10 of Our Favorite MIT SMR Reader Comments This Year

Tapping into the business value of design

Design, whether it’s of products or experiences, is not only about aesthetics but also about specific actions taken to boost revenues and customer engagement.
Tapping into the business value of design

Reimagining global ties: How China and the world can win together

Unraveling links between China and the world could increase risks in the global economy; reimagining ties could drive global growth for all.
Reimagining global ties: How China and the world can win together

What Singles Day can tell us about how retail is changing in China

Singles Day is the largest single-day sales event globally, but new trends are changing what it means inside and outside of China.
What Singles Day can tell us about how retail is changing in China

Economic Conditions Snapshot, December 2018: McKinsey Global Survey results

Executives report the least-positive views on economic conditions—at home and in the world economy—that they have all year.
Economic Conditions Snapshot, December 2018: McKinsey Global Survey results

What can we expect in China in 2019?

The next stages of China’s transition away from economic equilibrium with the United States will likely create volatility in market growth and require conservatism in some areas and bold moves in others.
What can we expect in China in 2019?

IBM’s New Battle in the Cloud

The Problem With Big Data

How to select and develop individuals for successful agile teams: A practical guide

What personality traits and values help agile teams bloom? Discover ways to identify these when recruiting and coaching your people.
How to select and develop individuals for successful agile teams: A practical guide

The seven make-or-break API challenges CIOs need to address

Application programming interfaces hold great promise for tech modernization—if CIOs develop a coherent strategy in advance.
The seven make-or-break API challenges CIOs need to address

How to serve today’s digital traveler

Travel went digital a long time ago, but the digital customer isn’t standing still.
How to serve today’s digital traveler

Unlocking the Value of Augmented Reality Data

Perspectives on CCAR: Preparing for 2019 amid expectations of regulatory relief

Focusing on these six themes will help institutions take into account potential for regulatory relief, realistic expectations for CCAR 2019, and the business benefits of thoughtful stress testing.
Perspectives on CCAR: Preparing for 2019 amid expectations of regulatory relief

Five Fifty: Year end 2018

It's time for your annual review. Here's what the Five Fifty did to support your success. 
Five Fifty: Year end 2018

The Top MIT SMR Articles of 2018

Driving value from fleet telematics

Connected vehicles don’t always deliver. Often the weak link isn’t in the technology—it’s in the organization.
Driving value from fleet telematics

Positioning for growth in the fast-changing lubes market

Given the threat of disruptive change in the lubes market, companies need to plan competitive strategies quickly and carefully, with a focus on extending their offerings beyond the core products.
Positioning for growth in the fast-changing lubes market

Preparing millennials for the age of automation

Overall, about 30% of the time spent in most occupations could be technically automated-but in only about 5% of occupations are nearly all activities automatable, writes Anu Madgavkar in Live Mint.
Preparing millennials for the age of automation

Machine learning and therapeutics 2.0: Avoiding hype, realizing potential

Six levers can help healthcare and pharma players achieve better outcomes when using machine learning.
Machine learning and therapeutics 2.0: Avoiding hype, realizing potential

Synergy and disruption: Ten trends shaping fintech

As the fintech landscape continues to evolve, a look at the newest developments from across the globe.
Synergy and disruption: Ten trends shaping fintech

Reserve a seat—the future of mobility is arriving early

What happened in 2018, and what can we expect in 2019?
Reserve a seat—the future of mobility is arriving early

The journey to a new tomorrow: A conversation with Patrick Conway, MD, President and CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina

Patrick Conway, MD, President and CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina shares his perspective on embracing challenges and disruptions in healthcare, improving the patient experience, and preparing for the future with Celia Huber, Senior Partner, McKinsey and Company in a June 2018 conversation.
The journey to a new tomorrow: A conversation with Patrick Conway, MD, President and CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina

Right product, right time, right location: Quantifying the semiconductor supply chain

Problems along the semiconductor supply chain are difficult to diagnose. A new metric can help companies pinpoint performance issues.
Right product, right time, right location: Quantifying the semiconductor supply chain

