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The authors note that companies want to protect their supply chains from serious and costly disruptions, but the most obvious solutions -increasing inventory, adding capacity at different locations and having multiple suppliers -undermine supply chain cost efficiency. Surveys have shown that while managers appreciate the impact of supply chain disruptions, they have done very little to prevent such incidents or mitigate their impacts. The authors argue that supply chain efficiency, which is directed at improving financial performance, is different from supply chain resilience, in which the goal is risk reduction. Although both require dealing with risks, recurrent risks (such as demand fluctuations) require companies to focus on efficiency in improving the way they match supply and demand, while disruptive risks require companies to build resilience despite additional cost. Recently, managers have become much better at managing global supply chains through improved planning and execution and building operational reserves such as production capacity and inventory. However, the authors argue that reliance on sole-source suppliers, common parts and centralized inventories has left companies vulnerable to disruptive risks. Although sourcing from or outsourcing to distant low-cost locations and eliminating excess capacity and redundant suppliers can make supply chains more cost-efficient, they also make supply chains more vulnerable. How should managers reduce their supply chain's exposure to disruptive risks without giving up hard-earned gains in performance from improved supply chain efficiency?

MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte have been exploring the impact of social media on business over the past three years through surveys, data analysis and interviews with executives and academics. The latest survey explored whether companies are deriving value from their social business initiatives. Sixty-two percent of managers surveyed report that their organization's social business initiatives are at least somewhat successful at meeting their stated business objectives, while 63% of respondents report that social business has positively affected business outcomes at their company. Fifty-nine percent of respondents in multinational companies report that social business helps them operate across geographies. Perhaps equally compelling is the extent to which individual employees indicate the value of social business to their daily work. Fifty-seven percent of respondents say that it is at least somewhat important for them to work for companies with mature social business practices, while 46% of respondents say that social business is at least somewhat important for decision making in their day-to-day role. A key factor in whether companies are able to derive positive benefits from social business is social business maturity. The researchers asked survey respondents to envision a company with ideal social business practices and then to assess how close their company was to that ideal. The higher a respondent rates his or her company, the more likely they are to report that the company is deriving business value from its social business initiatives. For example, 92% of respondents from the companies with the most mature social business practices say that social business helps them operate across geographies.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Facing headwinds from a shifting media industry, executives at Spanish language broadcasting company Entravision recognized the need to innovate their business model. To get there they created Luminar, a big data insights division that utilizes about 2000 external data points to deliver customized, transaction-based insights to marketers, about Entravision's Latino audience. The fastest growing U.S. demographic, Latinos have amassed buying power worth more than a trillion dollars annually.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Oil & Gas is GE's fastest growing business, with revenues of $15 billion. It competes in high-growth markets and creates products like the recently launched first subsea compressor that utilize GE's broad technical capabilities. Measurement & Control, a division of Oil & Gas, covers a swath of industries and applications, according to its website, including sensing, asset condition monitoring, controls and instrumentation. But Oil & Gas, along with the rest of GE, is also betting heavy on analytics. The company announced this summer the first-of-its-kind cloud platform for collecting, storing and analyzing large scale machine data, to handle the massive data from the coming Industrial Internet. GE is also applying that analytic rigor to innovate internally - and drive commercial change. Philip Kim, (former) marketing operations leader for Measurement & Control , discusses how GE uses data to continuously improve performance - whether that's to grow sales, decrease costs or improve performance-- and in the process, democratizes analytics.

For generations, the model for receiving health care services in the developed world has been straightforward. It starts with showing your insurance card at the reception desk and ends with a 10-minute examination/discussion with a doctor. In developing countries, this model is structurally untenable: according to the World Health Organization, there is a global shortage of four million health care providers, and in 57 countries, this amounts to a crisis. The authors present several new models for delivering health care services in developing countries that use ICT (information and communication technologies)-i.e., cell phones, tablets and computers. It is only a matter of time, they say, before these models spread to more resource-rich settings.

In recent years we have witnessed an endless stream of value-destroying behaviour by individuals and organizations in the financial world. The persistence of these scandals, say the authors, indicates that the prevailing paradigm of financial economics requires transformation. They argue that the core issue at hand is a lack of recognition that integrity is a factor of production that is as important to success in all aspects of life as knowledge, technology and human and physical capital. They define integrity for individuals, organizations and objects, and going forward, call for leaders to identify out-of-integrity behaviour as it happens.

