Matt Chinworth Venture studios are emerging as a compelling — if resource-intensive — way for organizations to maximize value creation through innovation. Pioneered by organizations such as Google, the studio model offers a structured and systematic approach to venture creation inside an organization. But before adopting it, leaders must ask: Is a studio the right… →

Matt Chinworth For most leaders, the ideal high-functioning team operates with smooth collaboration guided by a clear goal that was agreed upon at the outset. Researchers studying the innovation process have also found this model to be particularly important for helping teams communicate better, coordinate tasks, and resolve conflicts as they explore diverse ideas and… →

In the United States, milk is back on the menu. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, signed into law in January, restored whole milk’s eligibility for the National School Lunch Program that feeds tens of millions of American kids. New dietary guidelines released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of… →

Fernando Dias Silva/Getty Images How should brands react when faced with negativity from reviewers? Recent research published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology suggests that brands could benefit by proudly brandishing the very insults hurled at them. Researchers Katherine Du, Lingrui Zhou, and Keisha Cutright examined whether brands can benefit from “reappropriating” insults, or intentionally… →

Gerasimov174/Getty Images We often assume that leadership influence flows from visibility and authority. But our new neuroscience research suggests that when it comes to building consensus, real influence comes from a very different source. In our study, we used functional MRI technology to scan the brains of 49 MBA students as they watched ambiguous film… →

georgeclerk/Getty Images Leaders who recognize that outsiders can be major drivers of innovation often seek to bring new knowledge into their organizations by making external hires. But recent studies show that although these outsiders do bring new knowledge with them, leaders can’t be certain that their organization will effectively use or absorb that knowledge, given… →

Shawn Read/MIT SMR Monica Caldas is executive vice president and global CIO of Liberty Mutual Insurance. Before joining the company in 2018, she spent 17 years at General Electric working on transformation projects, including digitizing supply chains and using data to predict locomotive engine failures. An immigrant from Portugal who came to the U.S. at… →

Cuteness is having a moment in the marketplace. The fervor around cute products has spread well beyond children’s plush toys like Labubu and Squishmallow to cell-phone cases and even credit-card designs. And countless companies are leveraging this cute aesthetic—either in the product itself or its packaging—to increase consumer appeal. “In marketing research, we have mostly… →

Once upon a time, there was an easy way to diversify your stock portfolio: go international. In the U.S., smart investors could hedge their domestic investments by buying stocks or index funds from other countries. In years where the American market declined, that international exposure gave you uncorrelated performance from foreign markets, dampening some of… →