As Uber seeks to resume testing self-driving cars on the road seven months after one of its prototypes killed a pedestrian, debate and discussion will likely turn to whether the technology is trustworthy. Joining Uber in trialing autonomous vehicles are fellow Silicon Valley tech companies Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Tesla and Waymo, as well as traditional automakers…
What are the biggest obstacles to driving your company’s transformation? Too often, leaders think of the barriers purely in terms of technical or strategic issues. But Nathan Furr, INSEAD professor and world-renowned innovation expert, argues that the real problem has more to do with basic aspects of human psychology – fear, habit and lack of imagination….
What is the biggest obstacle to large companies innovating and disrupting their industries? It may be perception. In an era where entrepreneurs are romanticized, we have become conditioned to believe that innovation begins and ends with small startups. Gary Pisano, the Harry E. Figgie Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a renowned authority…
By Brian Sherry October 17, 2018 The perceived impact of digital currencies has so far been limited to the ups and downs of Bitcoin and similar innovations on the world market. Media is overloaded with stories of rapid rises, bubbles and sudden drops in value. But the real story is in the transformative technology that enables these currencies to exist…
In corporate boardrooms and leading business schools, the question of for whom a publicly traded company is supposed to work has a simple answer: its shareholders. But a single-minded focus on maximizing shareholder value at almost any cost is responsible for much of what is wrong with our current economy, from the wealthy disproportionately benefitting…
Much of modern American society is designed around the car, and the trend toward greater density and urbanization requires new ways of thinking about transportation, traffic patterns and parking space. The challenge? Life in densely-populated areas does not always include a personal vehicle. It’s in this gap – between existing product options and people’s needs…
How does a company deal with constant innovation and disruption? The answer, says Dunkin’ Brands CEO Nigel Travis, is to embrace the “challenge culture.” Having been Chief Operations Officer at Blockbuster, Travis knows firsthand the risks of failing to anticipate imminent change and push back against the status quo. “The world used to seem static and…
The CEO is the primary decision-maker and focal point of any company, with responsibilities ranging from long-term strategy to crisis management. Success or failure of the entire enterprise depends on the CEO’s leadership. While many leading executives have an abundance of support to complete a number of their tasks, one important resource remains a scarcity: time….
By Brian Sherry June 20, 2018 Elon Musk recently made an admission that isn’t entirely in keeping with our tech-crazy times: “Humans are underrated.” Musk was speaking of the problems he experienced at his Tesla electric car factory after becoming overly reliant on artificial intelligence (AI) rather than human workers. In theory, AI boosts productivity and profit margins…
We have come a long way from the days when losing an arm or leg meant a permanent handicap. Modern bionic technology allows people who lose limbs to not only walk, run, climb, or do anything else they did before, but do it better. And still, this new generation of bionic humans are missing one element that…
By Brian Sherry June 6, 2018 If you think you can avoid the perils of data hacking and cyberattacks by logging off the internet, you’re sorely mistaken. We now live in the era of the “Internet of Things” – devices ranging from home assistants and smartphones to coffee makers and lightbulbs – that are digitally connected…
Each year, renowned business experts Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen release their World’s Most Innovative Companies list in Forbes, revealing the firms at the cutting-edge of their industries and most likely to change the world. In their 2018 list published this week, Dyer and Gregersen name ServiceNow, Workday and Salesforce.com as the top three. What do these powerhouses have in common? They are at…
How do we solve the world’s problems? Rana el Kaliouby, inventor, artificial intelligence expert, and co-host of PBS’ new series “NOVA Wonders” argues that the most pressing global issues increasingly require technological solutions. “The way to solve problems in the world is to become scientists and technologists, build things that have never been built before and…
The human brain is still largely a mystery to the medical world, but scientific prodigy Dr. Ed Boyden is working to change that reality. A neuroengineer and professor at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute, Boyden is reinventing the way we study the brain. But this isn’t just a story about new advances in…
As early as 1931, Winston Churchill said, “[In the future] we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing, by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium.” Fast forward to 2018: A growing human population now in the billions is demanding more meat. To keep up,…
Scientist Andrew Hessel is building a machine to kill cancer cells. For most scientists, eradicating cancer would be the crowning achievement of a lifetime of work, enough to put them on the list of the most impactful scientific minds in history. But for Hessel, this is just the beginning of what he plans to do with biology and technology. He’s…
Digital technology has helped transform every industry, except for health care, which remains slow-moving, costly and inefficient. Legendary performance management and strategy execution expert Robert S. Kaplan, co-developer of both the balanced scorecard and activity-based costing, has been working to implement accurate costing and improved performance management approaches to health care organizations. Recently he examined what…
By Brian Sherry April 17, 2018 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in the Congressional hot seat last week as he answered for the platform’s sharing of the private data of an estimated 87 million users with an ethically dubious political consulting firm. Digital technology expert, futurist and Harvard Law School Professor Jonathan Zittrain writes in an op-ed for the New…
