Moon Shots for Management

In May 2008, a group of management scholars and senior executives worked to define an agenda for management during the next 100 years. The so-called renegade brigade, led by Gary Hamel, included academics, such as C.K. Prahalad, Peter Senge, and Jeffrey Pfeffer; new-age thinkers, like James Surowiecki; and progressive CEOs, such as Whole Foods' John Mackey, W.L. Gore's Terri Kelly, and IDEO's Tim Brown. What drew them together was a set of shared beliefs about the importance of management and a sense of urgency about reinventing it for a new era. The group's first task was to compile a roster of challenges that would focus the energies of management innovators around the world. Accordingly, in this article, Hamel (who has set up the Management Lab, a research organization devoted to management innovation) outlines 25 "moon shots"--ambitious goals that managers should strive to achieve and in the process create Management 2.0. Topping the list is the imperative of extending management's responsibilities beyond just creating shareholder value. To do so will require both reconstructing the field's philosophical foundations so that work serves a higher purpose and fully embedding the ideas of community and citizenship into organizations. A number of challenges focus on ameliorating the toxic effects of hierarchy. Others focus on better ways to unleash creativity and capitalize on employees' passions. Still others seek to transcend the limitations of traditional patterns of management thinking. Not all the moon shots are new, but many tackle issues that are endemic in large organizations. Their purpose is to inspire new solutions to long-simmering problems by making every company as genuinely human as the people who work there.