Articles

John R. Ehrenfeld is Executive Director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology. He retired in 2000 as the Director of the MIT Program on Technology, Business, and Environment, an interdisciplinary educational, research, and policy program.He has been thinking about sustainability for a long time. "In 1967," he says, "I founded a research company called Walden Research, a good name for someone in the greater Boston area, to do air pollution research. And it was one of the handful, literally, four or five companies at that time devoted to studying the environment. I stayed there for a while and in 1978 I was appointed by President Carter to run a small resource agency here in New England called the New England River Basins Commission. I ran that until Reagan took office and abolished the agency. I've been the executive director of the International Society for Industrial Ecology since it was started in 2001. And then in-between I found time to do some lecturing, a little teaching, but primarily I spent the last five years, in putting a book together, my book, Sustainability by Design." Ehrenfeld spoke with Michael S. Hopkins, Editor-in-Chief, MIT Sloan Management Review.

In an interesting book, two Wharton professors analyze the innovation process.

Executives who fail to understand power forces at play may find their careers in jeopardy.

Designers at restaurants and theme parks are leading the way in thinking about how to make waiting in line more pleasant.

On the Web, innovative data reuse yields opportunities — and legal questions.

Edward R. Tufte, author of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and other classics of information visualization, says that businesses would think better, make better decisions and present themselves more powerfully if they would only learn to talk--both among themselves and externally--in facts. To present themselves and their products better and more honestly, Tufte recommends that companies concentrate on delivering facts (rather than pitches), deliver as many of those facts as they can, not count on the marketing department to make it happen, and look to news sites and scientific publications for models of success. In particular, he argues that Google Inc. is where most companies should turn for design inspiration, and Tufte continues his examination of the corrosive influence that he says presentation software has on thought. Following his big ideas about information presentation, he says, will help companies differentiate themselves.

Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds help world-renowned executives, politicians and thought leaders deliver stronger presentations. In a talk with MIT Sloan Management Review, they consider not how to make better presentations--their books handle that--but how to become a better manager by thinking more like a designer. They argue that managers and designers have to do many of the same things: embrace restraints, take risks, question everything and make sure that tools don't get in the way of ideas. And they reveal how design concepts such as hierarchy, balance, contrast, clear space and harmony are just as relevant to managers as they are to designers.

Should external innovators be organized in collaborative communities or competitive markets? The answer depends on three crucial issues.