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The author of the popular 2008 HBR article, 'Strategy as a Wicked Problem', argues that disruptive business models and wicked problems have de-linked the future from the past, making traditional strategic planning systems inadequate. He presents a tool that organizational strategists can use to face 'multiple possible futures' and 'chaotic ambiguity': feed-forward systems. By embracing this approach, he says, leaders can fashion a future that is unrelated to the past, driven by 'robust actions' and 'enablers' that can transform an organization and its context.

In this wide-ranging interview, Unilever CEO Paul Polman describes how his company is putting the world's biggest problems-from sanitation issues to poverty to youth self esteem-at the very core of its business model. He describes the company's Sustainable Living Plan, which aims to reduce environmental impact, improve health and well-being and enhance livelihoods around the world. He shows that this approach not only makes enormous sense for shareholders and brings costs down, it drives up employee engagement levels and enables a company to embrace new business opportunities.

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.

In 2005, Royal Dutch Shell (Shell) invested in oil exploration leases in the Beaufort Sea in the Alaska Arctic. A few years later, additional leases were acquired in the nearby Chukchi Sea. After years of delays, Shell began drilling in the summer of 2012 with two drillships. More delays and the short drilling season resulted in only two partially drilled wells. On the journey south after drilling was completed, one of the ships had an engine fire and the other one ran aground. The Kulluk, the drillship that ran aground, was eventually scrapped. After spending more than $5 billion on its Arctic exploration program between 2005 and 2015, the company had very few results for its efforts, raising questions about Shell's and the industry's ability to manage large complex oil and gas projects in the Arctic.

Nigeria's oil industry was in decline. Nigerian crude was having trouble finding customers, fuel shortages plagued the domestic economy, and power plant outages were rising. NNPC had failed to develop one of the world's largest reserves of natural gas, Nigeria's four refineries were operating at a fraction of capacity, and the company was considered inefficient and corrupt. Many voices were now calling on President Muhammadu Buhari, newly elected in May 2015, to reform Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) or sell off the national treasure for an estimated $75 billion.

This case comprises four scenarios that exemplify some of the benefits of a very brief, very inexpensive educational program, El Gran Proyecto Salta (The Big Leap Project). Salta was designed to assist female micro-entrepreneurs in developing countries by teaching them basic business knowledge so that they might make the leap to the next level of success. Salta instruction was provided free of cost to more than 100,000 Peruvian women in very brief stand-alone sessions (three hours per session) at exceptionally low cost to sponsors ($38 per participant). Four women who participated in Salta are featured in this case. Each of these micro-entrepreneurs' stories includes their personal backgrounds, their adaptations of Salta lessons and experiences, and the benefits derived for their businesses, families, communities, and for themselves.

Although 46 similar products were on the market when Intuit launched Quicken, in 1983, it immediately became the market leader in personal finance software and has held that position for three decades. That's because Quicken was so well designed that using it is intuitive. But by the time Smith became CEO, in 2008, the company had become overly focused on adding incremental features that delivered ease of use but not delight. What was missing was an emotional connection with customers. He and his team set out to integrate design thinking into every part of Intuit. They changed the layout of the office, reduced the number of cubes, and added more collaboration spaces and places for impromptu work. They increased the number of designers by nearly 600% and now hold quarterly design conferences. They bring in people who have created exceptionally designed products, such as the Nest thermostat and the Kayak travel website, to share insights with Intuit employees. The company acquired one start-up, called Mint, and collaborates with another, called ZenPayroll, to improve customer experience. Although most people don't think of financial software as a category driven by emotion or design, Smith writes, Intuit's D4D ("design for delight") program has paid off. For example, its SnapTax app, inspired by consumers' migration to smartphones, led one user to write, "I want this app to have my babies."

