Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.

In the Navy Now: New Project Highlights Digital Twin Potential

Jason Radel
To demonstrate the degree to which digital twins are becoming a powerful tool, this Advisor examines a digital twin framework that was used to create, adjust, and deploy a digital twin of a NATO member’s naval ship. The tool can be used for training, engineering, and operational activities.

What Does the SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision Mean for Corporate DEI?

Rohini Anand
The US Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action has prompted concern among DEI leaders. In this Advisor, I address several of these issues and offer some thoughts based on my experience leading DEI transformation efforts.

Monetary Impact Accounts: A Proactive Currency for Better ESG Reporting

Robert Zochowski, Ryan Daulton
Proactive measurement and management of consumer product impacts can minimize the risks of running afoul of social expectations and enable analysis and decision-making alongside financial metrics by translating those impacts into units of currency we call “monetary impact accounts.” This Advisor takes a closer look at this new way of capturing a more complete view of corporate ESG activities.

Are Enterprises Addressing GAI’s Privacy, Security & Ethical Concerns?

Curt Hall
Make no bones about it, data privacy/security and the ethical/responsible use of generative AI (GAI) are hot-button issues. But to what extent are enterprises actually taking steps to address these concerns as they rapidly adopt GAI? In a recent Cutter survey, we asked organizations this key question.

Looking for Talent? It’s Time to Adjust Your Lens

Linda Patterson
As a woman of color, it is important that when I consider employment with your organization, I see representations of myself in roles across the spectrum — including at the senior level. I’m not suggesting that job qualifications are irrelevant, of course, but I’m asking you to adjust your lens to look past gender and color for talent. Better still, look at women of color and recognize that your organization is in need of their talent.

Understanding the Climate-Related Information Disclosure Landscape

Cynthia Clark
How a company handles environmental concerns — or crises — is central to what it stands for, and it’s becoming increasingly divisive. Not surprisingly, it seems every major country is focused on how environmental information should be disclosed to stakeholders, with a focus on climate-related information. For many years, companies have been presented with a patchwork of conflicting rules and requirements, making it hard to compare them, even within an industry. Executives and boards have been calling for the multiple prevailing standard-setters to not only consolidate but to do so on a global scale. This Advisor examines the landscape of climate-related information disclosure.

Healthcare’s Transformation Requires a Shift from “Digital” to “Data-Driven”

Mario Nico, Dario Garante, Katia Valtorta, Ulrica Sehlstedt, Vikas Kharbanda
During the next decade, the healthcare industry will undergo a profound transformation as many important technologies, including AI, reach mainstream adoption. Clinical workflow will become more agile by virtue of AI and advanced analytics that automate decision-making processes. The emergence of these technologies requires a transformation from mere digital health to data-driven healthcare given the fundamental role of data in automated decision-making.

How One Company Emerged from Crisis Stronger Than Ever

Yuriy Adamchuk
In this Advisor, Avenga CEO Yuriy Adamchuk delves into repercussions from an actual, ongoing war — in Ukraine. Avenga has 11 offices and 1,300 professionals in the country, and, knowing the risks of an attack (based on the 2014 invasion and subsequent expert predictions of escalation), the company developed its Service Endurance Plan.

Transparent Disclosure: Americans Want More of It from Companies

Rachael Doubledee, Matthew Nestler, KelleyFrances Fenelon
Last year, we conducted six focus groups, each containing seven participants and a moderator, to discuss topics related to just business behavior by the largest public corporations in America. Participants said that honest, transparent disclosures affect how positively or negatively consumers and shareholders value the company. This Advisor takes a closer look at the issue of corporate transparency.

3 Strategies to Help Tech Firms Navigate Geopolitical Storms

Douglas Fuller
This Advisor explores three strategies tech companies can employ to avoid being damaged in the current atmosphere of treacherous geopolitics: lobbying, bandwagoning, and corporate de-risking. While some policymakers and pundits may view these strategies as violating the ideals of economic efficiency, new geopolitical realities dictate more corporate flexibility in pursuing healthy bottom lines.

Exit Strategy Management: The First Decision Is a Financial One

Klaus Meyer, Saul Estrin
A leader’s decision to leave a foreign country requires complex financial, operational, and ethical considerations. First, the financial analysis of the operation under scrutiny must be adjusted to account for losses incurred elsewhere in the global organization. This Advisor takes a closer look at this initial step in an exit strategy decision tree.

Minimizing the Carbon Footprint with a Focus on Scope 3 Emissions

Alex Saric
Scope 3 sources (GHGs produced by external suppliers and customer activities) represent the largest opportunity to lower emissions, making up at least 70% of overall emissions for most industries. As such, companies that are serious about minimizing their carbon footprint must focus strongly on Scope 3.