Growing faster than the market: Three questions the C-suite should ask

Leaders who are most successful at driving growth in their organizations are deliberate, persistent, and disciplined in the way they go about it.
Growing faster than the market: Three questions the C-suite should ask

Don’t Let Marketing Personalization Kill Your Brand

Putting Artificial Intelligence to Work

Finding talent and speed to transform a credit-card company into a digital native

A successful digital transformation means a lot more than new technology. You need to go all in, for the long haul.
Finding talent and speed to transform a credit-card company into a digital native

Digital insurance in 2018: Driving real impact with digital and analytics

Highlights from articles this year show the progress that has been made in reinventing the insurance landscape—and suggest more disruption to come.
Digital insurance in 2018: Driving real impact with digital and analytics

McKinsey Quarterly 2018 Number 4: Overview and full issue

This issue of the Quarterly, available here as a PDF download, looks at how data, technologies, and design are changing the DNA of today’s companies; why it’s essential to have a bold, agile digital strategy; and how to help your employees find more meaning in their work.
McKinsey Quarterly 2018 Number 4: Overview and full issue

Realigning global support-function footprints in a digital world

How can organizations ensure their global services footprints are ready for the new world of digitization, complexity, and uncertainty?
Realigning global support-function footprints in a digital world

From understanding to action: Our top reads from 2018

This collection of some of our most-read articles of the year explores the many ways that organizations must progress to capture value from advanced technologies.
From understanding to action: Our top reads from 2018

Improving patient adherence through data-driven insights

When patients fail to follow prescribed medical regimens, outcomes suffer. A McKinsey study points to areas pharmaceutical companies can address to combat this long-standing industry issue.
Improving patient adherence through data-driven insights

Powerful pricing: The next frontier in apparel and fashion advanced analytics

Leading apparel retailers are embracing advanced analytics and blending intuition with science to price smarter.
Powerful pricing: The next frontier in apparel and fashion advanced analytics

Talent and technology in Africa today

African Leadership Academy cofounder Fred Swaniker explains why companies should invest in people and harness technology to take on the continent’s big challenges.
Talent and technology in Africa today

Building a one-stop shop for government services in Australia

Service New South Wales, a website for citizen services, was built like a start-up within the government, in a rapid, iterative process sharply focused on customer satisfaction.
Building a one-stop shop for government services in Australia

Insights into the 2019 individual exchange market

This analysis reflects carrier participation, pricing, and plan type trends for the 2019 individual exchange open enrollment period. Findings are across 50 states and DC.
Insights into the 2019 individual exchange market

The Machine Learning Race Is Really a Data Race

The Art of Balancing Autonomy and Control

Testing the resilience of Europe’s inclusive growth model

The combination of six global megatrends is increasing the stress on Europe’s inclusive growth and the EU social contract.
Testing the resilience of Europe’s inclusive growth model

Learning from digital threats

Incumbent companies are finding they have strong hands to play as competition intensifies.
Learning from digital threats

How plastics waste recycling could transform the chemical industry

Reusing plastics waste could become an important driver of profitability for chemical companies. Incumbent players need to make the right moves now to tap this opportunity.
How plastics waste recycling could transform the chemical industry

Taking digital transformation to the limits at Koç Holding

The CEO and HR director of Turkey’s largest industrial conglomerate describe how a leadership-development program is preparing the company for a digital future—and shaking up the status quo.
Taking digital transformation to the limits at Koç Holding

A next-generation operating model for source-to-pay

A next-generation procurement operating model that capitalizes on advances in digital, data, and analytics delivers new levels of performance across the value-creation lifecycle.
A next-generation operating model for source-to-pay

Corporate and investment banking in Mexico: Delivering value through new models

Mexico is among the most profitable markets for corporate and investment banks, and prospects are strong. However, the terms of success are changing.
Corporate and investment banking in Mexico: Delivering value through new models

The transformation of global acquiring

The traditional acquirer processing model is destined to become commoditized and less profitable. Established firms will need to choose from among set of distinct strategies in order to compete.
The transformation of global acquiring

How to Get Others to Adopt Your Recommendation

An Executive Guide to the Winter 2019 Issue

Grow Faster by Changing Your Innovation Narrative

George S. Day and Gregory P. Shea (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)

Companies aspiring to be organic-growth leaders in their industries have abundant advice to follow. They can emulate the practices of giants like Amazon, Starbucks, and 3M, and adopt a host of popular innovation prescriptions — use design thinking, act more like a lean startup, cocreate with customers, and so on. Though much of this well-meant advice has its merits, it often leads to patchwork interventions with disappointing results.

