In 2024, the AI biotech firm Insilico Medicine faced a pivotal decision about its new drug, Rentosertib. Discovered and designed using artificial intelligence to treat a lung disease, Rentosertib had successfully advanced to Phase II trials — a first in global pharmaceutical history. Insilico could license the drug, consistent with its low-risk, revenue-generating model, or continue internal development to validate its full-stack AI capabilities. The decision would shape not only the future of Rentosertib, but also how Insilico balanced risk and ambition in deploying its AI tools—defining its identity as either a bold full-stack clinical innovator or a disciplined pioneer in early-stage discovery.
In 2025, Michelin CEO Florent Menegaux reflected on the company’s transformation since taking the helm in 2019. Amid a volatile global landscape marked by inflation, rising competition, and geopolitical and sustainability pressures, Michelin had achieved strong financial and operational results. Revenues climbed from 24.1 billion in 2019 to 27.2 billion in 2024, and its share price increased by over 60%. Under Menegaux’s leadership, Michelin had adopted a new purpose, defined an ambitious strategy, and implemented an innovative leadership approach—ICARE—which focused on genuinely investing in and empowering its frontline employees, especially in its 83 tire production plants around the world. Menegaux believed that the implementation of the ICARE leadership philosophy had been a key driver of the company’s strong performance during this period. He believed that an engaged and empowered workforce was essential to achieving excellence and sustaining continuous improvement. The approach required significant investments and remained a major undertaking still in progress. The case profiles operators, business unit leaders, and executives to explore how the ICARE philosophy shaped factory culture, engagement and performance—and what challenges remained. As Menegaux reflected on this transformation, a question remained: How could Michelin rigorously evaluate the return on its people investments and determine whether its leadership model was truly making a difference?
Political speech by firms is increasingly common around the world. This paper examines the government as an important, yet understudied, audience for such speech, focusing on how Chinese firms rhetorically align with the state. We introduce novel, general, and replicable quantitative measures of rhetorical alignment, using which we establish several empirical facts: (i) rhetorical alignment is prevalent but not universal; (ii) it has increased significantly over time; (iii) it is more pronounced in state-owned and strategic sectors; and (iv) it is negatively correlated with profitability and positively correlated with performance on political and social objectives. Exploiting two natural experiments, we further show that (v) rhetorically aligned firms experience larger stock price declines following events damaging the Party’s reputation, and (vi) firms increase rhetorical alignment after regulatory inspections. Guided by these findings, we propose a conceptual framework wherein rhetorical alignment serves as a commitment device: firms commit to supporting Party interests, and the Party commits to refraining from expropriation. Additional predictions of the framework are tested and supported by the data.
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