Enterprises Keen on Adopting Large Language Models, but Issues Exist

Curt Hall
This Advisor examines results from a recent Cutter Consortium survey on enterprise adoption of generative artificial intelligence. Based on our survey findings, approximately one-third of organizations currently indicate they plan to integrate large language models into their own applications, while nearly half are taking a wait-and-see approach.

How Can Tech Leaders Accelerate Value from the Cloud?

Myles Suer
How can technology leaders accelerate the delivery of business value from the cloud? What inhibits cloud adoption and cloud projects? Myles Suer recently posed these questions to a group of CIOs; this Advisor shares the insights gleaned from that conversation.

Decarbonizing the Aviation Industry

Brett Oakleaf, Scott Cary, Darin Meeker, Doug Arent, John Farrell, Marc Day, Robert McCormick, Zia Abdullah, Stanley Young, Jaquelin Cochran, Chris Gearhart
The aviation industry is committed to achieving decarbonization by continuing energy-efficiency efforts and introducing sustainable fuels and new types of aircraft. As we explore in this Advisor, this decarbonization will require steady, transformational growth.

Enhancing Data Analytic Capabilities in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing

Hossein Sahraei, Ramila Peiris, Olivier Moureau, Natalija Jovanovic
This Advisor explores how a data science team at Sanofi began an initiative to move toward prescriptive analytics. It sought to increase timely process monitor­ing and diagnosis and to move from a reactive to a proactive mode of operation that would enhance data analytics capabilities and increase efficiencies.

Digital Era Risk Requires a New Set of Rules

Noah Barsky
This Advisor presents three rules that can help business leaders manage digital era risk: (1) question analytics, (2) don’t excuse technological glitches, and (3) promote business acumen, not digital transformation.

A Framework for Achieving Nature Positive Business Goals

Eva Zabey, Erin Billman
Business for Nature, along with the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN) and several other partners, provides a framework called High-Level Business Action on Nature. As we explore in this Advisor, the framework offers an overview of key actions companies can take to help reverse nature loss and contribute to a nature positive world.

Improving IT Productivity for Faster Business Transformation

Myles Suer
The productivity of IT matters to just about everyone within the ecosystem IT touches. This includes marketing, finance, service, and HR. So, what are the greatest IT productivity limiters, and what should your IT leaders do to eliminate them and enable your business to transform faster? This Advisor provides some answers.

Reducing Methane: Cutting-Edge Developments in the Fossil Fuel Sector

Curt Hall
In Part III of this Advisor series on reducing methane emissions, we uncover new developments for mitigating methane in the fossil fuel sector.

Digital Twin Technology: Enabling Transformation in the Defense Industry

Alexander Weber
This Advisor discusses the use of digital twins in radar systems and how this technology enables the digital transformation of the defense industry. This is a good example of using digital twins to simulate products that are costly to build (especially if they are built incorrectly) and their use in addressing compliance requirements.

Equity & Equality Start with the Right Workplace Culture

Eli Doster
Eli Doster shares that having a broken culture was not only terrible for staff at his company, it was also costly and had a negative impact on business. Five years ago, the company lacked values employees could believe in, which affected their decisions and actions. Furthermore, the company lacked “diversity of cultures, ethnicity, and perspective.”

How Vertical Farming Can Contribute to Biodiversity: 3 Guiding Principles

Stefania Pizzirani, Robert Newell, Alesandros Glaros, Saeed Rahman, Lenore Newman
Food systems are highly interlinked, from production to distribution to consumption, and there are significant social, cultural, economic, environmental, and political factors that interact with those processes. Understanding how vertical agriculture fits within these larger food systems is critical to advancing more sustainable food production. This Advisor presents three guiding principles for how vertical agriculture businesses can contribute to biodiversity conservation.

Next-Level Banking with Modular Architecture

Daniel Gozman, Jonas Hedman
Modular architecture allows banks to build their value propositions into services, functionalities, and raw data while enabling new distribution and service creation. This Advisor describes a two-dimensional framework that shows how modular architecture enables four distinct roles (integrator, producer, distributor, and platform) to emerge and revolutionize traditional banking.

The Datapreneurs: A Must-Read for CIOs on Their Data Technology Journey

Myles Suer

The recently published book The Datapreneurs is an unusual read. Author Bob Muglia, a former Microsoft executive, former President of Snowflake, and a venture investor, says his new book is “part memoir and part history of the people and technologies that made the data analytics era possible.” And I would add, it is part what people in futures research call a “reference projection.” In this case, it is a reference projection for data, analytics, humanity, and artificial intelligence (AI).