. (2) Bring outsiders into the discussion. (3) Get people's definitions in writing. (4) Ask what's missing. (5) Consider multiple categories. (6) Analyze positive exceptions. (7) Question the objective.

Managers have tried various strategies and perks to boost employee engagement--all with little impact on long-term retention and performance. But now, neuroscience offers some answers. Through his research on the brain chemical oxytocin--shown to facilitate collaboration and teamwork--Zak has developed a framework for creating a culture of trust and building a happier, more loyal, and more productive workforce. By measuring people's oxytocin levels in response to various situations--first in the lab and later in the workplace--Zak identified eight key management behaviors that stimulate oxytocin production and generate trust: (1) Recognize excellence. (2) Induce "challenge stress." (3) Give people discretion in how they do their work. (4) Enable job crafting. (5) Share information broadly. (6) Intentionally build relationships. (7) Facilitate whole-person growth. (8) Show vulnerability. Ultimately, Zak concludes, managers can cultivate trust by setting a clear direction, giving people what they need to see it through, and then getting out of their way. In short, to boost engagement, treat people like responsible adults.