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Many industries and their offerings have fallen victim to managerial shortsightedness. Firms often believe they are invincible and see themselves as immune to threats from seemingly unrelated technologies. There seemed to be no apparent link between bound paper books and the emerging internet, no discernible ties between the video rental business and streaming technologies, and no obvious connections between photography and cellular phones. When these associations were established by means of other, newer technologies, major incumbent firms such as Barnes & Noble, Blockbuster, and Kodak came crashing down. CRISPR is the technology of the moment, one that will enable the programming of evolution. While we might think about gene editing in terms of cures for diseases, its repercussions will impact almost every domain of human and planetary development, and sooner than one might think. In this installment of On The Horizon, we adopt an evolutionary perspective to understand the impact of the genetic revolution on firms regardless of industry.

Resistance to change can be a significant factor in the success or failure of changes. As such, researchers have spent more than a half century studying the causes of resistance and how to manage it. Much can be learned from resistance literature that applies to today's unparalleled, nonstop change in which an organization's ability to manage resistance to change can not only impact the change's success or failure but also determine whether an organization will survive or thrive. This article explores important lessons revealed via resistance literature, and more importantly, how such knowledge applies to managing change in the modern world. The article emphasizes the urgent need for organizations to become skilled at effectively managing change and resistance to change and offers recommendations on how they can do so.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is ubiquitous in today's public discourse, underpinned by societal recognition of inequality and demands for less discrimination. Further, DEI increasingly serves as a resource for brands to express their identity and align with consumer values. However, implementing DEI as a brand management strategy requires more than lip service and poses risks if not properly embraced. For instance, consumers can perceive DEI initiatives as inauthentic, or initiatives can miss the mark with target consumer groups when poorly executed. Because brands are now more inclined to take responsibility and a public stance on sociopolitical issues, we take a step back and discuss key considerations and opportunities for brands to embrace DEI. We first document the case for DEI in brand management. Next, we present the consumer and brand perspectives of DEI before unpacking the considerations and opportunities of embracing DEI for brand management. Overall, our manuscript provides guidance for brands, marketers, regulators, and policy makers to better understand the role of DEI for brand management.

The digital data available online is currently measured in zettabytes. These vast repositories of big web data are increasingly viewed as a strategic resource comparable in value to land, gold, and oil. This big web data can be extracted and analyzed by organizations to gain a better understanding of their internal and external environment and improve organizational performance. Because of these opportunities, automated retrieval and organization of web data (i.e., web scraping) for research projects is becoming a common practice. This article outlines the data-related, technical, legal, and ethical issues related to web scraping. Awareness of these issues can help researchers save time and resources and, most importantly, mitigate the potential risk of ethical controversies or lawsuits related to the retrieval and use of big web data.

This article introduces the next major generational evolution of the web: Web3. We review the fundamental evolution of the internet and the web over the past 3 decades, including a brief presentation of the publications in Business Horizons that are important in a discussion of the emergence of Web3. We then discuss what these recent developments mean to organizations, consumers, and the public. Though the degree to which Web3 will be widely adopted is uncertain, these technologies are already creating both exhilarating and terrifying implications for e-commerce, digital media, online social networking, online marketplaces, search engines, supply chain management, and finance, among others. We propose the consideration and management of technical, organizational, and regulatory interoperability for Web3 to deliver on its promises of value and that failure to consider these interoperability components may destroy economic value, consumer confidence, or social issues online. We also call on our fellow researchers to focus on these interoperability issues and how they might impact the positive and negative sides of Web3 technologies to help us understand and shape our Web3 future.

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have experienced exponential growth over the past few years. Many companies and creators have experimented with various ways to develop NFT businesses, but often without clear guidance on how NFTs shape property rights and business models. In this article, we examine the roles of NFTs in establishing digital property rights, creating value for creators and collectors, and empowering business model innovation. As NFTs unlock digital property rights, they can spawn new business models centered around digital ownership, portable and composable digital assets, and decentralized communities. We believe our framework can help businesses and creators formulate and implement actionable strategies to create and capture value in NFTs and Web3.

