Future Digital Leaders

MIT have recently published their Top 20 Sloan Management Review articles of 2017.

Not surprisingly, articles on digital strategy, transformation, AI and data analytics dominate the most popular reads. 

The Top 20 are listed below (click link to access each article): 

The Jobs That Artificial Intelligence Will Create

Reshaping Business With Artificial Intelligence

Analytics as a Source of Business Innovation

The Smart Way to Respond to Negative Emotions at Work

Achieving Digital Maturity

The Most Underrated Skill in Management

How Big Data Is Empowering AI and Machine Learning at Scale

The End of Corporate Culture as We Know It

Why Design Thinking in Business Needs a Rethink

Turning Strategy Into Results

Your Company Doesn’t Need a Digital Strategy

Corporate Sustainability at a Crossroads

What to Expect From Artificial Intelligence

‘Digital Transformation’ Is a Misnomer

The Five Steps All Leaders Must Take in the Age of Uncertainty

Harnessing the Secret Structure of Innovation

Five Myths About Digital Transformation

12 Essential Innovation Insights

How to Monetize Your Data

How to Thrive — and Survive — in a World of AI Disruption

More details can be found here.

Take care.

Jim H

Working with big data remains one of the biggest IT challenges that businesses, government agencies and other organisations face. It's also one of the biggest opportunities for IT vendors and for solution and strategic service providers. The big data market grew 23.5 percent to $22.6 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow at an annual compound growth rate of 14.4 percent to $92.2 billion by 2026.

The editorial team at CRN have recently created their fourth annual Big Data 100, identifying vendors that have demonstrated an ability to innovate in bringing to market products and services that help business work with big data.

The 100 vendors have been divided into three categories: business analytics, data management and big data platforms/tools.

50 of the top vendors are profiled on a very useful slide show on the CRN web site. Vendors who compete in more than one category have been assigned to the group in which they are most prominent.

The list includes companies offering everything from simple-to-use reporting tools to highly sophisticated software for tackling the most complex data analysis problems. 

You can access the full slide show here.

As always, comment and feedback are very welcome.

Jim H

If you’re not turning your company into a “math house” you’re headed for serious trouble. Every industry will soon be driven by digitization and every winning company will be using algorithms, or mathematical rules for processing information, to shape the end-to-end customer experience. Any advantages you have now will pale in comparison with a great set of algorithms that differentiates the customer experience. It is the algorithms that will create value for the business.

This is not guesswork. Sensors, the cloud, mobile and broadband wireless, and other such technologies are increasing the flow of digitized information exponentially. Algorithms, run on ever faster computers, can do amazing things with that information, from detecting patterns and making predictions to solving complex problems. They can even modify themselves as new information comes to light. 

More such catalysts are entering the fray every day. Venture capitalists have their radar out for and provide ample resources for the catalysts to scale up very quickly. The result is the reconstitution or destruction of industries, creation of new market spaces, and reshaping of old industry ecosystems.

Some leaders will ignore the trend, as happened at Nokia, or remain on the defensive, as reflected in Walmart’s delayed response to Amazon. But others know it is not going away and that they have no choice but to transform the company. That realization creates more anxiety than insight into what to do. CEOs are on the hunt to understand who has done what, and who has succeeded. They want to know, does a legacy company really have a chance of transforming itself into a math house? Can it do so at the speed of a start-up? Yes. On both counts.

The above quotation is taken from a recent article in the Harvard Business Review by Ram Charan entitled How To Transform a Traditional Giant Into a Digital One. The article examines the leadership lessons to be learned from the digital transformation of GE, the only surviving member of the original Dow Jones Index of 1896, showing that it is indeed possible to transform a large, traditional business despite the many obstacles and barriers to be overcome. 

There are important lessons to be learned here.

Jim H

A new report from McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) shows that cross-border digital data flows, practically non-existent 15 years ago, now exert a larger impact on global GDP growth than trade in goods.

The report, entitled 'Digital Globalization: The New Era of Global Flows', shows that the world is more connected than ever, but the nature of its connections has changed in a fundamental way.

As shown in the Infographic below, the amount of cross-border bandwidth used has grown 45 times larger since 2005. It is projected to increase by an additional nine times over the next five years as flows of information, searches, communication, video, transactions, and intra-company traffic continue to surge.

In addition to transmitting valuable streams of information and ideas in their own right, data flows enable the movement of goods, services, finance, and people. Virtually every type of cross-border transaction now has a digital component.

The new digital form of globalization has opened the door to developing countries, to small companies and start-ups, and to billions of individuals. Even the smallest firm can now compete with the largest multinational. Individuals can use global digital platforms to learn, find work, showcase their talent, and build personal networks. Digital platforms for both traditional employment and freelance assignments are beginning to create a more global labour market.

MGI’s analysis finds that over a decade, all types of flows acting together have raised world GDP by 10.1 percent over what would have resulted in a world without any cross-border flows. This value amounted to some $7.8 trillion in 2014 alone, and data flows account for $2.8 trillion of this impact. Both inflows and outflows matter for growth, as they expose economies to ideas, research, technologies, talent, and best practices from around the world.

You can access the full article here.

Jim H

A fascinating article on the way in which Airbnb uses Big Data and machine learning to guide 'hosts' on pricing and how to increase bookings. What they don’t teach you on Hospitality Masterclasses :-)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/06/05/how-airbnb-uses-big-data-and-machine-learning-to-guide-hosts-to-the-perfect-price/

As usual, all comments and feedback are very welcome.

Take care.

Jim H

Big Data is often heralded as a transformative force that will usher in a new era of data-driven decision making. However, many enterprises are finding themselves drowning in data, but with no better insight into the issues confronting their businesses, according to a new report from Forrester Inc.

A good summary of the report entitled “Digital Insights are the New Currency of Business" can be found at - Without Big Insight, Big Data Is Useless - CIO Today

As usual, all comments and feedback are very welcome.

Take care.

Jim H