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Recent research suggests that how new business ideas are presented may matter more than the quality of the ideas themselves.

When the author agreed to accept the top job at UPS, the global shipping service, in late winter of 2019, she expected to steer the company toward a brighter future. She had no idea that she would have to do it during a global pandemic that made her organization an essential service but kept most people at home and pushed demand for shipped goods to holiday levels year-round. When she officially took over, in June 2020, she gathered her top team to decide on the principles to which they would hold fast during this crisis--including integrity, efficiency, constant learning and improvement, and a strong focus on both customers and employees. Among their top priorities were maintaining their brand relevance, keeping their balance sheet and credit rating solid, protecting their dual-class ownership structure, and continuing to pay a dividend. The organization divested from some businesses and invested in others, which has led over the past year to impressive growth, a happier customer base, and a more engaged workforce.

Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is chaotic, random, and unmanageable. But that view is flawed, the authors argue. Breakthroughs can be systematically generated using a process modeled on the principles that drive evolution in nature: "variance generation," which creates a variety of life-forms; and "selection pressure" to select those that can best survive in a given environment. Flagship Pioneering, the venture-creation firm behind Moderna Therapeutics and one of the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines in the United States, uses such an approach. It has successfully launched more than 100 life-sciences businesses. Its process, called "emergent discovery," is a rigorous set of activities including prospecting for ideas in novel spaces; developing speculative conjectures; and relentlessly questioning hypotheses.

More and more companies are relying on pricing algorithms to maximize profits. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning enables real-time price adjustments based on supply and demand, competitors' activities, delivery schedules, and so forth. But constant price shifts have a downside: They may trigger unfavorable perceptions of a firm's offerings and its brand. It's vital, therefore, to understand and manage the signals being sent by the algorithms. The authors offer real-world examples of companies that have succeeded in this endeavor and others that have not. And they recommend four steps to avoid harm: Determine an appropriate use case for algorithmic pricing and explain its benefits to customers; designate an owner to supervise and be accountable for the system; set and monitor guardrails, both to protect against wild surges and to learn how price changes affect all aspects of the organization; and override the algorithms when necessary.

The Economist opened 2021 with a cover story headlined "Why Retailers Everywhere Should Look to China." It's not hard to see why. China is both a large and a fast-growing retail market--worth about $5 trillion in 2020--and highly digitized. And the pandemic has made digital every retailer's strategic priority. The authors draw from their research on Chinese retailers to explain five lessons that Western companies can learn from China as they develop their own digital market offerings: 1) Create single entry points where customers can access all their potential purchases. 2) Embed digital evaluation in the customer journey. 3) Don't think of sales as isolated events. 4) Rethink the logistical fundamentals. 5) Always stay close to the customer.

Although power is essential to taking charge and driving change, it makes leaders vulnerable to two traps that can not only erode their own effectiveness but also undermine their team's. Hubris--the excessive pride and self-confidence that can come with power--causes people to greatly overestimate their own abilities, while self-focus makes them less attentive to subordinates, diminishing their ability to lead successfully. The authors offer strategies for recognizing and avoiding these pitfalls. They outline how to cultivate humility and empathy as antidotes to hubris and self-focus, through actions such as establishing channels for honest input, creating visible reminders that success is fleeting, immersing oneself in other people's jobs and experiences, and embedding interdependence in organizational systems. A balanced relationship with power can seldom be developed overnight, but in time, leaders who follow this advice will boost their own effectiveness and facilitate exceptional performance from their teams.

For years public concern about technological risk has focused on the misuse of personal data. But as firms embed more and more artificial intelligence in products and processes, attention is shifting to the potential for bad or biased decisions by algorithms--particularly the complex, evolving kind that diagnose cancers, drive cars, or approve loans. Inevitably, many governments will feel regulation is essential to protect consumers from that risk. This article explains the moves regulators are most likely to make and the three main challenges businesses need to consider as they adopt and integrate AI. The first is ensuring fairness. That requires evaluating the impact of AI outcomes on people's lives, whether decisions are mechanical or subjective, and how equitably the AI operates across varying markets. The second is transparency. Regulators are very likely to require firms to explain how the software makes decisions, but that often isn't easy to unwind. The third is figuring out how to manage algorithms that learn and adapt; while they may be more accurate, they also can evolve in a dangerous or discriminatory way. Though AI offers businesses great value, it also increases their strategic risk. Companies need to take an active role in writing the rulebook for algorithms.

To become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, many companies have turned to unconscious bias (UB) training. By raising awareness of the mental shortcuts that lead to snap judgment--often based on race and gender--about people's talents or character, it strives to make hiring and promotion fairer and improve interactions with customers and among colleagues. But most UB training is ineffective, research shows. The problem is, increasing awareness is not enough--and can even backfire--because sending the message that bias is involuntary and widespread may make it seem unavoidable. UB training that gets results, in contrast, teaches attendees to manage their biases, practice new behaviors, and track their progress. It gives them information that contradicts stereotypes and allows them to connect with colleagues whose experiences are different from theirs. And it's not a onetime session; it entails a longer journey and structural organizational changes. In this article the authors describe how rigorous UB programs at Microsoft, Starbucks, and other organizations help employees overcome denial and act on their awareness, develop the empathy that combats bias, diversify their networks, and commit to improvement.

