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Identifying the next big thing is often treated as an exercise in analyzing trends. But that's misleading. By the time a trend is established, any opportunities it presents have probably been captured by competitors. And although a company may need to reflect trends in its business plans, that may mean catching up with rivals rather than gaining a competitive edge. To take advantage of emerging trends, companies must identify them when they are embryonic--not purely speculative, but not yet named or widely known. At that stage the signs will be merely anomalies: weak signals that are in some way surprising but not entirely clear in scope or import. Most anomalies don't become meaningful trends, of course. But some do--and the businesses that identify and interpret them early will steal a march on the competition. The authors present a process for spotting anomalies that have the potential to drive a business, but the process isn't mechanical: Anomaly-driven strategy requires being open to unexpected ideas that may overturn long-held assumptions. Only if you are willing to look at your business from the outside in, question your existing models, and embrace ambiguity will you be able to identify the diamonds hiding in the data.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have been around in various forms for decades, but during the past two years they've taken off in the United States. In 2019, 59 were created, with $13 billion invested; in 2020, 247 were created, with $80 billion invested; and in the first quarter of 2021 alone, 295 were created, with $96 billion invested. In 2020, SPACs accounted for more than 50% of new publicly listed U.S. companies. SPACs are publicly traded corporations formed with the sole purpose of effecting a merger with a privately held business to enable it to go public. Compared with traditional IPOs, SPACs often offer targets higher valuations, greater speed to capital, lower fees, and fewer regulatory demands. Despite the investor euphoria, however, not all SPACs will find high-performing targets, and some will fail. Many investors will lose money. As an investment option they have improved dramatically, especially over the past year, but the market remains volatile. More changes are sure to come, which means that sponsors, investors, and targets must keep informed and vigilant. This article is not a blanket endorsement of SPACs. It is simply a guide for businesspeople considering a move into this rapidly evolving (and for many, unfamiliar) territory.

To create long-term value, corporate boards must focus on managing talent, strategy, and risk. But they also have to satisfy their shareholders, who often have competing demands. Activists, for example, might press for short-term profits, while index funds and other long-term shareholders are more concerned with the company's longevity. Drawing on years of work with boards, top executives, and the investment community and on interviews with the heads of public and private companies and investment firms, the authors offer a playbook for managing stakeholder relationships productively. They argue that regular, open communication is key; whether aligned with or hostile to the board's long-term objectives, investors often have valuable information about a company and its competitors and can be a source of fresh ideas. The authors provide guidance on how and when to meet with investors, how to get useful feedback, how to understand what each type of investor is looking for, and how to anticipate and ward off activist attacks. Although the advice is directed at board members, the insights will be valuable to CEOs, other members of the senior management team, and large shareholders as well.

Chicanery is common in the start-up world: With so much at stake, founders are apt to exaggerate, obfuscate, and otherwise stretch the truth when courting investors and other important stakeholders. Such deception locks up resources by prolonging the life of doomed ventures and makes it hard for VCs and employees to know where best to invest their money or labor. It also exacts a personal toll on founders themselves. The authors take a multidisciplinary approach to the problem. They argue that common justifications for such deception--the need to protect investors and employees, and the belief that all entrepreneurs engage in it--do not stand up to scrutiny. And they offer several pieces of advice to founders, drawn from moral philosophy: Dream big, but be forthcoming and honest about the evidence and assumptions underpinning your vision. And surround yourself with virtuous people who will help you be your best self.

The former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, whose life journey began in a Manhattan tenement, is an outspoken champion of inclusive capitalism and racial equity--themes that animate her just-published memoir, "Where You Are Is Not Who You Are." In this conversation with HBR's editor in chief, she talks about good leadership in a multistakeholder world, income inequality, battling an activist investor, how being both Black and female affected her career trajectory, and more.

Brain scans are showing us in new detail exactly what entices readers. Scientists can see a group of midbrain neurons--the "reward circuit"--light up as people respond to everything from a simple metaphor to an unexpected story twist. The big takeaway? Whether you're crafting an email to a colleague or an important report for the board, you can write in a way that delights readers on a primal level, releasing pleasure chemicals in their brains. Bill Birchard is an author and writing coach who's worked with many successful businesspeople. He's drawn on that experience and his review of the scientific literature to identify eight features of satisfying writing: simplicity, specificity, surprise, stirring language, seductiveness, smart ideas, social content, and storytelling. In this article, he shares tips for using those eight S's to captivate readers and help your message stick.

