For years public concern about technological risk has focused on the misuse of personal data. But as firms embed more and more artificial intelligence in products and processes, attention is shifting to the potential for bad or biased decisions by algorithms—particularly the complex, evolving kind that diagnose cancers, drive cars, or approve loans. Inevitably, many governments will feel regulation is essential to protect consumers from that risk.

This article explains the moves regulators are most likely to make and the three main challenges businesses need to consider as they adopt and integrate AI. The first is ensuring fairness. That requires evaluating the impact of AI outcomes on people’s lives, whether decisions are mechanical or subjective, and how equitably the AI operates across varying markets. The second is transparency. Regulators are very likely to require firms to explain how the software makes decisions, but that often isn’t easy to...

In a perfect world, you could pack up and go. But in this economically challenged world, you might not have the financial freedom to leave. Here are some things you can do to survive — until you have the resources to leave or decide it is time to go. Document your interactions. Take notes when communicating with your boss and keep a record of your conversations. Protect your mental health. It’s  helpful to externalize their behavior instead of ruminating on their manipulative tactics. Activate your support network. A strong support network is critical when dealing with an emotionally challenging situation.

The opened 2021 with a cover story headlined “Why Retailers Everywhere Should Look to China.” It’s not hard to see why. China is both a large and a fast-growing retail market—worth about $5 trillion in 2020—and highly digitized. And the pandemic has made digital every retailer’s strategic priority. The authors draw from their research on Chinese retailers to explain five lessons that Western companies can learn from China as they develop their own digital market offerings:

Many people believe that the process for achieving breakthrough innovations is chaotic, random, and unmanageable. But that view is flawed, the authors argue. Breakthroughs can be systematically generated using a process modeled on the principles that drive evolution in nature: variance generation, which creates a variety of life-forms; and selection pressure to select those that can best survive in a given environment.

Flagship Pioneering, the venture-creation firm behind Moderna Therapeutics and one of the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines in the United States, uses such an approach. It has successfully launched more than 100 life-sciences businesses. Its process, called emergent discovery, is a rigorous set of activities including prospecting for ideas in novel spaces; developing speculative conjectures; and relentlessly questioning hypotheses.

Subscribers to Harvard Business Review enjoy exclusive access to HBR’s 50 Best-Selling Articles: classics from the most respected minds in business strategy.

And now you can preview HBR’s Top 5 Best-Selling Articles as an introduction to the type of groundbreaking content you can expect from HBR. Whether you’re a new subscriber looking to hit the ground running, or if you’re considering a subscription, these executive summaries are a sneak peek at the best of HBR. Download your exclusive preview now.

Chia-Jung Tsay, an associate professor at the UCL School of Management, asked 1,855 study participants to predict the winners of a total of 19 venture capital pitch competitions after being assigned to review the contestants’ presentations in various ways, including as videos with sound, silent videos, sound recordings, and transcripts. She found that the silent videos best enabled people to identify the entrepreneurs the investors funded. The conclusion: In entrepreneurial pitches, stage presence is everything.

Mozart was a celestial genius, but he struggled like a mere mortal during his teens and early twenties. Though already a prolific composer, he had to work as an organist and concertmaster in his native Salzburg to make ends meet. Underpaid, unfulfilled, and hemmed in by his frustratingly average gigs, he felt a burning desire to devote more time and energy to his art. So after a period of doubt and deliberation, that’s exactly what he did. He quit his job, set up shop in Vienna, and embarked on what turned out to be the most productive and creative period of his life.

Demonstrating passion is not the only predictor of a great job candidate, however hiring managers repeatedly reference this trait in their interview feedback — so you need to figure out how to convey what matters most to you. In your responses during interviews, rather than reference what you did, talk about why you chose to do it. Passion often lies in the activities you aren’t required to do, so talk about what you do with your extra time and why. Talk about your hobbies and how this passion flows into side projects. Talk about where you’ve worked for free. Don’t get overlooked during your next job interview because you don’t display the kind of full-throated, table-thumping behaviors companies tend to equate with passion. Show them that passion comes in different forms and yields impressive results — the kind of results you’ve already nailed.

New research shows that scheduling when you take breaks or switch tasks encourages creativity and helps you find more insightful answers to problems you are solving. When you’re working on tasks that would benefit from creative thinking, consciously insert breaks to refresh your thinking. Set them at regular intervals — use a timer if you have to. When it goes off, switch tasks: organize your reimbursement receipts, check your email, or clean your desk, and then return to the original task. If you’re hesitant to break away because it feels like you’re “on a roll,” be mindful that it might be a false impression. We tend to generate redundant ideas when we don’t take regular breaks; ask yourself whether your latest ideas are qualitatively different. Finally, don’t skip your lunch breaks, and don’t feel guilty about taking breaks, especially when you are feeling stuck. Doing so may actually be the best use of your time.

Smallholder farms provide a large proportion of food supply in developing economies, but 40% of these farmers live on less than U.S.$2/day.  With a rapidly growing global population it is imperative to improve the productivity and security of farmers making up this sector.  This article presents the results of Better Life Farming, an ecosystem that connects smallholder farmers in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh to the capabilities, products, and services of corporations and NGOs.

Executives must play a proactive role in making sure their digital design functions in the best interests of users. Doing so has the potential to give companies a deeper and more positive relationship with its customers. Brands that design their sites to exploit consumer behavioral bias (or those that fail to recognize that they do so unknowingly) might benefit in the short term, but the damage done to their reputation will do lasting harm. To determine how your brand might be exploiting customers online, ask yourself the following questions: 1) Are you being transparent in user agreements? 2) Do you make cancelling your services easy? 3) Are your default options the best options for customers? 4) Do you frame choices in a misleading way? and 5) Is your product addictive?

