2024

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Jack Welch’s GE Was The Wrong Model To Take From The 90s. Lou Gerstner’s IBM Is The Right One

Digital Tonto

When Jack Welch was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine in 1999, it was still unclear what his legacy was going to be. Yet all the success belied serious problems rumbling underneath the surface. Welch increased profits largely by “financializing” the firm. Innovation languished. Yet perhaps the greatest indictment of Welch is those he chose to carry on his legacy.

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The Challenge of Leaving a Long-Term Job to Start Something New

Harvard Business Review

Leaving a company that’s been your professional home for years, or decades, is a major shift that can feel both thrilling and perilous. In this article, the authors outline six challenges that often come up when making this transition: 1) Ruminating and second-guessing; 2) Feeling guilty; 3) Being afraid of losing status; 4) Needing to adapt; 5) Managing the perceptions of your new colleagues; and 6) Balancing opposing emotions.

Strategy 138
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The great miscalculation–and exit–of multinationals in Africa… again

Christensen Institute

Deja vu. In 2015, many multinational companies exited Africa. Nestle cut staff across 21 countries and Barclays, Coca-Cola, Cadbury, Eveready, and SABMiller retreated from different African markets they once believed had promise. The allure of Africa, particularly the widely referenced Africa rising narrative, was fading. The reasons the multinationals cited were all too familiar: failing or inexistent infrastructure, smaller than expected consumer market, struggling institutions, and corruption

Report 145
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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Innovation Excellence

After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023: Robyn Bolton Robyn M.

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Navigating the Future: Generative AI, Application Analytics, and Data

Generative AI is upending the way product developers & end-users alike are interacting with data. Despite the potential of AI, many are left with questions about the future of product development: How will AI impact my business and contribute to its success? What can product managers and developers expect in the future with the widespread adoption of AI?

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Many Employees Fear Being Replaced by AI — Here's How to Integrate It Into Your Business Without Scaring Them.

Entrepreneur - Innovation

There's no need to convince employees of the merits of artificial intelligence — just show them they are about to become more relevant, not less.

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The NFL Draft: Are Teams Getting Better at Selecting Talent?

Michael Roberto

On Thursday, we will have the NFL Draft in which each team selects college players. The draft has become a major television event, and an entire industry of analysts, scouts, and analytics gurus has emerged to flood the airwaves with "expert" commentary. Teams have invested heavily in their scouting departments, and the assessment tools and analytics they use to select players are allegedly far more advanced than they were decades ago.

Tools 55

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Before You Start Collaborating with Someone, Talk About Your Work Styles

Harvard Business Review

When you’re working with new people, spending time upfront to have an explicit and open conversation about each other’s work styles and preferences can prove to be one of the best time investments. This “style alignment” conversation can lay a foundation for trust and understanding and help you set agreements for how to successfully work together. Yet, many people shy away from having these conversations for two reasons.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

Harvard Business Review

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one.

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Leading a Company That Can Thrive in a Chaotic World

Harvard Business Review

Worldwide, the past few years have been marked by multiple, intersecting crises — and things aren’t likely to get less complicated anytime soon. The authors met with a group of CEOs to discuss how they lead amid this ongoing chaos. To thrive in this chaotic new world, organizations need leaders with inner strength, character, and a moral compass. By continually adapting and learning, they’ll enable their organizations to navigate these ever-turbulent waters.

Company 142
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Lessons from Beyoncé on Navigating Exclusion

Harvard Business Review

In 2016, Beyoncé’s performance at the CMA Awards sparked backlash from fans complaining about everything from her attire to her lack of connection to the genre. This year, she released her first country album, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Her actions over the past eight years have been a case study in how to navigate workplace exclusion.

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Turn Payments Into Personalization: Unlock the Value of Transaction Data

Speaker: Loreal Lynch, Everett Zufelt, and Michaela Weber

Once upon a time, in the vast realm of online commerce, there lived a humble checkout button overlooked by many. Yet, within its humble click lay the power to transform a mere visitor into a loyal customer. 🧐 💡 Getting checkout right can mark the difference between a successful sale and an abandoned cart, yet many businesses fail to make payments a part of their commerce strategy even when it has a direct impact on revenue.

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6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart

Harvard Business Review

Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks.

Company 141
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Don’t Underestimate the Power of Small Breaks During a Busy Workday

Harvard Business Review

Many people operate from the belief that there’s too much to do and they can’t afford to pause during their workday. But taking effective breaks is essential to preventing burnout. In this article, the author outlines eight strategies to try to build more breaks into your day.

