For this final issue of MIT Sloan Management Review, Benjamin Laker and Maria Papacosta offer advice on ending things well. In that spirit, we want to reflect on the impact our editorially independent publication has had in its 67 years. Over the past few months, we’ve been buoyed by many messages and online comments validating our core mission: to identify and share new ideas that advance management practice. We’ve also heard about the value SMR has created as a curator and connector at a time when so much information of variable quality is available from so many sources. SMR has given scholars and practitioners a platform to develop their thinking on innovative approaches to business challenges, and leaders the opportunity to deeply engage with new insights and put them to work to solve problems and improve results.
Many people have contributed to SMR’s success; here are some thoughts from a few of them.
Paul Michelman
Editor in chief, BCG; former editor in chief, MIT SMR
“What SMR delivered for decades was innovative, well-expressed management thinking that can light a spark. It can provoke somebody to cast their eyes left or right when they’ve only been looking straight. Lighting a spark that leads to a solution is a highly practical thing. It begins with identifying ideas that matter, that can move the needle, that are fully additive to what’s already been published — but then shaping it in a way that delivers actionable inspiration. Another thing that set SMR apart is its place at the collision of technology, innovation, and industry — its MIT-ness. SMR was never afraid to be wonky, and I mean that in the best ways — that it’s OK to get underneath and a little bit nerdy.”
Deb Gallagher
Publisher, MIT SMR
“The most meaningful and rewarding part of the work we did was that people acted on our content — we helped change how people work, how organizations function. There’s a lot of great work being done in management education to make companies run better, but university scholarship can be very esoteric. Our mission was to create a bridge between academic research and organizational need. That remained steady while we evolved how we delivered it, adapting to new media formats and channels. We extended our reach by licensing our content to learning organizations and to publishers overseas that saw our unique value in speaking to the needs of leaders and workers in organizations and wanted to bring rigorous thinking to leaders in their markets.”
Martin Reeves
Founder, Martin K. Reeves Advisory; former chairman, BCG Henderson Institute
“BCG collaborated with SMR for almost 20 years on Big Ideas research projects on sustainability and on AI, in addition to contributing articles. Without a doubt, SMR has made a significant impact on the field of strategy, being one of the few publications bridging the rigor of academic research with practical relevance and digestible insights for practitioners. In particular, one of SMR’s superpowers has been to use its large and loyal subscriber base to both gather fresh field data and build an audience for consuming and discussing new insights. Thank you to all my friends in the editorial and marketing teams for your excellent work and impact on the field.”
Jeff Schwartz
Senior adviser, Gloat; former principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP
“For several decades, my job has been to look toward what’s coming next — and no publication shaped that view more than MIT Sloan Management Review. What we lose with its closing is a rare devotion to praxis: the living intersection of theory and practice, where technology, strategy, and operations meet — the very thing a place like MIT exists to think about. Our collaborations with SMR on digital transformation, talent, and strategy yielded early insights that continue to be relevant today. Later, we pivoted to a multiyear exploration that reframed the workforce itself — opportunity markets, workforce ecosystems. SMR seldom treated an idea as once-and-done. Themes were introduced, explored, and followed through. It seated academics and practitioners side by side, built communities of practice, and quietly orchestrated ambitious ideas.”
Robert W. Holland Jr.
Former managing director and publisher, MIT SMR
“SMR was losing money when I joined in 2010. We recognized that the academic journal model was no longer viable and made a strategic pivot to reposition SMR to bridge academic content and practitioner needs. The Big Ideas program generated significant revenue and extended SMR’s reach. We became self-sustaining and added “MIT” to our name to become MIT Sloan Management Review, which started to bring the ethos of MIT into what we were doing, with a greater focus on innovation and new ideas. That focus was unique to SMR compared with other journals.”
David Kiron
Editorial director, MIT SMR Big Ideas
“Big Ideas was never just a research program. It was a bet: that rigorous, independent research, produced with academics and with thought leaders at the world’s top consulting firms, could influence management practice and pay for itself. The bet paid off. Over 16 years, the program produced more than 40 reports and articles, garnering more than 3 million page views and 7,000 citations. Our thought leadership earned gold medals from the American Society of Business Publication Editors and Axiom. And program director Allison Ryder created Me, Myself, and AI, a respected podcast with nearly 2 million downloads. I am grateful to the researchers, editors, collaborators, and readers who made my role feel more like a privilege than a job.”
Martha Mangelsdorf
President, Mangelsdorf Communications; former editorial director, MIT SMR
“The heart of MIT SMR’s work is communicating rigorous and highly relevant academic research in a way that makes the findings easily accessible to managers. I worked with an author team as they developed a 2017 MIT SMR article about the Oxford approach to scenario planning. That topic has become increasingly important as our world becomes more uncertain, and the article is currently one of the bestselling pieces in MIT SMR’s store. MIT SMR’s continuing impact on practice can also be found in a new report from the MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research about negotiations between Kaiser Permanente and its unions over AI; the labor and management participants read and discussed two MIT SMR articles on AI implementation. That’s SMR at its best: providing practical, research-based information that helps leaders and organizations address critical issues.”
Linda Hill
Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; author and editorial advisory board member, MIT SMR
“SMR provided space for those of us who do research to share our ideas, even when they were evolving, and get feedback from readers to shape how we would do our research going forward. That link between theory and practice starts a dialogue between academics and practitioners that makes both the theory and the practice richer. SMR helped practitioners and academics to frame the questions we should be asking. There are very few people who know how to be those translators. SMR editors were the bridgers — people who can actually curate and translate and integrate across worlds. We need that so much today. Emerging technologies are transforming everything. SMR helped practitioners understand what the opportunities and challenges really are. It created a global ecosystem of thought leaders in both practice and the academy that helped push both forward.”
We’re proud of the work we did at MIT Sloan Management Review and honored to have convened and participated in a lively, productive, and exciting conversation on leadership, innovation, and how business can contribute to a better world.