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Are you involved in a new venture but just can't find the right name? Are you part of an organization that has outgrown its name, perhaps because of geographic/product expansion or societal changes? Or worse, does your organization need to shed its name owing to scandal or unfortunate family association? While many entrepreneurs and managers understand intuitively that names are imbued with meaning and that this meaning helps convey a company's identity and tell its story, they may not know what makes a great name. Even though choosing a name marks a universal rite of passage for an organization and a key strategic decision, there is surprisingly little practical, accessible, and consolidated guidance available to those in search of the "perfect" name. So, how can organizations improve their chances of crafting an outstanding name? We extract research-driven insights from a variety of disciplines to describe, examine, and evaluate five principal naming strategies. As such, we explore the effectiveness of organization names that are affiliated with the organization's signature product/service, family, or geography, as well as those adopting humor or pursuing novelty via portmanteaus. We also offer recommendations for maximizing the cognitive fluency and emotional resonance of potential names.

Brands become relevant to consumers via storytelling, and archetypal myths in popular culture inform this effect. The hero is an archetype of enduring interest, yet as the marketing literature is replete with heroic undertones, the scope of empirical research is limited and dominated by North American perspectives. To address this shortcoming, this study explores Australian consumer relationships with hero archetypes to provide a contemporary view of how consumers enact brand myths. An in-depth case study of R.M. Williams, an iconic Australian brand, shows the relevance of iconic heroes and reveals how historical archetypes can evolve to address emergent consumer-brand storytelling needs. The study identifies several novel archetypal patterns which contribute to a deeper understanding of how consumers enact brand myths. These archetypes influence consumers in their consumption quests, reconciling social needs and facilitating their immersion in the brand's story. To improve consumer-brand engagement, marketers must focus on engaging consumers with the brand's narrative through the strategic use of archetypal myths.

According to Microsoft's latest Work Trend Index survey, about half of employees are experiencing burnout. In this article, the authors discuss the importance of measuring all of the factors that contribute to burnout; its three primary symptoms; its impact in the workplace; and what leaders, managers, and employees can do to mitigate burnout's negative effects.

Executives typically add customer offerings such as new features or products or initiate new pilots, processes, and tools to spur business growth without considering how such changes will affect customer-facing workers' workloads and ability to serve customers. Based on research and experience with companies like Sam's Club, Mercadona, and Quest Diagnostics, the author explains how subtracting existing processes and product options rather than adding more can improve employee's work, retention, and wages and improve customer experience.

Despite their companies' pledges to support social justice initiatives and racial and gender equity in recent years, many business leaders are now balking at the label "woke" a term that has become a political weapon. But the authors assert that addressing inequality and injustice in the workplace and beyond is something leaders must do. They call for leaders to continue to work toward racial and gender inequity and to be conscious of their role in effecting change.

In this first 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 outline the opportunities AI brings for key performance indicators and strategic measurement. They discuss the business implications of using AI to generate and refine KPIs and explain how enabling strategic measurement systems to learn fundamentally alters how organizations understand and invest in future performance.

Product innovation increasingly involves both human designers (engineers, developers, lead users, creative geniuses, and other innovators) and machine designers (algorithmically organized software tools that autonomously collect and interpret data to make innovative design decisions). This article provides practical guidance about how firms can leverage different forms of machine designers in tandem with human designers to fundamentally change the way they engage in product innovation. It describes how successful companies have managed to optimally orchestrate the capabilities of human and machine designers to create both effective and ethical product innovations that were previously unthinkable.

Biodiversity loss threatens enough economic activity to warrant far more private sector investment than it gets. Over half the world’s total GDP is “moderately or highly dependent on nature and its services,” and restoring and conserving nature is widely expected to require annual investment of more than US$700 billion. However, the money currently being spent doesn’t come anywhere close to that. If we’re serious about protecting our ecosystems, we can’t rely on the public sector alone. To help attract the level of private-sector investment required to bridge the biodiversity financing gap before it’s too late, this article argues that governments need to create a conducive investment environment and seed a self-sustaining biodiversity market through a major increase in concessional financing. The authors believe there are three primary factors behind why the biodiversity crisis in developing countries fails to attract more private capital. First is the scarcity of investible deals. Second, the environment in terms of policies and frameworks isn’t conducive. Third, risk perception is significant. To develop biodiversity as an adaptation sector, climate accelerators (cohort-based programs offering early equity that have mentorship and educational components) could facilitate and support the growth of adaptation and biodiversity technologies, particularly in developing countries.

