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As the 21st century unfolds, lone creators of new ideas are increasingly rare, as teams and larger groups within organizations become the dominant mode through which progress is made in much of the world. Appropriately, management scholars have been turning their attention to organizational creativity. One such form of creativity, 'improvisational creativity' involves simultaneously identifying new challenges and generating responses with little or no time to prepare. To facilitate improvisational creativity, one must acquire the expertise to operate fluently in a domain without also acquiring the lack of novelty that often accompanies increased expertise.

The forces around any endeavor result in its ultimate design. When attempting to solve 'wicked problems', creative thinkers must design systems that influence people's behavior on a mass scale. 'Systems at scale' comprise a series of methods for directing behavioral change on a large scale by inspiring people to embrace a system as a stakeholder. In a world increasingly plagued by wicked problems, this is one approach to tackling seemingly-unsolvable problems.

Design contains the skills to identify possible futures, build bridges to customers and crack 'wicked problems'. For businesses to bottle the kind of experiences that rivet minds and run away with hearts, they need to do more than hire designers: they need to be designers -- to think like designers and work like designers. The narrow-gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today's wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.

Make no mistake, the end of oil is on the horizon, and with it come significant implications for business and opportunities for the redesign of industry. The forthcoming end of petroleum-derived oil will fundamentally change the course of business on the scale of the Internet, the credit crisis, and perhaps even climate change. Three sets of ideas, explored here, play an important role: finding substitutes for oil; collaborative innovation between industries and sectors; and facing the fundamental socio-political implications of moving away from petroleum.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Historically, neither the creators nor the distributors of cultural products such as books or movies have used analytics -- data, statistics, predictive modeling -- to determine the likely success of their offerings. Instead, companies relied on the brilliance of tastemakers to predict and shape what people would buy. Creative judgment and expertise will always play a vital role in the creation, shaping and marketing of cultural products. But the balance between art and science is shifting. Today companies have unprecedented access to data and sophisticated technology that allows even the best-known experts to weigh factors and consider evidence that was unobtainable just a few years ago. And with increased cost and risk associated with the creation of cultural products, it has never been more important to get these decisions right. In this article, the authors describe the results of a study of prediction and recommendation efforts for a variety of cultural products. They discuss different approaches used to make predictions, the contexts in which these predictions are applied and the barriers to more extensive use, including the problem of decision making pre-creation. They then discuss two aspects of the prediction market. First, the need for better prediction for distributors of cultural products, and second, the potential for business models around prediction techniques.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. When picking assessment tools to inform better decisions about future paths, executives are faced with a wide variety of options--some of which are well established, while others are in early stages of development. The authors provide an insider's guide to prediction and recommendation techniques and technologies. They cover prediction tools including attributized Bayesian analysis, biological responses analysis, cluster analysis, collaborative filtering, content-based filtering/decision trees, neural network analysis, prediction (or opinion) markets, regression analysis, social network-based recommendations and textual analytics. With each potential tool, they briefly describe the technique, who uses it and for what purpose, its strengths and weaknesses, and its future prospects as a prediction tool. Finally, the authors offer up an indication of the best time in the decision process to begin using the tool.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. One could argue that "what business are we really in" is the most important question a leader can ask about his company. But perhaps right up there with the classic Peter Drucker interrogatory is this one: What is your business model? So argue the authors, who correctly point out that firms searching for forms of competitive advantage -- sources of distinctiveness that are enduring, hard to copy and valuable in the marketplace -- should take a look at their management model. That is, they should examine the choices made by the top executives in how they define objectives, motivate efforts, coordinate activities and allocate resources. How they define the work of management, in other words. Not only do the authors provide a framework for this discussion -- dividing companies' business models into four possible choices -- but they supply a list of questions leaders can ask to determine which management model may be right for their company. Clearly, when it comes to management models, one size does not fit all. And it is equally obvious that even similar-size companies in the same industry may choose differing models, depending on their own particular circumstances. While the model they choose is of extreme importance, so, too, is the process they follow -- and the thinking they use -- to select it.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Companies have long used teams to solve problems: focus groups to explore customer needs, consumer surveys to understand the market and annual meetings to listen to shareholders. But the words "solve," "explore," "understand" and "listen" have now taken on a whole new meaning. Thanks to recent technologies, including many Web 2.0 applications, companies can now tap into "the collective" on a greater scale than ever before. Indeed, the increasing use of information markets, wikis, crowdsourcing, "the wisdom of crowds" concepts, social networks, collaborative software and other Web-based tools constitutes a paradigm shift in the way that many companies make decisions. Call it the emerging era of "Decisions 2.0." But the proliferation of such technologies necessitates a framework for understanding what type of collective intelligence is possible (or not), desirable (or not) and affordable (or not) -- and under what conditions. At a minimum, managers need to consider the following key issues: loss of control, diversity versus expertise, engagement, policing, intellectual property and mechanism design. By understanding such important issues, companies like Affinnova, Google, InnoCentive, Marketocracy and Threadless have successfully implemented Decisions 2.0 applications for a variety of purposes, including research and development, market research, customer service and knowledge management. The bottom line is this: For many problems that a company faces, there could well be a solution out there somewhere, far outside of the traditional places that managers might search, within or outside the organization. The trick, though, is to develop the right tool for locating that source and then tap into it.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Dan Ariely is one of the world's foremost experts in behavioral economics, the study of how people behave when making business and financial decisions. Ariely's insights should make executives think twice about the wisdom of the decisions they regularly make -- as well as the inner processes they rely on to make those decisions. Why, for example, will managers veto a 10% cost increase for a $1 million project while thinking nothing of a 1% overrun on a $10 million budget -- even though the actual amount is the same? Why will they often agonize trying to choose between two close alternatives when they're frequently better off just flipping a coin? In this wide-ranging interview, Ariely talks about how Apple Inc.'s initial decision to price the iPhone at $600 only to drop it to $400 soon after might not have been a mistake but instead a very shrewd marketing maneuver. He also explains why a product monopoly might not necessarily be desirable because it can lead to consumer confusion, resulting in slow sales. With regards to hiring practices, Ariely strongly questions the interviewing processes routinely used and asserts that some companies might be better off hiring graduates from reputable colleges at random. Toward the end of the interview, he describes his research that has investigated ways in which teams might be better able to make group decisions. Lastly, Ariely explains one of his most valuable managerial insights -- that adding even just a little meaning to employees' work will often increase their motivation enormously.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. That is a question that has long puzzled marketers who have heard from customers that they want to do business with ethically based firms -- defined as companies that produce products under conditions of progressive stakeholder relations, advanced environmental practices and respect for human rights. Marketers had no reason to doubt that sentiment, but they have always wondered if consumers would be willing to pay a higher price for ethically produced goods (since they tend to be more expensive to create.) It turns out that a series of controlled experiments proves that consumers will, in fact, pay a premium for ethically produced goods. But perhaps of equal interest is the fact that they will punish (by demanding a lower price) companies that are not seen as ethical. That relationship is not symmetrical. The punishment exacted is greater than the premium customers are willing to pay. How ethical do you have to be? Perhaps not as much as you might think. The research shows that a small degree of ethicalness "pays off" It is not necessary for a company's product to be "100% pure" in order to receive a price premium. This research is the first to find that consumers use price to punish unethical companies more than they use price to reward ethical companies, and that the ethicality of a company's behavior is, indeed, an important consideration for consumers (as demonstrated in their willingness-to-pay decisions).