Strategy 142
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5 Networking Tips for Introverts (and Anyone Else)

Harvard Business Review

Even if you’re an introvert who dreads the notion of networking, you can develop your skills to get out there and do it. Research by the Lehigh@NasdaqCenter, a partnership between Lehigh University and the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, identified make-or-break factors for developing networking skills. They include: the ability to adapt your thinking swiftly in response to changing situations; combating a tendency to focus more on avoiding errors and negative results and instead striving for pos

Tips 136
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When You Have to Make a Strategic Decision Without Much Data

Harvard Business Review

One big challenge that leaders have when figuring out how or where their companies can grow is that a dearth of data about future problems and opportunities. In these situations, there are three techniques that leaders can employ to develop insights: look at customers and startups for signs of change, experience new technologies rather than just read about them, and practice “associative thinking,” which means connect two seemingly disparate concepts to develop a novel idea.

Data 142
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Manufacturing Sustainability Surge: Your Guide to Data-Driven Energy Optimization & Decarbonization

Speaker: Kevin Kai Wong, President of Emergent Energy Solutions

In today's industrial landscape, the pursuit of sustainable energy optimization and decarbonization has become paramount. Manufacturing corporations across the U.S. are facing the urgent need to align with decarbonization goals while enhancing efficiency and productivity. Unfortunately, the lack of comprehensive energy data poses a significant challenge for manufacturing managers striving to meet their targets.

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To Succeed with AI, Adopt a Beginner’s Mindset

Harvard Business Review

Times of substantial tech progress and change, like the current AI revolution, create fear and anxiety. This often causes leaders to fall back on their ego and emphasize their expertise, closing their minds and negatively impacting their people and organizations. Instead, leaders need to take on a beginner’s mindset of openness and curiosity. This is not easy.

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4 Reasons Why Managers Fail

Harvard Business Review

Gartner research has found that managers today are accountable for 51% more responsibilities than they can effectively manage — and they’re starting to buckle under the pressure: 54% are suffering from work-induced stress and fatigue, and 44% are struggling to provide personalized support to their direct reports. Ultimately, one in five managers said they would prefer not being people managers given a choice.

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A Growth Strategy that Creates and Protects Value

Harvard Business Review

For organizations to truly innovate and grow, leaders in every role and at every organizational level must be attuned to how they are creating new value while simultaneously protecting existing value. Just as a soccer coach must simultaneously pursue both scoring and defending, leaders must constantly focus their attention on opportunities to create value — through innovation, risk-taking, and experimentation — and to protect value — by preserving and defending key aspects of their responsibilit

Strategy 137
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How People Are Really Using GenAI

Harvard Business Review

There are many use cases for generative AI, spanning a vast number of areas of domestic and work life. Looking through thousands of comments on sites such as Reddit and Quora, the author’s team found that the use of this technology is as wide-ranging as the problems we encounter in our lives. The 100 categories they identified can be divided into six top-level themes, which give an immediate sense of what generative AI is being used for: Technical Assistance & Troubleshooting (23%), Content Crea

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Peak Performance: Continuous Testing & Evaluation of LLM-Based Applications

Speaker: Aarushi Kansal, AI Leader & Author and Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO at Aggregage

Software leaders who are building applications based on Large Language Models (LLMs) often find it a challenge to achieve reliability. It’s no surprise given the non-deterministic nature of LLMs. To effectively create reliable LLM-based (often with RAG) applications, extensive testing and evaluation processes are crucial. This often ends up involving meticulous adjustments to prompts.

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When New Hires Get Paid More, Top Performers Resign First

Harvard Business Review

To attract new talent, employers often offer new hires higher wages than existing employees. But today, a combination of regulatory changes and technological advances have dramatically increased pay transparency in many sectors, making employees increasingly aware of these pay disparities. How do existing employees (and especially top performers) react to these higher-paid new hires?

Agile 140
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The Missing Link Between Strategy and Innovation

Harvard Business Review

In too many companies, an innovation team is allowed to pursue its own agenda and imagine itself to be a separate island from the rest of the company. The results are always disappointing: a lot of creative ideas, but a failure to deliver meaningful growth. The root problem is the disconnect between strategy and innovation. To succeed, corporate innovation needs to be bounded by a clear set of strategic priorities that matter to the business.

Strategy 138
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GenAI Could Make Online Conversations More Civil

Harvard Business Review

Online conversations are famously fraught, which creates challenges for people communicating on online platforms, including those used for workplace collaboration. New research suggests that these platforms might want to consider using generative AI to help cool down heated discussions and prepare employees for difficult conversations. The author discusses research that he and his colleagues have conducted on this topic and discusses the ways in which the community platform Nextdoor has started

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What Employees Need from Leaders in Uncertain Times

Harvard Business Review

It’s one thing to lead through a normal range of uncertainty with its ups and downs. But how do you lead when the inflections, disruptions, dislocations, and other threat conditions pile up, as they have in the last few years? While the leader has little to no control over the external competitive environment, they have astonishing influence over the internal performance environment, including employee engagement, morale, and productivity.