Both practically and morally, corporate leaders can no longer sit on the sidelines of major societal shifts or treat human and planetary issues as "someone else's problem." For their own good, they must play an active role in addressing our biggest shared challenges. The economy won't thrive unless people and the planet are thriving. In this bold manifesto, consultant and author Andrew Winston and former Unilever CEO Paul Polman describe their vision of a "net positive" company--one that grows by helping the world flourish. Drawing on examples from Unilever and other leading companies, they outline four critical paths businesses can take to prosper today and win in the future. They can operate first in service of multiple stakeholders--which then benefits investors (as opposed to putting shareholders above all others); take full ownership of all company impacts; embrace deep partnerships, even with critics; and tackle systemic challenges by rethinking advocacy and the relationship with governments. No company has yet reached the ambitious goal of becoming net positive. But a growing number have begun the journey--unlocking greater value for their businesses while helping solve larger problems for the benefit of all.

Conventional wisdom says it takes three to five years and tens of millions of dollars to digitize a corporation's supply chain. However, a few companies have reaped major benefits--including higher revenue and customer retention--with a faster, cheaper approach. It involves assembling available data; using analytics to understand and predict customers' and suppliers' behavior and optimize inventory, production, and procurement; and adding automation to revamp or introduce processes. The transformation requires three main initiatives: replacing consensus forecasts with one unified view of demand, changing one-size-fits-all supply strategies to segmented ones, and creating a plan to continually balance supply and demand and manage deviations or disruptions.

When people feel that their career progress is frustratingly slow or has sputtered out, they can become dangerously demoralized. Without a clear understanding of what constitutes a reasonable pace for advancement or why peers are outachieving them, they write off promising paths, downscale their ambitions, or quit altogether. But often these people are simply not giving themselves enough time to succeed. They need to cultivate "strategic patience." What does that entail? Five things: doing research on what it realistically takes to achieve their goals; recognizing "raindrops," or small wins that are early indicators of success; abandoning harmful social comparisons and instead leveraging their relationships in a positive way; appreciating how far they've come rather than continually moving the goalposts; and understanding that it's OK for their career goals to shift as long as they keep moving in the right direction.

The future of shopping in the post-covid world.

The renowned tennis player reflects on founding the Women's Tennis Association Tour, being outed as gay, her work to make tennis diverse, and more.

Navigating the chaos that characterizes periods of rapid change demands tools that prepare an organization for an uncertain future. So says the founder of the Institute for the Future, who shares several 'tools of the trade' that she uses with clients to help them navigate uncertainty. Leaders must also know the difference between trends and fads, and weak and strong signals. Her 'tools of the trade' are invaluable because, as she notes, "Accounting data, competitor intelligence and consumer research covering near-term needs can be accurate and useful in the present, but they are often unreliable predictors of the future."

"Power is misunderstood." Thus begins the new book from management professors Tiziana Casciaro (Rotman School of Management) and Julie Battilana (Harvard). In this interview, co-author Casciaro shares insights from the book, including the fact that the most effective changemakers in an organization are not necessarily the people at the top; and that power is not intrinsically good or bad. She provides a four-element definition of power and shares key principles of the authors' framework for shifting the balance of power-a critical undertaking in a world beset by inequality. Armed with this understanding of how power works, she promises that we have a chance to live on this planet in harmony.

As businesses the world over begin to recover from the pandemic, many are hoping to see a new and better economic model emerge that is both socially inclusive and ecologically virtuous. Acclaimed management thinker Navi Radjou argues that transitioning from a deleterious economic system to a virtuous one will require something from each and every one of us: a major shift in our consciousness. After defining 'the seven chakras', he shares his new-to-the-world balanced representation of the chakras, with 'heart' (love and compassion) at the center. In the end, he makes it clear that we cannot reinvent our economy without first reinventing ourselves.

The global pandemic has been brutal to employees working in certain industries. The authors-consultants with the Boston Consulting Group and The Network-show how disruption to professional lives and incomes has had many questioning what type of work they will do in the future. Indeed, in their survey, almost seven in ten people said they are open to switching to completely different job roles. The authors show that automation, new careers that people favour and individual learning habits have implications for organizations everywhere. They outline six of them and warn that embracing these principles could become a key point of differentiation for companies seeking to attract and retain the best talent.

Innovators who experiment solely to validate their idea are making a dangerous mistake, and the authors point to the inventor of the Segway as a prime example. The purpose of experimentation should always be twofold, they say: to test an assumption and learn from the testing, so you can decide whether to persevere, pivot-or pull out. They show how 'radical innovators' use experiments to validate and investigate. Their investigation is a more open-ended form of experimentation, designed to illuminate overlooked factors or preferences. Most importantly, it leaves room for unexpected insights to emerge along the journey to product launch.

The past two decades have seen a resurgence of interest in applied Behavioural Science, with the popularization of concepts like nudging and choice architecture. The result: Policymakers across the globe have begun applying techniques from the social sciences to design programs and policies that go with the grain of human psychology. So, the authors ask, why have so few businesses-in particular, financial firms-embraced behavioural insights? They show what it looks like to put a 'behavioural lens' on a common business practice like customer segmentation; describe the critical role of context in applying behavioural insights; and share key principles for designing a compelling user experience.

In a wide-ranging interview, economist and board member (3M, Chevron) Dambisa Moyo describes how globalization has unravelled in recent years, but argues that, led by China, it must ramp back up. The economic growth it enables is far too important for countries around the world. Despite the rocky road ahead, she believes fortunes will still be made and discusses three particular opportunities for investors. Most importantly, she argues that corporations must now take on many of the challenges traditionally handled by governments, such as inequality and climate change. This is not a choice, she warns: Those who fail to do so will cease to exist.