MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Gain Competitive Advantage by Transcending the Front-Line Paradox

In a fast-moving world, organizations can sustain a competitive edge by developing actionable knowledge from streams of unstructured data. Front-line employees are among the first to observe emerging problems on the horizon, because they’re positioned at the point of contact between an organization and its customers and thus uniquely aware of the early symptoms of impending change. To paraphrase Stanford professor Robert Burgelman and Andy Grove, the late CEO of Intel, front-line employees can feel the winds of change because they spend time outdoors where the stormy clouds of disruption rage.

About the Author

Carsten Lund Pedersen is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing at Copenhagen Business School in Denmark, where he researches B2B digitization strategies, employee autonomy, and market strategies in times of change.

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