The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is announcing the third leg of the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Innovation—the Long-Term Capitalism Challenge.

With this challenge, we hope to accelerate the shift toward a more principled, patient, and social accountable capitalism—one that’s truly fit for the long term.

Specifically, we’re looking for Stories (real-world case studies) and Hacks (boldly original ideas) that offer up the most progressive practices and disruptive ideas that tackle the challenge of making our organizations more:

PRINCIPLED Capitalism degenerates into narrow self-interest without a strong ethical foundation.

• How do we focus the entire organization on a higher purpose and embed such virtues as generosity and selflessness into everyday interactions, evaluations, and reward systems?
• How do we measure the ethical or moral climate of a company, and what is the dashboard?
• What does it mean for individuals at all levels to act as wise stewards of organizational values, resources, and stakeholder well-being?
• What kind of a forum or process could we create that would allow individuals to freely share and discuss ethical dilemmas?
• In what ways might extreme transparency preserve and promote the highest purpose of the organization?
  

PATIENT Vision and perseverance are critical to value creation-- and highly vulnerable to short-termism.

• How do we stretch management timeframes and perspectives?
• What does it mean to articulate and instill a vision compelling enough to inspire sacrifice, stimulate innovation, and hedge against expediency?
• How might we rebalance compensation and measurement systems to provide incentives for long-term value creation along with short-term performance?
• What tactics or capabilities might we develop to earn some slack from investors?
• What kind of incentives and measurement systems could we devise to encourage internal entrepreneurs and nurture a varied portfolio of opportunities?

SOCIAL Capitalism cannot operate in a social vacuum and profits and shareholder return can no longer be the only measures of a company's value-added.

• How do we eradicate the pervasive zero-sum mentality in business and embed the positive-sum view of stakeholder interdependence into operations at every level?
• How do we build the consideration of social return into every conversation and every decision at every level in the organization?
• How could we embed social goals into an organization’s innovation agenda and processes? In other words, how might we encourage not just social responsibility, but social entrepreneurship?
• What kind of measurement and reward systems would give significant weight to social impact created by individuals and the wider organization?

The Long-Term Capitalism Challenge will unfold in two stages: a preliminary submission phase (ending May 11, 2012) and a final round for several finalists or finalist teams (ending June 1, 2012). All entries will be judged by our panel of leading management thinkers and progressive practitioners.

Winners will receive significant recognition as management innovators on the MIX, Harvard Business Review and HBR.org, the McKinsey Quarterly and McKinseyQuarterly.com. Winners will also earn the chance to appear at the invitation-only MIX Mashup, taking place in San Francisco on June 19.

About the Management Innovation eXchange

The MIX (Management Innovation eXchange) is the world's first open innovation project aimed at reinventing management. On the MIX, impassioned innovators from around the world are working together to create organizations that are as resilient, inventive, and inspiring as the people who work within them. It's time to reinvent management. You can help. Join the MIX.

The Management Innovation Exchange

The Management Innovation Exchange

The Management Innovation eXchange (MIX) is based on the premise that management is nothing less than the technology of human accomplishment. But after 100 years of incremental tweaks, it now needs to be reinvented for a new age.

Designed as a collaborative platform, the MIX brings together CEOs, academics, and management experts with executives and managers — indeed, anyone with ideas on how to make management better suited to cope with the 21st century, organizations that are as resilient, inventive and inspiring as the people who work within them.

For more information, please visit www.managementexchange.com

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