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The pioneers of the United States' first credit agencies, in the mid-nineteenth century, understood that modern commerce required a new kind of foundation.

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.

The complex problems of our time increasingly demand creative, adaptive and flexible governance structures. The author shows that a new breed of 'temporary' organization is emerging to tackle some of the world's most wicked problems, achieve targeted results, then shut down. She provides examples, including an initiative to combat AIDS that involves The Gates Foundation, Merck Pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline and UNITAID. She then describes five key characteristics of the new mindset required to build short-term organizations with long-term impact.

As Asia's population and per capita incomes rise, four key components of its natural resource base are set to decline substantially. The authors group the environmental problems that confront Asia into four categories-water management, deforestation and land degradation, air pollution, and climate change. They then provide seven policy objectives that can serve as a platform from which to address these problems, at both regional and local levels. Embracing these objectives, they believe, will facilitate the management of Asia's environmental problems to 2030 and beyond.

Solving wicked problems involves mobilizing different actors, ways of thinking, forms of knowledge and practices. In short, it requires messy solutions. The authors argue that Mary Douglas's Cultural Theory can guide the selection of problem-solving approaches for wicked problems. Having analyzed 20 problem-solving approaches from Organizational Studies, they present six that-based on Cultural Theory's focus on combining Individualistic, Egalitarian, Hierarchichal and Fatalistic elements-are best suited to tackling wicked problems, including Design Thinking, Future Searches and 21st Century Town Meetings.

In today's global marketplace, companies are being asked to create innovative products and services for increasingly diverse users, cultures and environments. These 'design challenges' can be so wickedly complex that the task of aligning all of a project's stakeholders sometimes seems impossible. But it's not. The authors show that design empathy is an approach that can be embraced to draw upon people's real-world experiences and address modern challenges. They provide four strategies for scaling and sustaining design empathy within your organization, including 'telling stories, documentary-style' and 'taking clients on visceral journeys'.

Senior executives from Novo Nordisk, Virgin Group, Johnson & Johnson and Tim Hortons provide dispatches from the front lines of the corporate sustainability challenge, describing their companies' varied approaches to tackling sustainability in arenas including aviation, investing, consumer products and health care.

The traditional linear and analytic problem-solving processes to which business leaders have become accustomed-from quality management to Six Sigma-rarely open up the variety of different 'frames' that the more exploratory approaches from the realm of Design Thinking can. The authors show that sometimes-and more frequently than ever these days-we need many different frames around a problem in order to see the many different possible solutions. They describe four elements of the skill of framing and 're-framing' a problem, and show how together, they enable you to 'create a new story' on behalf of your customer.

If we want to create a future in which humanity thrives, we must re-frame our approach to life and the way in which we see the world. The author, an innovation strategist, describes seven cultural and economic shifts that are taking place within what he calls 'The Age of Opportunity'. These include a shift 'from mechanical to organic' and 'from data to patterns'. The social and business landscapes are ripe for opportunities to re-frame our world, he says, and embracing these shifts is the first step on the road to innovation.

In the past, society has counted on government bodies and institutions like the World Bank to address global issues like climate change, youth unemployment and income inequality. But in recent years, the author argues, another kind of institution has become uniquely placed to address these challenges: global corporations. The catch, she explains, is that before a corporation can take a wider world view, it first has to reach inside of itself to build inner resilience. She describes three spheres of corporate influence and how to build resilience within each in order to proceed to the third and final sphere: contributing to global resilience.

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.

Every business decision depends on making a forecast of the consequences of the decision. Although most organizations do forecasting, most do so badly. They ask either for a point prediction-a single "best guess" forecast, when everyone knows that this is an oversimplification of the truth, or for a simple range forecast, which is likely to result in biased predictions more often than not. In this article, the authors propose a better approach, one that takes seriously the uncertainty in forecasting and the most common errors in the way people think about this uncertainty.