It’s better to start with a coherent, affirming narrative about how the business is equipped to innovate for growth. Of course, once that message is in place, the company must reinforce it with action.

The authors tested 18 widely touted levers that companies could pull to support their innovation narratives and identified the four that organic growth leaders use most to stay ahead of competitors: (1) investing in innovation talent, (2) encouraging prudent risk-taking, (3) adopting a customer-centric innovation process, and (4) aligning metrics and incentives with innovation activity.

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Key Words for Digital Transformation

Shantanu Narayen (Adobe), interviewed by Paul Michelman (MIT SMR)

By many rights, one might have expected to find Adobe on the register of companies disrupted by digital transformation. And yet the 35-year-old software developer has persevered — even excelled — by embracing the very technological forces (think cloud computing, mobile technology, platforms, IoT) that could well have been the harbingers of demise for a legacy producer of packaged software designed for the desktop.

In conversations that took place via videoconference and email, MIT Sloan Management Review editor in chief Paul Michelman asked Adobe chairman and CEO Shantanu Narayen to share his thoughts on several key words related to Adobe’s journey: communication, artificial intelligence, platforms, expectations, and uncertainty.

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The Promise of Targeted Innovation

Marcel Corstjens (INSEAD), Gregory S. Carpenter (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University), and Tushmit M. Hasan (University of Texas)

The largest consumer goods companies each spend more than $1 billion annually on R&D. What have they gotten in return for their hefty outlays? On average, virtually nothing from a sales perspective. An industry analysis found that the sector’s biggest R&D spenders saw no appreciable impact on revenue. That’s troubling for companies whose growth has plateaued over the past five years. At the company level, however, the picture is more nuanced: Even though companies that spent heavily on R&D saw no measurable impact on sales, some outfits that focused on iterative improvements to products or services showed a significant positive correlation. Conventional management wisdom holds that across sectors, R&D productivity depends on industrial might. In the consumer products world, at least, the authors’ analysis suggests that’s not the case. This article explains why and provides guidance on how big spenders can improve their returns.

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Bill It, Kill It, or Keep It Free?

Wolfgang Ulaga (INSEAD) and Stefan Michel (IMD)

In tough times, companies hunt for new sources of growth. Yet in doing so, many overlook opportunities to generate sales from services they’re already giving customers for free. Though it sometimes makes sense to stick with a free model, companies too often make that the default option. This article provides a framework for transitioning from free to fee. The research behind it focuses on B2B companies, but the takeaways also apply to B2C companies. The framework includes three steps: (1) Take stock of all the services you give away, (2) build action plans for pricing and selling services you’ve decided shouldn’t be free, and (3) manage the resistance to change, whether internally or from customers and distributors.

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The Truth About Behavioral Change

Damon Centola (University of Pennsylvania)

People tend to assume that Twitter adoption spread virally through the internet, thanks to social contacts connected by weak ties and long bridges. That narrative is easy to grasp. Unfortunately, it is also inaccurate. Research shows that Twitter’s growth pattern was surprisingly geographic. Friends and neighbors adopted the technology from one another. It spread locally, like a grassroots social movement. The real story of Twitter’s success illustrates how social networks promote behavioral change. Unlike knowledge sharing, which is a simple contagion that spreads quickly, behavioral change is a complex contagion, which requires reinforcing ties and wide bridges to spread. This article, adapted from the author’s book How Behavior Spreads, explores these concepts.

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A New Playbook for Diversified Companies

Ulrich Pidun (BCG), Ansgar Richter (Surrey Business School, University of Surrey), Monika Schommer (BookingGo), and Amit Karna (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad)

Scholars have argued for years that large amounts of diversification hurt performance and value creation. But the authors’ research shows that high levels of diversification aren’t necessarily bad for performance and that diversified firms aren’t a dying breed.