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Managers and directors alike face tough choices as they decide on the quality and quantity of information that the board receives and uses in its governance and fiduciary roles. As the fallout from recent crises such as the subprime mortgage debacle illustrates, both sides must address the problem of "information asymmetry" -- the gap between the information available to management and to the board. The authors' research suggests that tomorrow's boardroom will be reshaped by three related forces: First, they face a thorough rethinking, brought on by concerned stakeholders, of directors' information needs. In responding to these pressures, boards and management must overcome several impediments: caution about altering the dynamics of the present manager-director relationship; directors' lack of needed skills for interpreting the new information; and the inertia of cultural norms. Second, they face dramatic improvements in the performance assessment approaches used to guide boards' decision making. The core of a healthy information relationship between managers and directors is their agreement on the most useful performance metrics to track and assess. This selection enables the building of trust and an eased and more pertinent workload for the board (having been freed from the need to decode reams of data while also gaining some independence from management's sometimes self-serving evaluations). Finally, boards and managers face the adoption of technologies that support critical board functions. Once access to such information is granted, new technologies can help directors obtain and use it. Board members may apply tools that, for example, enable improved visualizations and helpful alerts. And directors may engage in electronic "what-if" analyses, using company data as well as outside information -- related, say, to competing firms -- which is becoming increasingly available online.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Although top managers must project an image of professionalism and strength, they still require networks of individuals they can trust. The development of trust depends on the degree to which the executives perceive the presence of three critical attributes -- ability, benevolence and integrity -- within their support networks, and on their ability to match these qualities with the type of support they are seeking in any particular situation. We model the support being sought as having high or low informational complexity and high or low emotional demand. The combinations correspond to four types of support requested: raw information (low, low), actionable advice (high, low), emotional support (low, high), and strategic or political help (high, high). Meanwhile, the three critical attributes (each with either a high or low rating) translate into eight kinds of support providers: Trustworthy Partner, Harsh Truthteller, Moral Compass, Loyal Supporter, Star Player, Average Joe, Dealmaker and Cheerleader. Executives in need of actionable advice will most often turn to Trustworthy Partners or Harsh Truthtellers, given their high levels of ability and integrity. For strategic or political help, Trustworthy Partners will be sought because of their high levels of ability, benevolence and integrity. Seekers of emotional support will look to Loyal Supporters and Trustworthy Partners because they offer high levels of benevolence and integrity. And when the three facets of trust are less critical, executives will be willing to go to virtually any of their contacts for raw information, though most often they seek out Average Joes. These and other matches were observed, useful data was gathered and valuable insights were obtained when we tested our model on vice presidents, directors, general managers and other executives at a Fortune 50 technology firm.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. One could argue that "what business are we really in" is the most important question a leader can ask about his company. But perhaps right up there with the classic Peter Drucker interrogatory is this one: What is your business model? So argue the authors, who correctly point out that firms searching for forms of competitive advantage -- sources of distinctiveness that are enduring, hard to copy and valuable in the marketplace -- should take a look at their management model. That is, they should examine the choices made by the top executives in how they define objectives, motivate efforts, coordinate activities and allocate resources. How they define the work of management, in other words. Not only do the authors provide a framework for this discussion -- dividing companies' business models into four possible choices -- but they supply a list of questions leaders can ask to determine which management model may be right for their company. Clearly, when it comes to management models, one size does not fit all. And it is equally obvious that even similar-size companies in the same industry may choose differing models, depending on their own particular circumstances. While the model they choose is of extreme importance, so, too, is the process they follow--and the thinking they use--to select it.