The biopharmaceutical sector’s innovation- and growth-focused activities are having a surprising side effect—they’re building organizational resilience at a time of inflation, looming economic downturn, and scarcity of the right skills and talent. This offers relevant lessons for all other industries. The idea of building resilience may most often be associated with “playing defense” through cost-cutting and efficiency moves, but it can also stem from new and more rapid ways of leveraging invention and innovation driven by purpose. To understand how, the authors recommend taking a closer look at the “New Science” of some biopharma companies. New Science combines the best of what biopharmas know on the scientific front with the best of what technology can offer to target disease areas where no treatments or cures exist. According to Accenture’s research, the three significant benefits of New Science are improving the chances of creating viable offerings, reducing the cost of innovation, and driving revenue growth. While scientific novelty, technology convergence, and unmet patient needs are the guiding principles of New Science, transferring these basics to other industries requires shifting a company’s essence toward innovation with purpose. This article offers three practical steps to make that happen. First, reorient the portfolio: business leaders must pursue new products and services, new markets, and new ecosystems to address unmet needs. Second, flip the budget: senior executives need to free up capital to invest in innovation activities. Third, create dynamic teams: applying the principles of New Science requires forming new kinds of teams—human teams and “human + machine” teams.

Early detection of weak external signals is increasingly critical for strategic agility. While many organizations scan for weak signals, most dismiss them as anomalies, principally due to poor amplification strategies. Several challenges hinder the necessary amplification and sensemaking of weak signals for organizational awareness. This article analyzes 139 proof-of-concept projects with startups and 15 interviews with executives involved in the projects at a leading German mobility corporation, and it reveals four actions to amplify weak external signals, thereby enhancing organizational hyper-awareness. It illustrates the actions with examples and presents the implications for both weak signals and strategic agility management.

Even in a turbulent environment where employees are facing job insecurity, leadership changes, or reorgs, managers can take steps to give their team members a sense of stability and help mitigate their anxiety. The author suggests seven ways managers can support their teams during times of instability to help restore employees' sense of control and maintain their motivation.

In this second article in a series of four, the researchers behind the 2023 MIT Sloan Management Review-BCG Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy Big Ideas research project offer a framework improve-create-establish, or ICE for enhancing strategic measurement with artificial intelligence. Examples from companies such as Wayfair and DBS Bank help illustrate the potential benefits of using AI to improve KPIs.

Although agility is often associated with rapid speed and flexibility, having processes for "deep reflection" is also crucial. This includes the need for collective dialogs across and outside organizations to build greater awareness of, and attention to, strategic issues. How do managers involve a wider range of stakeholder voices in strategy as they pursue agility? This article identifies three practices that synergistically contribute to agility and conceptualizes them in a framework for managers called the "Strategy Making as Polyphony Wheel." The work outlines several implications for managerial practice and research.

Researchers from the University of Missouri studied the auto insurance industry to learn more about what drives sales success. The analysis showed that experienced reps found fewer prospective customers than novices did. But that didn't necessarily hurt their overall performance, because they excelled at conversion. Advertising boosted both prospecting and conversion efficacy but was most beneficial among experienced reps. And the success of managerial levers to enhance both kinds of efficacy depended in part on reps' level of experience. In this article, the researchers offer several recommendations for sales managers looking to bolster their reps' productivity.

Having studied TV signals in East Germany from the 1960s to 1989 and rates of entrepreneurship there after German reunification, the researchers found that people in households with access to West German broadcasts were more likely than other East Germans to launch companies later in life.

The author has conducted in-depth interviews with hundreds of CEOs and other executives for the New York Times feature "Corner Office" and his leadership series on LinkedIn, and he has coached hundreds of high-potentials. In this article he shares the lessons that emerged about the mental shifts needed to make a successful transition to a senior leadership position. The process involves identifying and communicating your core values and learning how to approach tough decisions. It requires setting the bar for your team's performance and learning to compartmentalize so that you can find the right pace for yourself. And it requires expanding your self-awareness and paying attention to the stories you tell yourself about your experiences-your successes and failures, your bad times and good ones-when you contemplate the arc of your career and life.

