MIT Sloan Management Review Article on When a Leader Like Bezos Steps Down, Can Innovation Keep Up?

When the founder CEO of one of the world’s most valuable — and innovative — companies steps down, it’s bound to raise questions about the future of the business. Jeff Bezos’s decision to step back from day-to-day operations at Amazon provokes particular concern because the company has been an unbelievable innovator under his leadership. Similar worries have persisted about Apple post-Steve Jobs. Will these innovative companies lose their way without the founder’s drive and creativity?

About the Author

Hal Gregersen is a senior lecturer in leadership and innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a Thinkers50 globally ranked management thinker, the author of Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life (Harper Business, 2018), and coauthor of The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).

Learn more about MIT SMR.