MIT Sloan Blog

A river runs through ... um ... MIT

Patches of murky ice have given way to inklings of activity on the Charles. A scull here, a sailboat there, tourist-filled duckboats afloat, seagulls doing their best Greg Louganis into the rippling early spring waters. Hopeful signs of spring. Change in the air ... and as ever on campus.

Spring has sprung, and so has a lot on which we have been working here at MIT Sloan.

- We launched a redesigned MIT Sloan home page last week. Should be a lot faster, more content rich, a better representation of the breadth of activities here. The previous home page was launched in 2004, so this is very much a breath of fresh air, both in its look and feel and its use of technology. The redesigned home page is the first in a number of changes we plan to make to the website over the next year. Our goal: a website that is clear, compelling, informative, fast, optimized for any device, worthy of this great institution. Love to hear feedback (srolph -at- mit.edu). And look for more change on the horizon.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu

- We populated the MBA website with a bunch of new content. Props to my colleagues Michelle Choate and Tina McCarthy and our friends in the MBA Admissions Office (Julie, Rod, et al.). We hope the site is better organized, provides greater depth, and is more fun than its predecessor. Hey, nobody said innovation had to be boring.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba

- We brought on board a new digital media specialist to take our podcast and video efforts to the next level. A big hearty welcome to Anthony Placet, who in a few short months has shown the value of having a professional multimedia editor. He has greatly enhanced our audio podcasts and is ready to begin producing videos. Look for an MIT Sloan Video Short -- Coming soon to a computer near you.

- On the podcast front, we've launched some interviews with fascinating folks of late. Student Samantha Joseph jumps out of planes and has jumped ably into business school despite her non-traditional background. Sheila Chandrasekhara is an author, b-school student, and arguably MIT Sloan's top chef. Professor Arnie Barnett makes numbers palatable and applicable to problems of the day. Check out interviews with these folks and more in iTunes or our new collection on MIT TechTV.

http://mitsloan.techtv.mit.edu

- Posted by Scott Rolph

"My staff is lazy"

Actually, my staff is brilliant, tireless, and incredibly productive (Michelle, Scott, everyone, I love ya). But the impulse to think "my staff is lazy" is one of the symptoms of overload in organizations.  Understanding overload -- and effectively addressing the problems it creates -- may ultimately be the key to saving the planet.

At MIT Sloan's first conference on strategies for sustainable business practices, Professor Rebecca Henderson gave an inspiring (and very humorous) presentation on why organizations get stuck and stay stuck. See the video and other conference materials at:

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainability/ilp.php

Drawing on 20 years' experience working with large organizations, she cited examples any manager can relate to, from wearing overload as a badge of honor, to the soul-killing and productivity-destroying loops that result from constant fire-fighting. 

Highlighting emerging cross-disciplinary work with several MIT Sloan colleagues, she outlined not only the perils of overload (and why they're so intractable) but also what can be done about them -- and why it will be heartening and even fun.

Today's sustainability challenges affect more than the environment: they show up in problems of economic development and social justice and, yes, our own personal lives.  But global warming is the best known high-stakes challenge of sustainability, and the clock is ticking rapidly.  Organizations need to get unstuck and fast.

Fortunately, the challenges of sustainability also provide huge opportunities: opportunities for new businesses and business models, opportunities for new ways of thinking and for having new kinds of conversations with one another.  At the conference, participants heard stirring examples of initiatives that are working, from empowering business practices that improve lives and profits at Nike to mind-spinning possibilities from advances in materials and infrastructure.  The work being done by Professor Henderson and her colleagues brings it all home: to our work and our daily lives, and how we all benefit when we can bring more of our whole selves to the office.

I came away from the conference inspired and incredibly proud to be a part of MIT Sloan, where some of the finest minds are helping solve some of the world's most pressing problems and create extraordinary new opportunities -- all with great thoughtfulness, wit, and humanity.  I'd say more, but ... I have a few fires I have to fight right now.

- Posted by Tracy Carlson

Redefining sustainability

MIT Sloan Professor Rick Locke is a pioneer in the sustainability realm. He worked closely with Nike as it sought to improve factory working conditions across the globe. So it seems appropriate that he emerge with a new definition of sustainability.

The definition seems strikingly pragmatic during the week after Live Earth, which a cynic might alternately characterize as the beginning of a presidential campaign, a well-intentioned pep rally, or the embodiment of the very excess against which it sought to rally.

Here's how Professor Locke views sustainability in the context of MIT Sloan's S-Lab:

“Up until now we have considered aspects of sustainability — climate, energy, water, food, poverty, and social development — in isolation. S-Lab is developing an integrated framework to consider the system-wide dynamics of human society along with tools and methodologies for measuring and monitoring sustainability efforts and their applications.”

- Posted by Scott Rolph