Advisor

Jeremy Blain

New global research from over 2,100 leaders reveals a critical execution gap — “digital detachment” — where senior leadership overestimates progress while failing to align culture, data use, and customer-centricity. Although many leaders express confidence and progress is evident, transformation efforts falter without a shared purpose, cultural alignment, and effective data-driven decision-making. The Advisor underscores the urgent need for leaders to shift from acknowledging challenges to taking decisive action that embeds transformation into the organization’s DNA.

Advisor

Hamdy Abdelaty, Jakob Pohlisch

Lusatia is undergoing a major transformation as part of Germany’s Energiewende, which aims for climate neutrality by 2045. Central to this transition is the Energy Innovation Center (EIZ) at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. Funded by the German government, EIZ drives regional structural change through interdisciplinary research, technology development, and open innovation. EIZ is developing sustainable, intelligent energy systems to replace coal. Its innovation hub, EIZ SPARK, accelerates commercialization, positioning Lusatia as a model for a just and future-ready energy transition.

Advisor

Denis Dennehy

With the business analytics market expected to double by 2033, organizations must move beyond descriptive and diagnostic analytics to predictive and prescriptive approaches that enable smarter decision-making, efficiency gains, and strategic agility in an increasingly data-driven world. This Advisor explores the evolving role of business analytics in transforming raw data into actionable insights that drive organizational value.

Advisor

Noah Barsky

As businesses navigate the fast-approaching 2030 horizon, executives and boards must confront a complex mix of digital era opportunities and risks. Emerging technologies like AI offer powerful levers for innovation, efficiency, and growth — but they also bring challenges. In this Advisor, Cutter Fellow Noah Barsky looks at effective digital leadership tactics for the next five years.

Advisor

Cynthia Clark

This Advisor explores the shifting landscape of corporate responsibility, tracing its evolution from traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) to broader frameworks like environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and beyond. Amid increasing pressure from stakeholders — particularly younger generations — companies are being called to integrate ethical, environmental, and societal considerations into their core operations, governance, and long-term value creation.

Advisor

Tim Giuliani

Orlando, Florida, is leveraging cutting-edge 3D technology to drive economic and community development through one of the world’s most comprehensive regional digital twins. Spanning 800 square miles, the model recreates 40 square miles in high fidelity and is used by the Orlando Economic Partnership to attract businesses to the region. This Advisor looks at this interactive tool, which integrates data on demographics, infrastructure, and amenities, offering immersive experiences via tablets and VR headsets.

Advisor

Andriy Rozhdestvensky, Sofiya Opatska, Gerard Seijts

In this Advisor, we explore the vital connection between leadership and purpose, using Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a powerful example. Amid the Russia-Ukraine war, Zelenskyy’s resolve, communication, and ability to inspire unity have rallied Ukrainians and earned global support. We argue that in times of crisis, deeply rooted trust and purpose-driven leadership are essential for resilience and survival.

Advisor

Santosh Kumari, Athula Ginige, Sanju Saharan

This Advisor explores how sustainable farming practices can enhance climate resilience and food security in northwest India. It highlights the shift away from harmful methods like crop residue burning toward conservation agriculture techniques such as zero tillage. It also emphasizes the urgent need for policy support, public investment, and farmer-led adaptation strategies to ensure a sustainable and equitable agricultural future in the face of escalating climate change.

Article

Margaret O'Gorman, Frank Werner

This issue of Amplify, the second in a two-part series, moves outside the company into nature and explores unifying efforts to address climate, community, and biodiversity. It also examines how a nature-centered approach can direct action that has meaning and impact.

Article

Dan Salas, Caroline Hernandez

Dan Salas and Caroline Hernandez illustrate how existing nature positive programs can be the best choice for companies at certain maturity levels in their nature engagements. Across the world, there are countless such programs, and the authors focus on a particularly successful approach: the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group (ROWHWG) at the University of Illinois Chicago. This group of practitioners, academics, and corporations has developed and deployed the largest multi-stakeholder conservation agreement in the US.

