Calibrate AI Use to the Decision at Hand
The article argues that AI must be matched to the type of decision it supports, separating narrow, data‑driven choices from wide, ambiguous, politically charged ones. Misapplying generative tools to narrow problems or analytical engines to wide decisions leads to weak recommendations and low stakeholder buy‑in. McKinsey’s 2025 AI state report shows 88% of firms use AI, yet only about 40% see measurable profit impact, underscoring the calibration gap. A six‑question diagnostic and dual playbooks are proposed to align AI capabilities with decision characteristics, turning AI into a true decision engine or helper as needed.
Behind the AI in the Newsroom: The Washington Post’s Vineet Khosla
Washington Post CTO Vineet Khosla explains the paper’s "AI everywhere" strategy, which embeds artificial intelligence across news production and consumer products. The newsroom has rolled out AI‑generated personalized podcasts, now exceeding 100,000 episodes, and internal tools like Haystacker that let...
Audit Yourself to Get More From GenAI
The MIT Sloan Review article introduces a self‑audit prompt that scores generative‑AI sessions against 30 habits organized into five goals—setup, refine, verify, own, and systematize. A field experiment with 250 Chinese consultants showed that AI‑assisted workers only outperformed peers when...
What Global Turmoil Means for Company Structure
The accelerating geopolitical upheaval—from wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to digital‑sovereignty battles—is forcing multinationals to overhaul traditional structures. Companies are reconsidering the classic exit‑relocate‑reorganize playbook, with many opting for polynational models that embed semi‑autonomous units and local ownership....
Why Adventure Matters in Long Working Lives
The article argues that purposeful adventure—travel, role shifts, or unfamiliar projects—becomes essential for sustaining increasingly long working lives. It draws on the author’s five‑decade career, showing how each adventurous episode reshaped perspective and capability. As careers extend into the 60s,...
How to Slay the Chaos Dragon
Organizational chaos hampers performance, but leaders can mitigate it through four practical actions. First, maintain continuous communication with the teams their groups collaborate with, focusing on the most frequent and strategic interactions. Second, create protected space in meetings for spontaneous...
Industrial AI for the Physical World: Siemens’s Peter Koerte
In a recent MIT Sloan podcast, Siemens chief strategy and technology officer Peter Koerte explained how the company is using industrial AI to boost efficiency across factories, energy grids, buildings and transportation. He highlighted concrete use cases such as AI‑driven building...
Beyond the Model — Why Responsible AI Must Address Workforce Impact
MIT Sloan Review and BCG released their fifth‑year responsible AI (RAI) panel findings, emphasizing that AI governance must extend beyond model safety to address workforce impact. Eighty percent of the 31 experts surveyed agree that displacement of human workers is...
How AI Helps the Best and Hurts the Rest
A field experiment in Kenya gave 320 small business owners access to a WhatsApp‑based GPT‑4 advisor and compared them with 320 peers receiving a standard training guide. Overall, the average impact on revenue and profit was statistically indistinguishable from zero....
Lessons From Innovation Pioneer Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale transformed 19th‑century health care by pairing rigorous data analysis with clear, public‑facing communication and by founding the world’s first formal nursing school. Her polar‑area chart exposed the deadly impact of unsanitary hospitals, while her 1859 book *Notes on...
The Human Side of AI Adoption: Lessons From the Field
The article examines why AI adoption stalls in traditionally heavy‑industry sectors such as construction, mining and waste management, despite rapid uptake in digit‑first fields. It identifies three core barriers: fear and perceived intrusiveness, the belief that AI adds workload, and...
Managing Up: A Skill Set That Matters Now
Managing up has become a critical capability as AI tools strip away middle‑management layers, forcing employees to influence leaders directly. The article defines upward leadership as listening to senior staff and shaping their actions to align with organizational values, mission,...
Rethink Responsibility in the Age of AI
The MIT Sloan article argues that traditional blame‑centric accountability is obsolete in an era where AI and autonomous systems disperse decision‑making across humans and machines. It introduces “narrative responsibility” – a framework that maps the full story of an incident,...
Gain Consumer Insight With Generative AI
Generative AI, especially large language models, is reshaping the $153 billion marketing‑research industry by compressing study timelines from months to days. Researchers can create synthetic consumer "digital twins" to simulate responses, enabling rapid concept testing and reducing reliance on costly human...