Especially when they find themselves in the midst of crisis and uncertainty, leaders should ask powerful and inspiring questions. Asking questions well can put you on the path to solving intractable problems and will also help you connect with others and, counterintuitively, to earn their trust. Those questions should be big in scope: What new opportunities have emerged that we don’t want to miss? How might we use new technologies to change our business model? And you should involve others in answering those questions —employees, stakeholders, and even customers. Doing so can not only help you generate better answers, it can also help you to change your organization’s culture.

In today’s increasingly globalized world, more and more people are choosing to live, work and study abroad — and this trend appears to be a good thing: Social science studies have shown that international experiences can enhance creativity, reduce intergroup bias, and promote career success. Researchers set out to examine whether and how international experiences can transform a person’s sense of self. Specifically, they focused on “self-concept clarity,” the extent to which someone’s understanding of himself or herself is “clearly and confidently defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable” — a trait that has been linked to increased well-being and job performance. In six studies with 1,874 participants, they found that living abroad leads to greater self-concept clarity — which can lead to clearer career decisions — and what matters is depth rather than breadth of living abroad experiences.

Too many companies bet on having a cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners culture to drive their financial success.

But a large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology demonstrates that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.

Although there’s an assumption that stress and pressure push employees to perform more, better, and faster, what cutthroat organizations fail to recognize is the hidden costs incurred.

First, health care expenditures at high-pressure companies are nearly 50% greater than at other organizations. The American Psychological Association estimates that more than $500 billion is siphoned off from the U.S. economy because of workplace stress, and 550 million workdays are lost each year due to stress on the job. Sixty percent to 80% of...

Boundary predators appear in every realm of life. From the boss who asks you to fix the slide show botched by a colleague (and to add three new slides while you’re at it) to the 10-year-old who asks for “just five more minutes” of screen time to complete their video game, it can feel like you say “no” all day long. The author supplies scripts and sample language to help you set — and hold — boundaries, no matter who is trying to push you to do more than you agreed to.

Generational differences are real, but we tend to make too much of them. If the way you are managing the older or younger members of your team is overtly or subliminally signaling that you don’t value them, you will surely see the symptoms of hurt feelings: resistance, disengagement, anger, or insubordination. Take some time to consider each of your direct reports as a whole person. One thing you can count on is that regardless of age, everyone wants to be valued. Start by engaging each person in a conversation that demonstrates that you’re interested in their thoughts. If you listen openly, you’ll hear insights you can act on. For most people, young or old, seeing their ideas in action will reduce resistance and start to bridge any perceived generational divide.

At age 11 King tried tennis for the first time and found her calling. She not only became the top female player in the world but also founded the Women’s Tennis Association and WTA Tour and pushed for gender pay equity and more diversity in the sport. At the height of her career, after a triumph over Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, she was publicly and painfully outed as gay, and she has since become an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. Her new memoir is .

When you express your honest opinion during an interview, you present yourself as you are, not someone you believe the employer wants you to be. But disagreeing with an interviewer isn’t always easy. There is an imbalance of power and you risks coming off as difficult. But you can navigate the downsides by doing a few things before, during, and after the interview. Research the company. Is the culture one where people are receptive to new ideas? Are the organization and its founders known for inclusion and open-mindedness, or do they have a slow-moving legacy mindset? If the interviewer states something or asks a question that gives you pause, resist the urge to answer immediately. Take time to formulate a thoughtful response. And ask for permission to provide a different viewpoint. Say something like, “I see this differently. May I share my perspective with you?” Of course, during the interview, follow your gut. If you think disagreeing won’t be well received, then bite...

Smallholder farms provide a large proportion of food supply in developing economies, but 40% of these farmers live on less than U.S.$2/day.  With a rapidly growing global population it is imperative to improve the productivity and security of farmers making up this sector.  This article presents the results of Better Life Farming, an ecosystem that connects smallholder farmers in India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh to the capabilities, products, and services of corporations and NGOs.

Executives must play a proactive role in making sure their digital design functions in the best interests of users. Doing so has the potential to give companies a deeper and more positive relationship with its customers. Brands that design their sites to exploit consumer behavioral bias (or those that fail to recognize that they do so unknowingly) might benefit in the short term, but the damage done to their reputation will do lasting harm. To determine how your brand might be exploiting customers online, ask yourself the following questions: 1) Are you being transparent in user agreements? 2) Do you make cancelling your services easy? 3) Are your default options the best options for customers? 4) Do you frame choices in a misleading way? and 5) Is your product addictive?

Surveys are a pain to complete and, as a result, most people don’t invest much thought in filling them in, which means the information they give is low-quality and unlikely to provide strategic insight.  Talking to customers and asking open-ended questions yields better results and in most cases your managers will not need to conduct much more than a dozen such interviews to gain a complete picture of customer needs and preferences.

While 76% of working professionals believe that a mentor is important to growth, more than 54% do not have such a relationship. If you’re one of these people, there are a few things you can do to find a mentor and build a strong relationship: define your goals and specific needs; write a “job description” for your ideal mentor; search for mentors through your second-degree network; make the ask (and keep it simple); have a first meeting; create a mentorship agreement; and follow up to say thank you over the long term.