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What do organizations that successfully unlock AI's strategic potential have in common, according to recent research? Executives with high AI literacy. Many leaders will be uncomfortable with the need to continually learn about artificial intelligence as the technology evolves, but executives and board members need to embrace that discomfort and make it a habit. This article shares three ways to put that habit into action.

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. Information systems are traditionally designed to impose structure on processes, while innovation activities require a tolerance for ambiguity and failure and the flexibility to redefine goals when opportunities or roadblocks arise. Yet the potential of information systems to improve the innovation process is too great to dismiss them out of hand. Undertaking research to learn how leading innovators have used IT to make their innovation activities more effective and efficient, the authors found that companies require three things in order to do so. First, they need specific IT-enabled organizational capabilities, which are formed by combining their IT assets with non-IT assets to enable the across-the-board processes essential to developing and applying innovations. Second, companies need a strong set of IT-based tools to effectively sustain the central activities required for innovation and to support the analytical work that innovators need to transform ideas into products, processes and services. Third, companies need a system of control that allows workers to access and use the IT resources effectively. The authors'research provides numerous lessons for an organization's innovation leaders, IT managers and top leadership -- particularly the CEO. The primary lesson for innovators, for example, is that the IT department can be an active partner in innovation, not an enemy. When all of these stakeholders understand the role that information technology can play in streamlining and accelerating the innovation process, a company will be well on its way toward producing more innovations, and better innovations, with the resources at its disposal.