Despite the widely accepted ideal of "shared value," research led by Harvard Business School's Kasturi Rangan suggests that this is not the norm-and that's OK. Most companies practice a multifaceted version of CSR that spans theaters ranging from pure philanthropy to environmental sustainability to the explicitly strategic. To maximize their impact, companies must ensure that initiatives in the various theaters form a unified platform. Four steps can help them do so: Pruning and aligning programs within theaters. Companies must examine their existing programs in each theater, reducing or eliminating those that do not address an important social or environmental problem in keeping with the firm's business purpose and values. Developing metrics to gauge performance. Just as the goals of programs vary from theater to theater, so do the definitions of success. Coordinating programs across theaters. This does not mean that all initiatives necessarily address the same problem; it means that they are mutually reinforcing and form a cogent whole. Developing an interdisciplinary CSR strategy. The range of purposes underlying initiatives in different theaters and the variation in how those initiatives are managed pose major barriers for many firms. Strategy development can be top-down or bottom-up, but ongoing communication is key. These practices have helped companies including PNC Bank, IKEA, and Ambuja Cements bring discipline and coherence to their CSR portfolios.

Authenticity has become the gold standard for leadership. But as INSEAD professor Herminia Ibarra argues, a simplistic understanding of what authenticity means can limit leaders' growth and impact. All too often, we tend to latch on to authenticity as an excuse for sticking with what's comfortable. But few jobs allow us to do that for long. In this article, Ibarra explains how leaders can develop an "adaptively authentic" style by experimenting with many different leadership approaches. It's OK to change tactics from one day to the next, she says. That's not being fake; it's how we figure out what's right for the challenges and circumstances we face. Three strategies can help you break free from a self-concept that's too rigid: Learn from diverse role models. Growth necessarily involves some form of imitation, but don't copy just one person's leadership style. Borrow selectively from various people to create your own collage. Work on getting better. Set learning goals-not just performance targets-to focus on the value of experimentation. Stretch the limits of who you are by doing new things that make you uncomfortable but help you discover by direct experience whom you want to become. Don't stick to "your story." Jettison outdated self-concepts and draw on personal narratives that fit your circumstances as you're taking on new challenges.

Seeking and giving advice are central to effective leadership and decision making, and they require emotional intelligence, self-awareness, restraint, diplomacy, and patience on both sides. But managers tend to view these competencies as "gifts" that one either has or lacks. The authors argue instead that they're practical skills you can learn and apply to great effect. They draw on a large body of research to identify the most common obstacles to effectively seeking and giving advice--such as thinking one already has the answers, defining the problem poorly, and overstepping boundaries--and offer practical guidelines for getting past them. The authors define the five stages of advising: (1) finding the right fit; (2) developing a shared understanding; (3) crafting alternatives; (4) converging on a decision; and (5) putting advice into action. Each stage includes suggestions for seekers and for advisers. Example: At stage 4, when it's time to narrow down the options, a seeker might review discarded or briefly considered ideas, and his adviser might play devil's advocate--to check for confirmation bias. Overall, the authors' guidelines amount to a fundamental shift in approach: a creative, collaborative way of understanding problems and crafting promising paths forward--which often requires an ongoing conversation.

For organizations to prosper, managers in the middle ranks must feel empowered to identify and promote the need for change. People at this level gather valuable intelligence from direct contact with customers, suppliers, and colleagues; they can often see when the market is ripe for a certain offering, for instance, or spot signs that a partnership won't work. But for many reasons, ranging from a fear of negative consequences to compliance with a top-down culture, they may not voice their ideas and concerns--and even when they do, they often struggle to persuade the people at the top. The authors studied "issue selling" in a range of organizations, roles, and industries, identifying seven tactics associated with success. Managers should (1) tailor their pitch to the goals, values, and knowledge of decision makers; (2) frame the issue to show how it supports a strategic goal; (3) manage emotions (their own and their audience's); (4) get the timing right by, say, attending to a boss's preoccupations or watching larger trends; (5) involve others, both in and out of their networks; (6) adhere to organizational norms, such as how leaders prefer to receive information; and (7) suggest solutions, or at least propose ways to find one. Issue selling is an ongoing process that requires groundwork and patience. Midlevel managers who do it effectively get decision makers' attention and make a real difference in their organizations.

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.