MIT Sloan Management Review Article on How Autonomy Creates Resilience in the Face of Crisis

The outbreak of COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of the global supply chain and, in turn, many companies’ organizational structures. In their pursuit to become ever more efficient, bear fewer costs, and eliminate redundancies, many organizations have come to rely on tightly coupled, interdependent systems. In this type of system, there is little slack and few buffers among its parts and, as we are seeing now, little room to maneuver when something goes seriously awry. Dependencies span vast geographic distances, and they can be especially vulnerable to delays in another part of the chain.

About the Author

Howard Yu is the author of Leap: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied (PublicAffairs, 2018), Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at the IMD Business School in Switzerland, and director of IMD’s Advanced Management Program. Mark J. Greeven is a Chinese-speaking Dutch professor of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School in Switzerland and the author of Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Changemakers, and Underdogs (MIT Press, 2019).

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