Michael Lenox

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet — "just setting up my twttr" — sold for more than $2.9 million. Bored Ape Yacht Club digital art pieces fetch just over $100,000. NBA Top Shot sells digital NBA moments for millions of dollars. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are making this possible. But is it more hype than reality?

Darden Ideas to Action insights draw from faculty expertise, books, research, cases and white papers. Here: the most read stories of 2022. How can one build a brand? What happens when buzz turns to backlash? How does a strategist prepare for the unforeseeable? What inequalities to women face in feedback? And why is storytelling an essential skill?

The holy grail of clean energy? For the first time, scientists achieved nuclear fusion ignition, a nuclear reaction that produces more energy than it consumes. Darden Professor Mike Lenox, an expert in innovation and sustainability, offers perspective on the breakthrough, its potential and the path emerging technologies take to widespread adoption.

Early in 2019, who knew that a novel coronavirus would shut down businesses, communities, industries and economies in just weeks? A good business strategist understands that the future unfolds in ways that are unforeseeable as frequently as they’re predictable. But there are analytical frameworks you can use to yield insights for your organization.

The most successful companies are those that create strategies that align their plans for positioning in the market with the capabilities that they have. Here’s a step-by-step framework to determine if you have what you need to execute your strategy now or if you need to enhance your organizational capabilities moving forward.

Your firm’s value can be affected by trends that should affect your strategic outlook. Those factors may be technological, regulatory, institutional, cultural or societal changes. Analyzing these risks and opportunities—and thinking about how they may evolve—is critical to the long-term success of your business strategy.

Sustaining your stream of economic profits depends on there being certain barriers to entry and imitation to reduce competitive pressures. Here’s how to form a strategic analysis that identifies and analyzes direct competitors to forecast future cash flows and calculate an expected market value for the business.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide an online education platform reaching a global audience of millions of learners. Concerns around the rising costs of higher education are increasing the pressure on schools to consider digital offerings. Disruption is underway, but what are the opportunities and risks it poses?

The sheer number of crypto options available today suggests significant market disruption is underway. Yet where there is hype, there is also volatility. Is it merely the newness of crypto that is causing this volatility, or does the concern go deeper? What are the benefits and concerns of shifting the economy toward digital currencies?

Electric vehicles are on track to become the dominant technology over the next 10–20 years. But do we truly understand all the implications of this shift? Are we ready for it?