Popular notions about founders are often wrong, as demonstrated by five new books: "Amazon Unbound," by Brad Stone; "The Cult of We," by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell; "Tencent," by Wu Xiaobo; "Super Founders," by Ali Tamaseb; and "The New Builders," by Seth Levine and Elizabeth MacBride.

The former top editor of the Boston Globe and the Washington Post talks about the Globe's investigation of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, attacks on the Post by President Trump, truth as a casualty of political polarization, and more.

Too much competition diminishes motivation and creativity.

An analysis of 1,172 public companies over 19 years reveals that the more uncommon a leader's given name is, the more his or her strategy deviates from the industry norm.

Organizations can attempt to improve strategy implementation by developing strategy execution maps, which aim to translate strategic objectives into specific activities and provide sufficient clarity to inform employees' decisions and actions. However, managers often encounter pitfalls, both in framing the process and in developing maps. This article suggests how to overcome these pitfalls, describes several applications of causal maps to further enhance strategy execution, and illustrates strategy execution maps for organizations with distinctive strategies.

Working remotely during the pandemic weakened social capital networks within organizations, making it harder for employees to maintain the same high level of productivity and for new employees to get up to speed. When thinking about returning to in-person work, leaders can help build those important ties by strategically addressing three areas: strengthening weak ties, building social capital in new teams, and onboarding employees.

Leaders will need to offer a compelling rationale for why post-pandemic work models that include some degree of in-person collaboration are not only good for the company but also valuable for employees. The authors explain how organizational network analysis a methodology that maps employees' working relationships can help guide leaders' return-to-office decisions and show employees how hybrid work can improve their own effectiveness.

A monolithic, highly interdependent organization can become a modular one by turning traditional business processes whether financial, legal, or HR-related into microservices with application programming interfaces. APIs can help codify interactions among departments, reduce ad hoc communication, and minimize coordination complexity.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated long-running retail profitability issues many of which have been plaguing the sector since the early 2000s. New research from Deloitte sheds light on the current consumer-to-business paradigm, the direction in which customer experience trends are headed, and what retailers can do to ensure their sustained success.

Virtual working became the norm for most organizations since March 2020, and it brings well-recognized challenges. But we know little about the impact of virtual working on managerial behavior. This article presents the results of three surveys conducted before and during lockdown to understand what changed. It shows how managers became more blinkered: turning inward, becoming task-focused at the expense of relationship-building, and finding few opportunities to develop new skills. The article offers practical suggestions for how the evolution of managerial work might be accelerated, so that managers can become more effective in this changing environment.

Partnering with startups is an important way by which large multinational corporations (MNCs) pursue open innovation. This article sheds light on distinctive startup partnering strategies across multiple locations. These vary in terms of institutional strength (advanced vs. emerging markets) and local reputation in a given sector (cluster vs. non-cluster). Different partnering strategies are appropriate for each location type: a template-based or purpose-built approach (in clusters vs. non-clusters, respectively), and a facilitative or directive approach (in advanced vs. emerging markets, respectively).

When hackathons are held virtually, people from a variety of circumstances have an opportunity to participate. But facilitating such events entirely online requires an organizational and mindset shift for making the collaboration work, with greater emphasis on steps such as onboarding and building in fun. Recent hackathons around COVID-19 offer insights into how to make remote collaboration succeed with participants who have diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and experience with technology.

Risk reporting is often unconnected with business strategy and performance, and is considered merely as a matter of compliance, which defeats the purpose of risk management. This article describes four best practices of companies that have improved their risk reporting by strengthening the vertical and horizontal communication of risks, reporting near misses, and communicating risk digitally through apps. Better risk reporting involves simplification and incentivization. It enables organizations to improve risk management and risk culture overall.

Vigilant organizations excel at seeing looming threats and embryonic opportunities sooner than rivals, which prepares them to act faster when needed. Four drivers distinguish vigilant from vulnerable organizations, which can be used to design a roadmap to improve organizational acuity and preparedness. The fulcrum of these changes rests with the leadership team by demonstrating a strong commitment to vigilance at all levels, and reinforcing this by making targeted investments in foresight capabilities. These strategic moves also need to be supported by corresponding changes in the strategy-making process and by ensuring accountability and coordination of vigilance activities throughout the enterprise.