Imagination is what enables people to invent new business models, create differentiated products and services, and reframe a growing number of problems as opportunities. And yet we understand very little about how imagination works. The author shows that it has much in common with dreaming. He describes the key elements of the dream state and shows that the the number-one hazard for innovators is getting stuck in the 'tar pits' of prior knowledge. Once we learn the 'trick' of dreaming-of disassociating our thoughts from the linear and the logical-we can become wellsprings of originality.

Global trade has taken off over the past decade, and small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are reaping rewards in developing markets. The authors describe four political and four socio-economic challenges presented by these markets, and describe five strategies for surmounting these challenges, using examples of successful Canadian and British SMEs that are leading the way in fast-growth markets.

Our mental models, or mindsets, determine the way we see the world, make decisions and behave. In the realm of Marketing, the author argues that many peoples' mental models are severely outdated. He explains why the old Marketing paradigm is outdated, and describes six aspects of the new landscape that modern marketers must embrace in order to thrive in what he calls "a new marketing paradigm."

In his work at IDEO, the author has been closely studying a gigantic emerging market: the Chinese middle class consumer. In this article he describes three key aspects of this consumer's identity. Calling this consumer segment "a moving target", he says the important thing is to maintain a consistently human-centered approach aimed at uncovering latent needs. Businesses that continually develop their empathy and understanding of this group, he says, can meet the evolving needs of one of the largest new markets in history.

Widespread critiques of capitalism-as articulated by social movements such as Occupy Wall Street-have been widely legitimated, say the authors, and the resulting ideological shift has propelled migration towards 'connected consumption'. Emphasizing the re-use of goods rather than buying new, these practices facilitate local, face-to-face connections, and they are redesigning models of service delivery. The authors describe four types of connected consumption, then focus on one ('time banks'), explaining the broader context that is propelling this movement's popularity.

Business leaders from Jack Welch to John Seely Brown are amongst a growing number of leaders advocating the power of storytelling. The author describes the key tenets of storytelling and shows why it is so naturally appealing to the human mind. For instance, because we are highly averse to uncertainty, we tend to embrace simplistic 'cause and effect' relations without questioning them. The problem is, when the story isn't true, such characteristics of stories becomes 'traps'. She provides four ways to escape story- formula infrastructure so that we don't fall into a 'no-exit storytelling trap'.

Three veterans of the C-suite discuss the current business landscape and some of their key challenges past, present and future. Mark Barrenechea, CEO of OpenText, explains why "Big Data is a bit over-hyped"; Former MasterCard CMO (now Sotheby's CMO) Alfredo Gangotena describes his greatest challenge ever: marketing EuroDisney to Parisians; and Mountain Equipment Co-Op CEO Mark Labistour explains his affinity for Design Thinking, and the importance of working towards a "desired future state" for your customer.

In the realm of feedback, the receiver - not the giver - is the key player in the exchange. The authors describe three triggers that lead us to dismiss feedback, and how to counteract them to improve your relationships and take charge of your life-long learning. In the end, they say, receiving feedback well is a skill, and an important one for each of us to learn.

In a wide-ranging interview, the Managing Director for McKinsey and Company Worldwide, Dominic Barton, discusses his firm's work on the global problem of water scarcity, what type of talent his firm seeks out and why workplace flexibility is so important today.

In most industries, quality has never mattered more--but with cycle times compressing and output gains outpacing employment growth, the likelihood of error is higher than ever before. Traditional "total quality management" tools are not enough; companies must make quality their employees' passion. Here are four actions that can achieve this.

A decade's worth of data from the S&P 500 companies shows how the rate of director turnover correlates with shareholder returns, suggesting an optimal amount of turnover--three or four board seats every three years.

It's no secret that provocative ads are risky. Benetton, for example, has faced numerous boycotts and lawsuits over its "shock advertising." But there's another reason marketers should exercise caution: Topics that are too hot often generate no buzz at all--and the threshold for "too hot" is surprisingly low.

Researchers have long known that men's economic decisions change after they're exposed to pictures of models or lingerie. A new study reveals that women's decisions are also affected by sexual cues--although not in exactly the same way.

The author was for seven years CEO of Fifth & Pacific Companies (formerly Liz Claiborne, now Kate Spade). During the transformation he led there, he and his team came to recognize what he calls the truths of transformation, one of which is that transformation is not "a shocking but short-lived moment in a company's history." To manage it instead as an era, you must sustain a vision, resist being an ideologue, prepare people to see things get worse before they get better, and take a fresh look at the people you're relying on.