This Advisor presents two examples that illustrate how a new breed of business organizations is pushing beyond traditional boundaries by explicitly incorporating their understanding of nature into their strategies. These stories also demonstrate that a large-scale, system-level change toward more ecologically sustainable produc­tion systems is an evolutionary process, one that requires organizations to access as many sources of ecological knowledge as possible.

Companies can’t choose between growth and sustainability — they must have both. But what kind of technology-led business model transformations will ensure “sweet spots” between the pursuit of growth and sustainability?

Incorporating your customers’ reality into your product development processes via rigorous voice of the customer (VoC) solutions can help your company grow with significant and sustainable margins. In this Advisor, we explore various benefits and challenges of VoC solutions.

Businesses have strong reasons to focus on biodiversity. However, several fundamental issues need to be resolved to connect biodiversity to business, as we explore in this Advisor.

Examples of deep fakes range from videos of politicians or celebrities saying or doing things they never actually said or did and so-called “revenge porn” to fake photos of soldiers appearing to commit atrocities they didn't commit. However, as we explore in this Advisor, this trend is changing: hackers now use deep fake techniques to target commercial enterprises and government agencies for nefarious purposes.

Without question, complexity is a business inhibitor and slows down the wheels of business. But to be fair, not all business complexity is on IT’s shoulders. However, reducing the complexity instantiated by IT can dramatically improve business agility. And with agility, businesses can create the foundation to win in the digital world. In this Advisor, Myles Suer shares some CIO insights on reducing this business complexity.

In a recent webinar, Cutter Expert Helen Pukszta revealed how drone technology is being adopted and applied to contribute to the achievement of environmental sustainability goals, while also creating economic value. In this Advisor, we share the Q&A session that followed.

Effectively managing AI’s carbon footprint requires a shift to a system like regenerative capitalism or doughnut economics that does not emphasize continuous growth or increased consumption. However, the novel opportunities AI offers society make it difficult for many to accept the idea that data consumption related to AI must be managed. The 3Rs framework presents an alternate system grounded in regenerative capitalism and doughnut economics as a way to reduce the carbon footprint of data.

In a recent issue of Amplify, Torgeir Dingsøyr and his coauthors presented a teamwork effectiveness model aimed at co-located Agile development teams working on a single product. Since the publication of that issue, Dingsøyr has been asked to present the team effectiveness model to a number of organizations. In this Advisor, he addresses a recurring question from those experiences: how does the team effectiveness model adapt to post-pandemic work?

Drawing on the results of a recent ADL survey, this two-part Advisor series considers how companies are progressing in embedding sustainability into their strategy, governance, and organization. Here in Part II, we look at two other challenges uncovered by the survey, as well as lessons learned.

Explainable AI (XAI) is the discipline of going deeper within the AI system, identifying the reasoning behind the recommendations, verifying the data, and making the algorithms and the results transparent. XAI attempts to make the analytical recommendations of a system understandable and justifiable — as much as possible. Such explainability reduces biases in AI-based decisions, supports legal compliance, and promotes ethical decisions.

True strategy execution takes a village. To really succeed, we need to consider the entire process to move an idea into action — from innovation and strategy formulation through the delivery of results. A formalized and cohesive process is necessary to develop strategies, architect changes, plan initiatives, execute solutions, and measure success. It requires integrating many different teams and creating end-to-end transparency and accountability for the results.

Drawing on the results of a recent ADL survey, this two-part Advisor series considers how companies are progressing in embedding sustainability into their strategy, governance, and organization. Here in Part I, we look at two of the main challenges that companies face and how they can be best overcome.

In this Advisor, we identify a number of important trends involving the application of artificial intelligence (AI), big data analysis, collaboration, mobile, and other technologies in insurtech.

This Advisor explores 12 key leverage points for change within the New York City Waste system. Grouping the leverage points into broader buckets (low, medium, and high impact) gives us an uncomplicated categorization of solutions that tells us how much energy we should invest in supporting or opposing that solution.

In the shift toward data-driven healthcare, focusing only on new technologies is not sufficient. Indeed, how data is gathered and how stakeholders’ interests are managed can enable or hinder the transformation. This Advisor explores eight drivers of data-driven healthcare.

Teamwork effectiveness models are based on accum­ulated empirical observations and reasoned arguments, and identify and describe key factors necessary for effective teamwork. Our model, tailored for Agile practitioners, offers insights into effective Agile teamwork and explains how certain Agile practices support it.

This Advisor presents a mini case study to highlight the conflicts between market-based social activism and the traditional business model.

As we explore in this Advisor, machine vision systems employing machine learning and other artificial intelligence techniques are now bringing major benefits to automakers, dealers, and repair shops in the form of camera-based automated vehicle inspection systems.

In this Advisor, we discuss the idea that managers can and should use softer, psychological skills to build and maintain successful teams.

This Advisor commemorates World Environment Day 2022 by looking at the potential impact of the climate crisis and identifying promising options to address the worsening environmental problem.

This Advisor looks at the key roles that AI can play in cybersecurity operations: behavioral analytics, threat intelligence, ransomware attack detection, smart identity governance, strengthening security of cloud applications, online fraud detection, defending against deepfakes, and risk assessment.

We believe that a radical shift in MBA education is needed. Instead of transmitting existing knowledge or developing a set of functional skills, students must become comfortable with the process of thinking based on America’s unique contribution to the history of philosophy: pragmatism. 

The right hemi­sphere of the metaphoric brain of firms will track and reflect changes in its employees’ brains, so firms must introduce new practices requiring mastery of the right hemisphere. As that shift occurs, the negative conse­quences of the firm’s actions should begin to abate.