In recent years, the risk of value-destroying behavior seems to have been reduced by new trends such as increased efficiency of capital markets, a stronger focus on corporate governance, and improved transparency and steering due to advances in information and communication technology. Diversified companies tend to reap such rewards when they limit the number of business models in the portfolio and support them with a strong, cohesive operating model; tailor the corporate parenting strategy to the portfolio; and allocate resources on the basis of clear portfolio roles.

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Think Critically About the Wisdom of Experts

Andrew A. King (Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College)

Expert analysis informs the decisions we make as managers and in our lives. Almost daily, however, some expert’s previous certainty is discredited by new analysis. So how should we treat the next piece of advice we get?

Philosophers of science generally recommend that we trust what we hear from well-credentialed people. But we can and should think critically about what we read and hear. In particular: Don’t hesitate to challenge experts. When an expert links a cause to a supposed effect, ask whether it’s a story to make sense of the past or a theory to forecast the future. Unearth assumptions that experts have used to get from the raw data to a set of conclusions. Identify alternative explanations for a particular conclusion, and ask why each one is not a better answer.

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How Should Companies Talk to Customers Online?

Brent McFerran (Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University), Sarah G. Moore (University of Alberta School of Business), and Grant Packard (Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University)

More people are engaging with customer service through digital channels, including websites, email, texts, live chat, and social media. Despite the convenience and speed of such interactions, they lack some of the most important aspects of off-line customer service. For example, nonverbal expressions and gestures can signal engagement, and tone of voice can convey empathy and focus. Over time, these interpersonal touches help companies build and sustain relationships with customers. The authors explain how simple shifts in language can enhance customer satisfaction and purchase behavior.

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Deriving Value From Conversations About Your Brand

Brad Fay (Engagement Labs), Ed Keller (Engagement Labs), Rick Larkin (Engagement Labs), and Koen Pauwels (D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University)

In studying more than 500 leading consumer brands, the authors found that there was little correlation between what consumers said about brands online and what they said off-line, even though both can have big effects on a company’s sales. The authors asked consumers to recall the product and service categories and brands they talked about the day before, then compared the two types of conversations. Based on their analysis, the authors concluded that managers need to avoid relying solely on social media to represent the ecosystem that affects brand success.

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Driving Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Thijs H.J. Geradts (Erasmus University and Nyenrode Business Universiteit) and Nancy M.P. Bocken (Lund University and Delft University of Technology)

Faced with mounting pressure from governments, investors, and employees to be more aware of the environmental and social impacts of business activities, companies are searching for ways to do things differently while also seeking opportunities for growth. As a result, many are encouraging their employees to develop new products, services, or business models that create value for both the company and society. To learn what leading companies are doing to address that challenge, the authors conducted interviews with managers at seven multinational companies recognized for their sustainability activities.

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The Public Sector Can Teach Us a Lot About Digitizing Customer Service

Alireza Nili, Alistair Barros, and Mary Tate (Queensland University of Technology)

Digital customer service agents — also known as virtual assistants, chatbots, or softbots — are poised to transform customer service over the next decade. Most companies that use digital agents rely on them to sift through incoming customer requests and to process the most straightforward issues. More complex issues get passed along to human agents.

But digital agents can actually handle more. Public service agencies in Australia are already using them to handle complex inquiries from citizens regarding services. In most countries, government entities are slower than businesses to adopt new technologies. Companies worldwide stand to learn valuable lessons from these Australian public service agencies.

An Executive Guide to the Winter 2019 Issue

The Uncertain Status of Gig Work

Editor’s note: Elsewhere is a column that highlights ideas from other media platforms we believe are worth your attention.

In the 20th century, it became cheaper for companies in developed countries to employ workers full time than it was for them to find the right people “on demand” for each task that needed doing. But the so-called gig economy has changed that. Today, there are people out there ready and willing to do almost any task: drive you to appointments, bring you a take-out meal, assemble your new Ikea sofa, even clear spiders out of your house. So both individual customers and hiring organizations have just-in-time options aplenty.