How to Reap Compound Benefits From Generative AI
Generative AI has dramatically lowered the marginal cost of creating first drafts, but the true expense now lies in evaluating and learning from those outputs. Leading firms are moving from viewing AI as a simple throughput accelerator to a capability...
The Best Customers to Study When Scaling Into a New Market
Tech firms expanding into new geographies must decide whether their first customers should be familiar‑market users or target‑market users. Familiar users offer clearer, easier‑to‑interpret feedback, while target‑market users provide signals that are more transferable to the ultimate audience. The choice...
Level Up Your Crisis Management Skills
The MIT Sloan Review research introduced a “7C’s” model for effective crisis management, outlining seven core capabilities—Contingency, Clarity, Coordination, Compassion, Confrontation, Control, and Continuity—each maturing across five stages from reactive to strategic. Interviews with senior leaders from governments, militaries, and...
Why Leaders Lose the Room in High-Stakes Meetings
Leaders often lose influence in high‑stakes meetings when pressure amplifies their preferred thinking style, turning strengths into communication barriers. The article shows how over‑reliance on preparation, control, delegation, or real‑time brainstorming can increase audience effort, silence input, and stall decisions....
How Goldman Sachs Stays Agile: HR Leader Jacqueline Arthur
Goldman Sachs attributes its decades‑long resilience to an agility‑focused culture driven by ambitious talent. HR chief Jacqueline Arthur explains that hiring high‑drive employees, stripping bureaucratic layers, and fostering internal mobility keep the firm nimble. CultureX data shows Goldman leads peers,...
Retro-Innovation: How Smart Companies Profit From the Past
MIT Sloan Management Review highlights the rise of “retro‑innovation,” where companies revive outdated technologies to capture new demand. The article notes that products like analog phones, vinyl records, and classic video‑game consoles are resonating especially with Generation Z. It outlines three...
Bridge the Intergenerational Leadership Gap
The global workforce is now dominated by Millennials and Gen Z, who together comprise over 60% of employees and are projected to reach 74% by 2030. Meanwhile, CEOs and board members at S&P‑listed firms are aging, with average CEO age climbing...
Leaders at All Levels: Kraft Heinz’s 5X Speed Secret
Kraft Heinz slashed its new‑product cycle from 36 months to six by overhauling its development process. The company limited active projects to a "golden number" of seven, consolidated work into a single financial‑outcome‑driven backlog, and granted teams decision rights. These...
Why Businesses Should Value Caregivers Now
Businesses are losing talent as more than 212,000 women left the U.S. workforce in early 2025, driven by return‑to‑office mandates and caregiving pressures. Research from Rutgers shows caregiving cultivates 18 skills that map onto 76.5% of the BLS’s core workplace...
An Industry Benchmark for Data Fairness: Sony’s Alice Xiang
Sony’s AI governance lead Alice Xiang announced FHIBE, a publicly available Fair Human‑centric Image Benchmark that combines ethically sourced, consent‑based data with extensive demographic annotations. The benchmark targets bias measurement in computer‑vision models, addressing the scarcity of responsibly collected datasets....
Why Visibility Has Become the New Test of Leadership
In professional‑service firms, quiet excellence has given way to visible leadership. Partners now must demonstrate impact through LinkedIn posts, client reviews, and internal dashboards, turning transparency into a credibility metric. MIT Sloan’s research identifies three levers—internal recognition, external reputation, and...
Our Guide to the Spring 2026 Issue
The MIT Sloan Management Review's Spring 2026 issue compiles ten research‑driven articles that map the evolving landscape of corporate innovation and transformation. Highlights include a framework for strategic innovation in mature firms, guidance on building effective venture studios, and evidence...
Three Things to Know About Learning by Hiring
Leaders increasingly turn to external hires to inject fresh knowledge, but the effectiveness of that knowledge depends on the organization’s existing knowledge architecture. Tight, highly integrated practices create resistance and can dilute the impact of new hires, especially when multiple...
Why Mergers Fail and How to Spot Trouble Early
M&A activity remains a high‑stakes gamble, with nearly half of large U.S. acquisitions eventually undone. A 27‑year study of 1,636 S&P 500 deals shows a 46% divestiture rate and an average ten‑year lag before breakup. Failures cluster around two patterns:...