Article

Catherine Drumheller, Matthew Ling, Laura Lawlor

Catherine Drumheller, Matthew Ling, and Laura Lawlor describe an approach for valuing the benefits of nature to ensure investments are made in the most economical and impactful ways. The authors identify six categories of benefits that can be realized from nature-based solutions, and those benefits are associated with indicators and criteria that provide a screening tool for project designers. This tool can be used to develop scores using standard ecosystem accounting principles and other methods to measure impacts on human and nature communities.

Article

Charlie Briggs

Charlie Briggs unifies science-based targets and reporting requirements to show that adopting such targets can satisfy current and pending reporting while allowing companies to use targets to take action, build institutional knowledge and capacity in nature, secure buy-in and funding for future nature-related needs, and enhance stakeholder relationships with credible targets that can be openly communicated. The article uses examples from business and other sectors to show the future-focused benefits of adopting science-based targets that contribute to business resilience.

Article

Enrique Castro Leon, Katrina Pugh, Jose Zero

Enrique Castro-Leon, Katrina Pugh, and Jose Zero take another approach to supporting business resilience. They believe we need a carbon-accounting system that is clear, credible, transparent — and can stretch along supply chains and be compared across businesses. Starting with US generally accepted accounting practices, the authors advocate for an approach based on the accrual method to provide a more accurate picture across time and promote the idea that carbon investments in impermanent solutions like forest planting should be accounted for just like a commodity with a value that changes depending on circumstances.

Article

Margaret Waldock, Jonathan Wagar, David Jeffrey Ringer

A net benefit for nature is central to the activities happening at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey, USA, a campus-like setting in a peri-urban landscape. Margaret Waldock, Jonathan Wagar, and David Jeffrey Ringer describe how Duke Farms addressed greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and carbon sequestration using a science-based approach that supported the location’s strategic objectives with smart decision-making and an authentic discussion of trade-offs.

Advisor

Curt Hall

Cutter Expert Curt Hall explores small language models (SLMs), which are gaining attention for their ability to deliver advanced AI capabilities with lower computational costs than LLMs. Optimized for efficiency, SLMs excel in domain-specific applications like customer service, healthcare, finance, and retail, where real-time processing and reduced resource consumption are key.

Advisor

Amit Vikram, Vikram Agarwal

This Advisor explores the real-world implementation of a change management office (CMO) and highlights key phases of execution, success metrics, and the challenges organizations face in establishing a CMO. While a well-structured CMO can drive alignment, efficiency, and adoption, overcoming resistance, resource constraints, and operational silos is essential.

Advisor

Armand Smits

This Advisor introduces the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP), a key industry initiative supporting the European Green Deal. With a structured governance model and ongoing collaboration with the European Commission, the CNDCP drives the data center industry toward climate neutrality by 2030.

Advisor

Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, Michael Papadopoulos

In this Advisor, ADL’s Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, and Michael Papadopoulos question whether AI will deliver on its promised productivity gains. While GenAI has surged in prominence, real-world efficiency improvements remain elusive. To maximize AI’s potential, leaders must take a strategic, human-centric approach — analyzing how AI can enhance key roles while preserving the professional skills needed to harness it effectively.

Advisor

Jim Brosseau

This Advisor explores the deep connection between organizational culture, leadership, and power dynamics. It highlights how cultures often develop unintentionally, reinforcing existing leadership behaviors — both good and bad. While many organizations rely on coercive or reward-based power, a shift toward collaborative and participatory leadership fosters adaptability and long-term success.

Advisor

Brian van Laar, Angela Greco, Hilde Remøy, Vincent Gruis, Mohammad Hamida

In this Advisor, we explore how AI is transforming adaptive reuse decision-making. The Reincarnate project integrates AI tools with traditional scenario methods and participatory workshops to develop 15 circular building reuse scenarios. Leveraging ChatGPT-4 for narrative insights and DALL-E for visualizations, these scenarios enhance early design stages, align stakeholder priorities, and support more informed policy and project decisions.