Stanford Business Magazine Fall 2023

As much as I miss the ’80s, I’m not sure I’d want to relive them. Sure, the music and my hair were way better back then. But otherwise, things were pretty gnarly.

Rewind to 1983: The economy was rebounding from a serious downturn. Americans were worried about inflation, jobs, and crime. New technologies were upending communication, entertainment, and labor. (A Nobel Prize–winning economist predicted that “Human workers will go the way of the horse.”) Tensions between Washington and Moscow were at their highest point in years. And scientists were warning about “an unprecedented rate of atmospheric warming.”

That was the familiarly messy world that Henry A. Fernandez stepped into when he received his MBA 40 years ago. As he reassured this year’s grads during his commencement address in June, “Every GSB class thinks they are graduating at a uniquely difficult moment in history. In a way, they are all correct.” It’s never been easy to envision the future, especially when the present is unsettled. Yet Fernandez, the chairman and CEO of MSCI, emphasized that this is no excuse for short-term thinking: “Perspective is the perfect remedy for both irrational exuberance and undue despair.”

This issue features many people with that long-term perspective — and what Everett Harper, MBA ’99, describes as “comfort with ambiguity and complexity.” We meet young “ecopreneurs” who are working on products designed to clean dirty water, expand renewable energy, and prepare farmers for climate change. And we profile the new wave of executives keeping their companies focused on sustainability and impact. As one of them, Peggy Brannigan, MBA ’87, says, “You have to have some buoyancy, some optimism — and you have to be in it for the long haul.”

We also return to artificial intelligence — a topic we last covered a year ago, way back when ChatGPT was barely a household word. Now that AI apps are suddenly everywhere, we asked GSB professors for practical advice on how to adopt them without being too hasty or hesitant. They note that one of the best applications for these tools is making predictions, but caution that they’re no substitute for old-school decision-making and vision. There’s still no such thing as a crystal ball. Or a time machine.

— Dave Gilson