As global inflation increases, maintaining food and fuel subsidies will be difficult for developing nations. However, because discontinuing subsidies can ignite popular protests, nations must proceed cautiously as they remove those subsidies to protect both their own interests and those of the foreign companies that invest in them.

Downturns naturally reshape customers' needs. While competitors mindlessly cut costs, you should divide your customer base into new segments, whose emerging needs you can serve - and invest in - profitably. You'll increase market share and market capitalization.

A financial services firm's ability to recover from an industry downturn depends not only on how it reacts during the slowdown but also on its state of readiness when the crunch hits. Here's what to do both before and during the unwelcome event.

"What best practice challenges the conventional wisdom about what to do in a downturn?" We put that question to our team of management bloggers at harvardbusiness.org. This article provides an edited selection of their provocative responses.

The promise of clean-energy technologies makes this renowned venture capitalist optimistic about the world's economic future. He foresees many "cleantech" successes that will pave the way to better times.

In 2004, Fiat was a laughingstock. It seemed that whenever you opened a newspaper in Italy, there was another embarrassing story: Fiat had lost more money; a new car had flopped; a strike was on somewhere. The company had gone through four CEOs in three years. Then Sergio Marchionne, an industry outsider, came on board. Today, Fiat's bottom line is solidly in the black and the automaker's latest car, the Cinquecento, is the talk of the industry. In this article, Marchionne describes how he changed the way the company was run. He abandoned the "great man" model of leadership that had long characterized Fiat and created a culture where everyone is expected to lead. The CEO details how he made four particularly effective improvements. First, he searched the company for hidden leadership potential - such as people far from headquarters and young talent in marketing and other functions that hadn't been considered high-potential career paths. Once Marchionne found those potential leaders, he engaged with them in myriad ways - such as through formal performance assessments, informal conversations, and text messages - demonstrating his commitment to them and improving the corporate culture. Second, he set ambitious goals and actively guided managers toward achieving them, in part by challenging long-held assumptions. The time to market for the Cinquecento was whittled down from four years to just 18 months once engineers and designers started questioning and streamlining their processes. Third, he pushed the organization to be less inward-looking, adopting benchmarks from Apple, for instance, and hiring people from outside the car industry. And fourth, he showed respect for Fiat's employees by making adjustments - such as opening kindergartens and grocery stores near plants - to help them cope with work/life balance.