Artificial intelligence typically takes root in an organization in isolated experiments or projects, but formal structures are needed to scale the technology across the organization and deliver on its potential. The authors identify three typical structural phases of AI implementation: islands of experimentation, centers of excellence, and federations of expertise. They identify the strengths and limitations of each and describe how companies have managed transitions to new structures that better enable AI initiatives.

Bringing neurodiversity into the larger conversation about workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion is important not only for reasons of fairness: Neurodiverse individuals represent an undervalued talent pool. The authors discuss the challenges neurodivergent employees often face in the workplace and suggest ways that leaders and employees can support their neurodivergent colleagues and help them achieve their potential.

Although the hybrid work model has been widely adopted among many businesses, the complications involving peer relationships and connections that it has introduced linger on. Relying on results from The CMO Survey, the authors derived a set of strategies to help leaders navigate organizational culture and the socialization of new employees during this era of digital transformation.

As the parents of two children with Down syndrome, the authors learned that 80% of people with disabilities in the United States are unemployed. They were determined that their children Bitty and Beau would not become part of that statistic. They decided to open a small coffee shop in their hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, and employed mostly people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Today they have 17 owned and franchised locations across 11 states and the District of Columbia-with four more slated to open in 2023-which collectively staff 400 people with disabilities. They believe that any organization can open its doors to such workers, and they've learned through experience how to get the best from these team members, how to overcome challenges, and how to capitalize on all the value they provide.

Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder has an impact on other stakeholders-engaged employees improve customer satisfaction, which in turn spurs growth, and so on-many CEOs are pledging to generate benefits for all their constituents: customers, workers, suppliers, communities, and investors. But few leaders have explicit strategies for doing so; most seem to rely on intuitive approaches. The good news is, firms can use data to design and implement effective stakeholder strategies. They should start by exploring outside perspectives of the value they produce-specifically, the ratings of agencies like the Drucker Institute and Just Capital. Firms must then bolster data from such third parties with inside insights and gain an understanding of the interdependencies among their particular stakeholders. Armed with that, they can develop a clear description of their purpose, establish criteria for evaluating progress toward it, set priorities among stakeholders, and start measuring value creation for each group. The last step is sustaining the new strategy through cultural change and by developing supporting processes and organizational structures.

For the past 20 years "disruption" has been a battle cry in business. Not surprisingly, many have come to see it as a near-synonym for innovation. But the obsession with disruption obscures an important truth: Market-creating innovation isn't always disruptive. Disruption may be what people talk about. It's certainly important, and it's all around us. But, as the authors of the best-selling book Blue Ocean Strategy argue, it's only one end of the innovation spectrum. On the other end is what they call nondisruptive creation, through which new industries, new jobs, and profitable growth are created without social harm. Nondisruptive creation reveals an immense potential to establish new markets where none existed before and, in doing so, to foster economic growth without a loss of jobs or damage to other industries, enabling business and society to thrive together.

Advanced analytics can help companies solve a host of management problems, including those related to marketing, sales, and supply-chain operations, which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. But as more data becomes available and advanced analytics are further refined, managers may struggle with when, where, and how much to incorporate machines into their business analytics, and to what extent they should bring their own judgment to bear when making data-driven decisions. In general, humans are better at decisions involving intuition and ambiguity resolution. Machines are far superior at decisions requiring deduction, granularity, and scalability. How can you find the right balance? There are three common approaches to analytics: descriptive, where decisions are made mainly by humans; predictive, which combines aspects of the other two; and prescriptive, which usually means autonomous management by machines. This article describes when and how to use each approach and examines the trade-offs and limitations. Although the focus is on marketing and sales, the principles may be applied more broadly.