Many companies realize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion. But most focus on gender and ethnicity, paying less attention to people with disabilities. Employing people with disabilities is usually seen as a social cause-one best suited to nonprofits or the public sector. That is a mistake-and more important, a missed opportunity. In many industries innovative companies are demonstrating that including people with disabilities can lead to real competitive advantage, in four ways: (1) Disabilities often confer unique talents that make people better at particular jobs. (2) The presence of employees with disabilities elevates the culture of the entire organization, making it more collaborative and boosting productivity. (3) A reputation for inclusiveness enhances a firm's value proposition with customers, who become more willing to build long-term relationships with the company. And (4) being recognized as socially responsible gives a firm an edge in the competition for capital and talent. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do good in the world, but there is also nothing wrong with wanting to do well, and the latter is enough reason to employ people with disabilities.

AI has the power to gather, analyze, and utilize enormous volumes of individual customer data to achieve precision and scale in personalization. The experiences of Mercury Financial, CVS Health, and Starbucks debunk the prevailing notion that extracting value from AI solutions is a technology-building exercise. That thinking holds companies back from capturing the power of AI. They needn't build it; they just have to properly integrate it into a particular business context. But AI is probably only about 10% of the secret sauce. The other 90% lies in the combination of data, experimentation, and talent that constantly activates and informs the intelligence behind personalization. Personalization is the goal; it's what constitutes a company's strategic brawn. The technology is merely the tool for reaching it. The authors describe what it means to integrate AI tools and what it takes to continually experiment, constantly generate learning, and import fresh data to improve and refine customer journeys.

Markets for carbon trading function poorly, and many traded offsets do not actually perform as promised. Without robust protocols for monitoring offsets and in the absence of proper accounting mechanisms, market-based approaches to reducing atmospheric GHG will be vulnerable to misrepresentation and fraud. This article presents an accounting framework based on five core principles. The first two define what can and cannot be counted as an offset and what may or may not be traded. The remaining principles set out basic accounting guidelines for offsets. Together they provide the foundation for a well-functioning market that accelerates innovation and deployment of improved offsetting technologies, leading to atmospheric decarbonization.

Although human beings are naturally social creatures, ready to both give and accept help, many of us struggle to actually ask for it, which over time can make us miserable and bitter. And because remote work is on the rise, leaving many of us isolated from colleagues, the challenges of asking for help have only intensified. To feel fulfilled and be successful both personally and professionally, it's important to acknowledge and accept when you are working beyond your own capacity and be open to asking others for help. In this article the author, a management scholar and a leadership guru, looks at what drives people's reluctance to seek help and offers strategies for overcoming the barriers.

Four new books investigate how language connects, differentiates, and enlightens us. Viorica Marian's The Power of Language explores the benefits of multilingualism. People who are multilingual perform better on executive-functioning tasks, for instance, and draw more novel connections. In A Myriad of Tongues, author Caleb Everett notes that more than 7,000 languages exist today. And while academics traditionally looked for commonalities among languages, recent research has focused on how languages diverge, and what those differences can teach us. A third book, Magic Words, by Wharton professor Jonah Berger, examines how specific words can carry an oversize impact, making them more likely to change hearts and minds or drive change. By contrast, Dan Lyons's STFU reminds readers that sometimes saying nothing is the best approach. "All of us," he writes, "stand to gain by speaking less, listening more, and communicating with intention." His book offers advice on how to do that, whether online, at work, or at home.

Nominated for 10 Tony Awards, the Broadway star began her career as a chorus girl. She went on to play the original Anita in West Side Story and the original Velma in Chicago. Despite her success, she describes herself as "obedient" and says, "You get so much by being humble."