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How Mature Companies Are Scaling Transformational New Businesses

Scaling transformational innovations in large companies is challenging due to ‘Company Fit’ issues, which arise when the resources, processes, and priorities (RPPs) of the core business are not aligned with the needs of the new business. Many companies have learned how ambidexterity—the ability to both ‘exploit the present and explore the future,’ can help them address these issues for ideation and incubation of new innovations, but scaling transformative business innovations remains a challenge

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How to Decide If AI Should Be Part of Your Growth Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Should your company be betting on AI as a growth strategy now? How do you distinguish genuine opportunities from speculative fads and make an informed decision on whether AI is your next big bet? In this article, the authors cover five steps to help your company answer this question. After thoughtful analysis, your decision ultimately boils down to this: Does the current state of AI align with your business strategy?

Strategy 137
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Want to Be a Better Leader? Stop Thinking About Work After Hours.

Harvard Business Review

It’s not uncommon for managers to continue thinking about their job, even after the official workday is over. This may involve ruminating about an issue with an employee, trying to think of a solution to a client problem, or creating a mental to-do list for the next day. But new research shows that this tendency may not be beneficial, particularly for people new to a leadership role.

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5 Well-Intentioned Behaviors That Can Hurt Your Team

Harvard Business Review

Most people can spot a toxic leader and connect the dots on why and how they are causing damage. But it’s much harder to recognize when well-intentioned leaders are actually hurting their teams because they aren’t aware of their negative impact, and team members aren’t always comfortable pushing back. If you’re a manager with a strong desire to be helpful to your team, be aware of these five common ways you may inadvertently hurt them despite your best intentions.

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How to Make Small Talk with Anyone from Anywhere

Harvard Business Review

Meet-and-greet conversations can be uncomfortable. And they can feel especially daunting when you’re paired with strangers from different cultures, like when networking in a global business context. In this setting, light and introductory-style conversations (what some of us know as “small talk”) can be very helpful, and even necessary. Small talk is a quasi-universal tool for initiating conversations with strangers from different cultures, for building a quick rapport, and for planting the seed

How To 140
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How Automation is Driving Efficiency Through the Last Mile of Reporting

Speaker: Jamie Eagan

As organizations strive for agility and efficiency, it's imperative for finance leaders to embrace innovative technologies and redefine traditional processes. Join us as we explore the pivotal role of digitalization and automation in reshaping what is commonly referred to as the “last mile of reporting”. We’ll deep-dive into why digitalization is no longer a choice, but a necessity for finance departments to stay competitive in a fast-paced environment touching on: 2024 trends for the Office of

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How to Discuss the Undiscussables on Your Team

Harvard Business Review

Surfacing the undiscussables on your team may be uncomfortable, but it must be an ongoing campaign, or they will sneakily build up in the background and impact your employees’ morale. In this article, the author explains how to spot the classic signs of undiscussables — meetings marked by quick consensus, a lack of productive debate, or uneven participation — and offers strategies on how to uncover those unexpressed thoughts and feelings to help your team work more productively.

How To 135
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Put Marketing at the Core of Your Growth Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Companies that make the decision to put marketing at the core of their growth strategy outperform the competition, according to McKinsey research. Specifically, both B2C and B2B companies who view branding and advertising as a top two growth strategy are twice as likely to see revenue growth of 5% or more than those that don’t (67% to 33%). Yet their research also showed that few CEOs recognize the potential for marketing as a growth accelerator.

Marketing 139
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How Gamification Can Boost Employee Engagement

Harvard Business Review

Employee disengagement is a persistent problem, and attempts to inject excitement often fall flat. However, gamification — using elements of games to motivate — has serious potential when thoughtfully executed. This article explores the psychology behind gamification, successful examples, and how to leverage probabilistic rewards (like lotteries tied to performance) to increase employee motivation.

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A Simple Hack to Help You Communicate More Effectively

Harvard Business Review

Using a structured approach when communicating can help you prioritize what you need to convey. In this article, the author introduces his “What, So What, Now What” framework. Much like the Swiss Army knife, known for its versatility and reliability, this structure is flexible and can be used in many different communication situations. The structure is comprised of three simple questions: 1) What: Describe and define the facts, situation, product, position, etc. 2) So What: Discuss the implicati

Meeting 143
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From Whims to Wins: How a Customer-Centric Portfolio Transforms Product Strategy

Speaker: John Mansour - President, Product Management University

You know that sinking feeling. You’ve come up with a winning product strategy, everyone’s on board and energized, and you’re halfway down the path to execution only to have it submarined by something someone convinced your leadership was more strategic! It’s a scenario that’s all too familiar, and it exemplifies one of the biggest struggles with individual product strategies.