Management by Imagination - The Conversation

The perception that good management is closely linked to good measurement runs deep. How often do you hear these old saws repeated: "If you can't measure it, it doesn't count"; "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it"; "If you can't measure it, it won't happen"? We like these sayings because they're comforting. The act of measurement provides security; if we know enough about something to measure it we almost certainly have some control over it. But however comforting it can be to stick with what we can measure, we run the risk of expunging something really important. What's more, we won't see what we're missing because we don't know what it is that we don't know. By sticking simply to what we can measure, we come to imagine a small and constrained world

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How to encourage big ideas - from MIT Sloan's School of Management

A new study suggests certain types of funding — which provide more freedom and focus less on near-term results — lead to more innovative and influential research. Scientists are much more likely to produce innovative research when using long-term grants that allow them exceptional freedom in the lab, according to a new study co-written by MIT economists. The work shows that biologists whose funding encourages them to take risks and tolerates initial research failures wind up producing about twice as many highly influential papers as some peers whose funding is dependent upon meeting closely defined, short-term research targets. “If you want people to branch out in new directions, then it’s important to provide for their long-term horizons, to give them time to experiment and potentially fail,” says Pierre Azoulay, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and an author of the study. “The researcher has to believe that short-term failure will not be punished.” The results are contained in a working paper released this fall

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Sharpening Your Skills: Balanced Scorecard in Action

Questions to be Answered How does the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) improve corporate governance? Does customer profitability increase using the BSC? Can BSC measures reduce the gap between strategy and execution? Does the BSC work in testing strategy?

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