Credit: Stephen Sauer
Oxford University Press declared “brain rot” to be its word of the year for 2024, and Merriam-Webster added “touch grass” as one of its new phrases, both indicative of a year when the digital media ecosystem felt to many people both extreme and inescapable.
Perhaps in response to the digital firehose, some of the most popular of MIT Sloan’s Working Definitions this year featured a dialed-back vibe.
Over the past year, our biweekly Instagram series of words and phrases that define management ideas included low-ego leadership, which describes a quiet style of management style; greenhushing, which details an intentionally under-the-radar approach to climate advocacy; and financial nihilism, which tracks a trend among Generation Z to opt out of the hype and speculation of investing in the stock market.
