Intelligent Artificiality: Algorithmic Microfoundations for Strategic Problem Solving

Mihnea  Moldoveanu

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

Intelligent Artificiality: Algorithmic Microfoundations for Strategic Problem Solving

Abstract

This paper introduces algorithmic micro-foundations for formulating and solving strategic problems. It shows how the languages and disciplines of theoretical computer science, “artificial intelligence,” and computational complexity theory can be used to devise a set of heuristics, blueprints, and procedures that can help strategic managers formulate problems, evaluate their difficulty, define “good enough solutions,” and optimize the ways in which they will solve them in advance of attempting to solve them. The paper introduces both a framework for the analysis of strategic problems in computational terms and a set of prescriptions for strategic problem formulation and problem solving relative to which deviations and counterproductive moves can be specified and measured.

Keywords: Problems and Challenges; Analysis; Strategy; Framework; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Mathematical Methods;

Language: English

Format: Print

61 pages

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Citation:

Moldoveanu, Mihnea. "Intelligent Artificiality: Algorithmic Microfoundations for Strategic Problem Solving." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-072, January 2019. (Revised February 2019.)

We two-dimensional measure of organizational complexity that distinguishes between the informational and computational dimensions of complexity and aims to function as a maximally context-invariant environment for posing fundamental questions about organizational dynamics, akin to the role and function of a phase space in classical mechanics. The new measure and associated space allows us to understand the effects of a researcher’s or manager’s choice of model or representation on the resulting complexity measure of a phenomenon and to measure the complexity of any organizational phenomenon that can be represented in a form amenable to an algorithmic description. We use the new complexity measure to present a unified treatment of complexity coping mechanisms, complexity-driven organizational failure and complexity-adaptive innovation and draw new distinctions enabling new questions whose answers will be useful to researchers and executives alike.

Article | Harvard Business Review | March–April 2019

The Future of Leadership Development

Das Narayandas and Mihnea Moldoveanu

The need for leadership development has never been more urgent. Companies of all sorts realize that to survive in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, they need different leadership skills and organizational capabilities from those that helped them succeed in the past at all levels of the firm. But the leadership development industry is in a state of upheaval. The number of players offering courses to impart the hard and soft skills required of corporate managers has expanded well beyond the traditional business schools, corporate universities, and dedicated consultancies. And yet organizations that spend billions of dollars annually to train current and future executives are growing frustrated with the results. There are three main reasons for the disjointed state of leadership development. The first is a gap in motivations. In executive development, the “customer” is not the “client.” The organization pays for the individual to enhance his or her skills—and résumé—and thereby benefit from participating. The second is the gap between the skills that executive development programs build and the skills that organizations require—particularly the interpersonal skills essential to thriving in today’s flat, networked, increasingly collaborative organizations. The third reason is the skills transfer gap. Simply put, most executives do not seem to take what they learn in the classroom and apply it to their jobs. For organizations to develop essential leadership and managerial talent, they will need to bridge these three gaps. The good news is that the growing assortment of online courses, social and interactive platforms, and learning tools from both traditional institutions and upstarts—which we call the personal learning cloud (PLC)—offers a solution. Organizations can select components from the PLC and tailor them to the needs and behaviors of individuals and teams. The PLC is flexible and immediately accessible, and it enables employees to pick up skills in the context in which they must be used. In effect, it’s a 21st-century form of on-the-job learning.

Keywords: talent management; executive education; Leadership Development; Business Education; Management Skills; Learning; Online Technology;

Citation:

Narayandas, Das, and Mihnea Moldoveanu. "The Future of Leadership Development." Harvard Business Review 97, no. 4 (March–April 2019): 40–48. (Spotlight Talent Management.) View Details

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Even as the demand for managerial skills continues to grow, executive education worldwide has entered a period of disruption caused by the digitalization of content, connectivity, and communication. The current offerings of many executive education program providers fall short of creating new skills in executives and developing fresh capabilities for organizations. Based on a study of all the programs offered by the business schools, consultancies, corporate universities, and online education providers, we analyze the advantages, and the constraints, of the existing programs. We also map the vehicles for skill development—such as case discussions, lectures, simulations, coaching sessions, live projects, etc.—in terms of their potential to develop executives for the future. We then examine the impact of the forces of digital disruption—the disaggregation and disintermediation of activity chains and the decoupling of the sources of value in education programs—on the future of executive education.

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Intelligent Artificiality: Algorithmic Microfoundations for Strategic Problem Solving

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