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Early returns are in from the first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Survey. Here are major highlights of what executives and managers said about how they are — or are not — capitalizing on information.

How are organizations attempting to compete on their ability to capture, analyze and act on information? How do you win with data and analytics? MIT Sloan Management Review conducted a global survey of nearly 3,000 executives to learn how they’re turning the data deluge and analytics into competitive advantage–or trying to, anyway. The major comprehensive analysis is still to come, but in these two companion articles (“10 Insights” and “10 Data Points”), readers will find an early snapshot of how managers are answering the most important question organizations face. To answer that question, SMR has teamed with the IBM Institute for Business Value to build a new innovation hub and research program called “The New Intelligent Enterprise.” Through the SMR and IBM IBV collaboration, The New Intelligent Enterprise aims to help managers understand how they can capitalize on the ways that information and analytics are changing the competitive landscape. What threats and opportunities will companies face? What new business models, organizational approaches, competitive strategies, work processes and leadership methods will emerge? How will the best organizations reinvent themselves to use technology and analytics to achieve novel competitive advantage? How will they learn not only to be smarter, but to act smarter? This article reveals preliminary results from the first annual New Intelligent Enterprise Survey. The responding executives told us about their top management goals, their uses (and misuses) of information and analytics as they attacked those goals, and the management practices in play in their organizations. Among the findings discussed: - Innovation is identified by executives as their organizations’ primary business goal–significantly ahead of “growing revenue,” “reducing costs” and “acquiring customers.” - A strong correlation appeared linking an organization’s analytics sophistication and its likelihood of outperforming its industry competitors. - Analytics methods are evolving to include more advanced techniques, and especially more visual presentation and simulation “to bring information alive.” - Far from being a mainly technological phenomenon, The New Intelligent Enterprise requires significant changes to corporate culture and the nurturing of new kinds of talent, if it is to succeed.

Five years ago, analytics practitioners spent about 95% of their time reporting on the past and only about 5% on analysis. Most companies were not really focused on the issue of analytics. While reporting is good, it's not enough. Companies need to understand why those data turned out the way they did, what it might do in the future and how they might optimize a particular one of those variables. Thomas H. Davenport, President's Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College, says the potential for analytics to become a critical tie to decision making remains an untapped opportunity for most companies. In a new MIT SMR interview, Davenport explores why the proliferation of data has not led to better decision-making. Davenport looks at the challenges that lie in the way of analytics being embraced by executives and how they can use analysis to understand and manage their business more effectively.

Effective social media measurement turns the traditional ROI approach on its head and measures investments made by customers in social media.

Organizations need to value the "soft side" of customer management: emotions, trust and control.

There’s an alarmist view of sustainable design that tilts toward the all-or-nothing. But it’s not the best path, says new-product design expert Steven Eppinger. When it comes to the practice of what Eppinger calls “design for environment,” he rejects the radical and argues for the incremental. For one thing, allor- nothing isn’t an approach businesses are especially good at; it takes too long, and fails too often. For another, the sum of continuous incrementalism is likely, he says, to carry designs further toward the no-impact outcomes everyone desires. Plus, there’s a method to it. It can be learned. The secret is to focus on materials. In this MIT SMR Sustainability Interview, Eppinger addresses the question of how environmental concerns can drive product design and innovation. Among his main points: 1) Design and product innovation for environmental sustainability should be framed as a materials problem; 2) How much material is used is less important than what material is used; 3) Don’t try to eliminate environmental impacts all at once. Try to get a little better each time you design any product.

The authors make the case that a shift in risk management approaches is needed.

There are five steps managers can take to protect their complex and vulnerable supply chains.

What's smarter: To charge separately for extras -- or to combine all charges into one total price?

In an interview that is part of SMR’s ongoing series on the business of sustainability, MIT’s Ernest Moniz, the director of the MIT Energy Initiative, explains why blending big-company culture with entrepreneurial innovation is the challenge that leaders must learn to meet. According to Moniz, large energy companies are the ones that have the capacity in terms of resources to scale up new technologies to impact climate change in a relatively short period of time. But to do so they need to be both “big and nimble.” “The number one overarching issue, which does pose business opportunity, business risk, and a need to rethink business models, is carbon constraints,” says Moniz. “As you know, 85 percent of our energy is fossil fuel. Fossil fuel equals carbon. Controlling carbon goes to the very core of the way we currently supply energy.” There are multiple strategies for dealing with innovation in a carbon-constrained world, including mergers and acquisitions, and investments in research. But the innovation culture is not natural to energy companies; until now they have been rewarded for reliability, not innovation. Cultivating an open mind, dealing with uncertainty, and balancing competing requirements necessary for innovation ultimately comes down to the judgment of senior executives.