Winter 2021 Articles

Leadership: Science, Art, or Craft? What is the best way to develop leaders? These questions are vital to the way leaders see themselves, enact their roles, and run their organizations. They present a range of choices to a CEO who needs to develop young leaders in order to grow a business. Philip Mirvis, Karen Ayas, and CEO Jason Grenfell-Gardner address this question by describing a novel approach to developing effective leaders.

Karol Wasylyshyn and Raj Gupta provide an in-depth look at a long-term leadership development process at Rohm and Haas that was dubbed “one of the best CEO universities” in the world. On a deeper level, they provoke reflection on the value of connecting holistically with high potential employees and on how, in doing so, we can maximize both human potential and business growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us lessons that can guide key decision makers in both the private and public sectors toward slowing climate change by reducing CO ₂ emissions now. Howard Kunreuther and Paul Slovic explain how decision makers can design a risk management strategy that heeds the advice of experts and addresses the cognitive biases which obstruct effective action.

The emergence of the Internet has profoundly affected our existence and the world we live in. Rooted in the efforts of a small group of people who had a vision and performed the intense labor necessary to realize it, the Internet has grown into a technological movement born of the collaborations of its contributors. One of those essential early figures in the Internet's history is Leonard Kleinrock. Morten Bay describes Kleinrock's remarkable life and career as a co-creator of one of the greatest inventions in human history.

How do companies translate their strategy into operational actions that support it? Strategists use a different language than operational workers, and often the statements of the CEO have little connection with what the employees do. Christoph Loch, Stylianos Kavadias, and B. C. Yang suggest a tool that can help companies to align their employees’ actions with strategies, clearly explain that alignment, and encourage innovation from the bottom up and collaboration between departments, all in a way that can be completely customized to the company’s strategy.

When navigating the uncertainties of digital technologies, vigilant firms gain an edge by paying close attention to what is happening on their periphery and fostering organizational agility, so they are ready to act when the time is right. George Day and Paul Schoemaker examine three key principles that underpin organizational vigilance and show how Adobe's leaders used them to great effect.

The consensus in social psychology is that monetary incentives for performance have a detrimental impact on individual performance. Yes, under certain specific and limited conditions, rewards can reduce performance. Yet pay for performance schemes are ubiquitous. How can we resolve this divergence between theoretical recommendations and observed practices? Nirmalya Kumar and Madan Pillutla recommend solving the problem by designing smarter incentives that avoid these detrimental effects.

What is capitalism? Is it the greatest source of prosperity and freedom the world has ever seen or a menace on the verge of destroying the planet and our society? Rebecca Henderson argues that capitalism is the only solution to the massive problems that we face and explores the ways in which the private sector can help to reimagine capitalism so that it works for everyone.

Yossi Sheffi,Massachusetts Institute of Technology Zadie Smith, the celebrated English novelist, is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “people who believe in fundamental...

Conversations about race in the workplace have long been silenced. Recently, though, leaders have begun to fervently embrace such conversations. Drawing upon academic research, Stephanie Creary provides a framework for having difficult conversations about race in US workplaces.