As a recent article in The Economist notes, the gig economy is growing, even though many of the jobs may not pay very well. Many workers value the flexibility and income that gig work provides; customers like being able to find people to do things they want done. Still, the extent to which gig workers, typically self-employed individuals, should be afforded the legal rights of employees has yet to be fully resolved in many jurisdictions. Tribunals and courts in England and California have recently ruled in favor of giving gig workers some protections (such as a minimum wage), but decisions in Italy and Australia have gone the other way. “The battle over the gig economy has a long way to run,” The Economist notes, and the outcome of that battle could have implications for both innovation and jobs.

The Distinct Charm of Voice

The number of “smart” speakers connected to the internet and capable of looking up information and performing various tasks is on track to reach an estimated 100 million by the end of 2018. Some analysts expect the number of digital assistants to grow more than 75-fold in the coming years as tech giants like Amazon and Google look for ways to extend voice activation into new areas.

As writer Judith Shulevitz points out in The Atlantic, pursuing voice is a way for the big companies to “colonize space” — to pull appliance and device makers, app developers, and consumers into their ecosystems of products and services. But it’s more than that, too. Amazon’s Alexa, for example, doesn’t simply help people do things they already do (albeit in a different way, “replacing fingers and eyes with mouths and ears”). It also brings technology “closer to our own level” through the highly personal act of conversation, Shulevitz suggests.

The article looks at some of the new research academics and corporate R&D labs are conducting on human speech and the nonverbal aspects of communication. It also explores the question of whether computers will eventually be able to develop something resembling empathy. Today’s smart devices aren’t really hearing us yet. They are “as likely to botch your request as they are to fulfill it,” Shulevitz writes. But over time they will get better.

Frightening if True

We have become all too accustomed to software-based hacks and large-scale data thefts — despite increasing efforts by companies to protect themselves. Fortunately, hardware hacks are exceedingly rare. While the potential for damage is staggering, they are much harder to carry out.

So when Bloomberg Businessweek reported in October that Chinese military operatives had somehow planted tiny spy-chips on China-built servers purchased by Apple, Amazon, and more than two dozen other organizations, the shock waves could be felt from Silicon Valley to the Pentagon and the CIA. The article claims that rogue, rice-sized microchips were attached to server motherboards supplied by Supermicro, based in San Jose, California. Once those tiny chips were in place, attackers could gain access to any network that used the compromised servers.

Reporters Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley say the story was based on information provided by 17 unnamed sources, including high-level people at Apple and U.S. security agencies. But basic details have been strongly disputed by Apple, Amazon, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. director of national intelligence, and other news organizations have not been able to confirm the information. Both Apple and Amazon Web Services have asked Bloomberg for a retraction. In the face of these challenges, Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple reports that Bloomberg has committed additional resources to investigating the story.

The Uncertain Status of Gig Work

Artificial Intelligence Brings Out the Worst and the Best in Us

I’ll never forget something that psychologist Daniel Kahneman said a couple of years ago at a people analytics conference. The keynote was largely about how algorithms can reduce “noise” (random, irrelevant factors that cloud our judgment) when we’re rating job candidates and trying to predict people’s performance. About halfway through, Kahneman made a quick, almost offhand comment that really struck me: He said he was “quite worried” about AI’s dark, dystopian possibilities, despite its great potential for good. The better AI becomes at making decisions, the less we’ll need human judgment — and that, he suggested, will threaten the power structure in organizations. Leaders won’t like that, so they’ll resist adopting the technology for their biggest, most important decisions.

That rang true when Kahneman said it, and it still does. It’s consistent with the ongoing human struggle to maintain control in the face of technological advancement, though it’s not one of the unintended consequences we usually think of regarding AI in the workplace. We tend to focus on other risks — amplifying cognitive biases, cannibalizing livelihoods, disrupting businesses. Those concerns are more than justified, but perhaps we have been a bit myopic and have overlooked something that’s as dangerous as relying too heavily on technology or allowing it to run amok: failing to reap its benefits, out of a deep, paradoxically self-destructive desire to keep calling the shots and preserve our status.

