The Harvard Business Review lists 24 actions for 2011 in the HBR Agenda, a collection of posts by a group of business and management leaders, sharing their plans for the year ahead. There’s an exciting mix of projects here – for example:
- Vijay Govindarajan wants to help design a $300 house with basic modern services such as running water and electricity, and shared access to all of the modcons, turning poverty alleviation into a massive opportunity for business to make a difference.
- Clay Shirky is studying design as a key driver behind the quality of our online conversations – looking at why some sites enjoy genial exchanges where others are hijacked by attention seekers.
- Robert I. Sutton, in a similar vein, is writing a book on how to ‘scale’ constructive behavior.
- A.G. Lafley will be working with Boards and CEOs to develop better succession planning processes at a time when great business leadership matters more than ever.
- Michael Porter is working with Robert Kaplan to lower the real cost of healthcare – a critical project as healthcare costs in the US and elsewhere are on the rise.
These are just a few of the two dozen initiatives on the Agenda, and as HBR points out, one of the best things about so many of them is that they focus on challenges bigger than business. I’ve been talking about the potential for business to make the world a better place for a while now and couldn’t agree more. Read more about what’s on the Agenda here.
