THINKING+++ FORWARD
Ideas for your work from MIT Sloan School of Management | Office of Communications
+ THREE INSIGHTS FOR THE WEEK
1. Digital disruption thrives in a startup-like environment, freed from the technical and bureaucratic constraints of the legacy enterprise.
Yet when established companies create new entities to accelerate digital transformation, they risk an increased likelihood of strategic, operational, and technological misalignment, especially at the leadership level.
A recent research briefing from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research details how Toyota Motor North America works its way around the problem by routinely placing executives in multiple, concurrent roles. Known as “multi-capping,” this practice lets executives lead digital transformation efforts while still maintaining their role within the enterprise.
According to the briefing, multi-capping offers enterprises and executives four benefits:
- Ownership without risk of loss.
- Expanded strategic alignment.
- Shared best practices.
- Local support to drive scalability.
Exhibit A for the success of multi-capping is Zack Hicks, chief information officer at Toyota, who in 2016 established a standalone company called Toyota Connected to develop new businesses related to telematics data. The new entity operated like a startup and was seeded with $5.5 million from the parent company.
Hicks eventually became president and CEO of Toyota Connected while retaining his role at Toyota.
2. One in five Americans received treatment for their mental health in 2020. And yet discrimination persists in society and in workplaces. How do revelations about mental health affect workplace relationships? Do they change how one person views another?
In a working paper, MIT PhD student Matthew Ridley explored these questions, resulting in two key findings. First, people exhibit a strong desire to avoid working with someone they know has a mental health condition — in this case, moderate to severe anxiety or depression. Second, those who suffer from mental health challenges are strongly inclined to hide this fact from co-workers.
The findings are particularly relevant as workplaces consider policies of transparency concerning mental health; while these efforts are likely well-intentioned, if the right foundation is not in place employees might be reluctant to discuss their mental well-being. And those who do may face discrimination.
Though Ridley has hypotheses about what is causing his results — people may perceive coworkers with mental illness as a burden; those with mental illness may expect to be discriminated against and so hide their symptoms — getting to the root is essential to relieving the discrimination so many face.
3. When Kristin Kagetsu was still an engineering student, she was challenged by Amy Smith, founding director of MIT’s D-Lab, to use her degree to create impactful solutions that help people.
Kagetsu took up the challenge in 2015, co-founding Saathi, a maker of biodegradable, compostable sanitary pads. “We built Saathi believing that good engineering and systems thinking can help solve social problems in a way that doesn’t have to compromise either profit or the planet,” said Kagetsu, SB ’12, in a recent Q&A.
In alignment with nine of the U.N.’s sustainable development goals, Saathi uses biodegradable and compostable banana and bamboo fiber sourced from local farmers to make its pads, which are assembled at an all-women manufacturing unit. A tiered business model enables the company to subsidize pads for underserved people.
In the long term, Saathi plans to be a model for sustainable and responsible manufacturing of absorbent products. “We believe in business as a tool to create impact, which is why we have built all of our impacts into our business model,” Kagetsu said.