It’s an unsettling thought. But two articles in this issue of MIT SMR (and others we’ve recently published) offer useful reminders that there’s reason for optimism, too. As keen as we may be to retain power and its privileges, we also see ourselves as fair, and we want to live up to that self-image. AI is starting to help us in that regard. As Josh Bersin and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic argue in “New Ways to Gauge Talent and Potential” — and as Kahneman himself said at the conference — AI-enabled tools can greatly reduce the role of bias in hiring decisions by screening for traits that affect performance and by disregarding those that don’t, such as the extent to which people look or sound like us. And in “Using Artificial Intelligence to Promote Diversity,” Paul Daugherty, H. James Wilson, and Rumman Chowdhury, too, urge us to hold ourselves to a higher standard of organizational behavior. They call on makers of AI systems to design, train, and refine applications that “ignore data about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other characteristics that aren’t relevant to the decisions at hand.”

Though these articles acknowledge that there’s plenty of room for our darker instincts to assert themselves, they suggest ways to bring us into the light — which feels constructive.

Artificial Intelligence Brings Out the Worst and the Best in Us

Friends or foes: The rise of European aggregators and their impact on traditional insurers

After grappling with aggregators for 20 years, many European insurers have embraced them as an effective way to reach customers. We estimate that today almost 50 percent of online insurance in Europe is sold via aggregators. The implications for insurers are significant.
Friends or foes: The rise of European aggregators and their impact on traditional insurers

Distraction or disruption? Autonomous trucks gain ground in US logistics

As logistics goes digital, profound changes are coming to industry structure, operations, and profits. In the first of a series, we examine the impact of autonomous trucks.
Distraction or disruption? Autonomous trucks gain ground in US logistics

Grow Faster by Changing Your Innovation Narrative

The Promise of Targeted Innovation

Key Words for Digital Transformation

What Cloud Localization Means for Organizations

Lubes growth opportunities remain despite switch to electric vehicles

Lubricating oils have traditionally been one of the most attractive areas in the oil and gas value chain, but disruption is on the horizon with the rise of electrification in the transport sector.
Lubes growth opportunities remain despite switch to electric vehicles

Natural language processing in healthcare

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted across the healthcare industry, and some of the most exciting AI applications leverage natural language processing (NLP). Simply put, NLP is a specialized branch of AI focused on the interpretation and manipulation of human-generated spoken or written data. In this infographic, we describe a few promising NLP use cases for healthcare payers and providers. We elaborate several specific approaches and their associated applications. Finally, we lay out a case study describing how we have used NLP to accelerate benchmarking clinical guidelines.
Natural language processing in healthcare

How Do You Lead Digital Transformation?

Leading an organization through digital transformation is an uncharted journey for most of us. Moving away from legacy systems, processes, and operations to a digital model requires a steady strategic hand. Too many companies approach this transformation as a technology issue when it’s really a people and processes issue.

Please join Gerald C. Kane and Anh Nguyen Phillips, coauthors of MIT SMR’s report, “Coming of Age Digitally,” for a discussion on the steps leaders can take to prepare for and execute digital transformation of the organization.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• Which functional areas have the greatest success in leading digital progress.
• Why technology shouldn’t be the key focus of your digital transformation effort.
• How to align digital and overall strategy for smoother transitioning off legacy systems.
• Why the C-suite’s digital leadership is essential (to a point).

How Do You Lead Digital Transformation?

The Public Sector Can Teach Us a Lot About Digitizing Customer Service

The cloud as catalyst for retail

For retailers, the cloud can do much more than reduce the cost of computing and data storage. To maximize value from cloud, retailers need to prioritize workflows that can best benefit from it. We share six opportunities for leveraging the cloud as a catalyst for accelerating delivery of business results.
The cloud as catalyst for retail

The European public-procurement opportunity: Delivering value in medtech

Value-based procurement is a reality today. To capture the opportunity in today’s European medtech-public-procurement market fully, winners need to adapt to new realities quickly.
The European public-procurement opportunity: Delivering value in medtech

Megadeals: How data and analytics can dramatically boost success

Megadeals are tricky and so rare that companies think there’s not enough data to be useful. But the data isn’t as scarce as they think.
Megadeals: How data and analytics can dramatically boost success

Every Leader’s Guide to the Ethics of AI

The Operations 4.0 podcast: Productivity and ‘pilot purgatory’