Internal talent marketplaces (ITMs), which organizations use to match workers and roles, can increase job satisfaction and engagement, reduce turnover, and allow executives to access diverse perspectives about key assignments. Users have an incentive and an opportunity to share information about their skills, interests, and ambitions, including valuable personal information that is usually omitted from résumés. ITMs take a variety of forms. Some function like social networks, where workers and managers interact to find matches. Others allow employees to rank their preferred assignments and use an algorithm to find optimal placements. But matching talent to opportunities requires balancing business objectives, agility, workers' desires for certain jobs, and the need to avoid disrupting existing work. Those challenges confound organizations from every sector. The authors have designed, implemented, and evaluated ITMs for more than a decade in the private, nonprofit, and public sectors, with partners across the globe. In this article they review the pros and cons of using an ITM, explain how to build and optimize one, and recommend ways to align employee preferences and the company's needs.

A paradox of business is that while leaders often employ a hands-on, directive style to rise to the top, once they arrive, they're supposed to empower and enable their teams. Suddenly, they're expected to demonstrate "people skills." And many find it challenging to adapt to that reality. To understand how leaders can successfully make this shift, the authors studied 75 CEO successions, involving 235 candidates. They discovered that the transformation is not a single event but unfolds over time and takes many twists and turns. It's a long journey with three stages: the departure, during which leaders recognize the need to change and leave behind their old ways of working; the voyage, during which they encounter obstacles and trials that teach them important lessons; and the return, when they arrive at a new understanding of what kind of leader they need to be. Completing this odyssey requires humility, self-awareness, and resilience. Several key practices will help executives along the way: understanding the extent of the change required, creating new contexts for learning, enlisting the help of advisers, learning from setbacks, and tapping the power of small wins.

The next era of competition is at hand. To succeed in an environment of high uncertainty, greater short-term pressure, and tighter resource constraints, companies must become even better and more efficient at developing options for future advantage while continuing to perform in the present. Embracing radical optionality, the authors contend, will allow firms to turn uncertainty from a disruptive threat into a potential source of advantage. Doing so requires upending some of the core tenets of strategy. For instance, they must eliminate the gap between thinking (strategy formation) and doing (execution). They should abandon the winner-takes-all approach, which has long been central to strategy and innovation, and strive instead for flexibility. And they need to achieve "polydexterity," the ability to exploit existing advantages in current markets while working toward multiple unknown future states. Companies must embrace complexity, learn to search and execute on ideas simultaneously, and engage with customers on their personal journeys. Accomplishing that will require new organizational forms and work practices, deeper integration between humans and technology, and next-generation performance metrics.

Marketers often worry that performance marketing and its focus on short-term sales is crowding out brand-building activities aimed at enhancing customer perceptions of their brand-and is sometimes working against brand strategy. Brand-building activities are typically measured using metrics that have no predictive or retrospective connection to financial returns. And performance marketing typically lacks measures that account for its impact on brand building, focusing only on sales, leads, and clicks. To achieve performance- accountable brand building and brand-accountable performance marketing, firms must create metrics that measure the effects of both types of investments on a single North Star metric: brand equity. That is then linked to specific financial outcomes-such as revenue, shareholder value, and return on investment-and deployed as a key performance indicator for both brand building and performance marketing. In doing so, companies are better able to make decisions that fortify the financial contributions of both and get them working better together.

Years ago the line between nonprofit and for-profit enterprises was clear, but that has changed. Nonprofits now offer products that compete with those of the best for-profits, and for-profits can deliver as much social value as charities. Despite the blurred distinction, all mission-driven start-ups will eventually face a stark choice about which legal structure to adopt, and they need to make it carefully, because it's hard to undo, say the authors, the CEO of a nonprofit accelerator and a partner in an impact investing fund. To guide their decision, social entrepreneurs should examine several questions: Is the market ready for a for-profit solution? Where is the available capital? And which structure would help the organization attract the talent and resources that it requires?