The value from Operations 4.0 comes from how it unleashes productivity gains across a wide range of measurements. But to achieve those results, businesses must do more than launch pilot after pilot.
The Operations 4.0 podcast: Productivity and ‘pilot purgatory’

Profiling tomorrow’s trendsetting car buyers

Our latest survey offers a glimpse of the customers who will set the pace in the future auto market: young, urban, tech smart, and adept at mobility.
Profiling tomorrow’s trendsetting car buyers

Catalyzing the growth of the impact economy

A mature impact economy would help power economic growth while solving global social and environmental challenges. Here’s what it will take to accelerate the impact economy’s development.
Catalyzing the growth of the impact economy

The Enabling Power of Trust

Trapped in the Data-Sharing Dilemma

Building a tech-enabled ecosystem: An interview with Ping An’s Jessica Tan

A culture of innovation and failing fast drives the Chinese financial conglomerate’s expansion beyond traditional sector boundaries and its early adoption of emerging technologies.
Building a tech-enabled ecosystem: An interview with Ping An’s Jessica Tan

The future of automated ports

The challenges are significant, but careful planning and implementation can surmount them.
The future of automated ports

Machine Learning in the Travel Industry: The Data-Driven Marketers’ Ticket to Success

Is Your Company Ready for a Cyberattack?

Zero-based productivity—Organization: Using zero-based principles to forge a purpose-built organization

By redirecting resources and employees to higher-value areas, companies can ensure that organizational structure and spending align with business strategy.
Zero-based productivity—Organization: Using zero-based principles to forge a purpose-built organization

What it takes to go agile

McKinsey partners offer perspectives on the most crucial elements to become a truly agile organization.
What it takes to go agile

The new CFO mandate: Prioritize, transform, repeat

Amid a raft of new duties for CFOs, our survey suggests that finance leaders are well positioned to lead the C-suite agenda by championing transformations, digitization, and capability building.
The new CFO mandate: Prioritize, transform, repeat

Zero-based productivity—Organization: Using zero-based principles to forge a purpose-built organization

By redirecting resources and employees to higher-value areas, companies can ensure that organizational structure and spending align with business strategy.
Zero-based productivity—Organization: Using zero-based principles to forge a purpose-built organization

What it takes to go agile

McKinsey partners offer perspectives on the most crucial elements to become a truly agile organization.
What it takes to go agile

The new CFO mandate: Prioritize, transform, repeat

Amid a raft of new duties for CFOs, our survey suggests that finance leaders are well positioned to lead the C-suite agenda by championing transformations, digitization, and capability building.
The new CFO mandate: Prioritize, transform, repeat

Deriving Value From Conversations About Your Brand

In pursuit of prosperity

Why do some emerging economies grow rapidly while others languish? New research highlights the role of public policy, effective government, and globally competitive companies.
In pursuit of prosperity

Building the zero-based culture

There’s a soft side to zero-basing. Businesses that want zero-basing’s changes to last ignore it at their peril.
Building the zero-based culture

Permian, we have a gas problem(s)

The Permian is experiencing its first natural gas problem. Gas production is starting to exceed pipeline capacity exiting the Permian, and in-basin prices are falling as a result. Paradoxically, the second problem is a potential overreaction to the first problem: market fundamentals could attract too many pipelines, and the Permian runs the risk of having underutilized pipelines.
Permian, we have a gas problem(s)

OFSE quarterly: Volatile end to a positive quarter

Crude oil prices rose during the third quarter to reach their highest level in four years, while increased E&P capital expenditures and continued efficiency improvements resulted in better OFSE performance.
OFSE quarterly: Volatile end to a positive quarter

The European electric bus market is charging ahead, but how will it develop?

Widescale adoption of electric buses in Europe is near. There is still a lot of uncertainty around eBus battery charging strategies and the optimal type of charging hardware, mainly related to costs and operational flexibility.
The European electric bus market is charging ahead, but how will it develop?

In full swing: North America’s crude prices and changing takeaway capacity

The first half of 2018 saw crude production continuing to rise in North America. US crude exports are also on the rise, but ample production growth and constrained takeaway capacity have combined to create a tight market with big discounts.
In full swing: North America’s crude prices and changing takeaway capacity