When Southwest Airlines suffered a post-holiday meltdown in December 2022, the trigger was a bout of adverse weather. But the storm hit Southwest harder than it did most airlines. The company’s outdated computer systems collapsed, and years of underinvestment in technology, particularly staff scheduling systems, led to more than 16,700 flight cancellations over the holiday travel period. Amid the chaos, an executive’s memo demanding proof of illness for the use…
My organization urgently needs to execute a new strategic initiative, but I’m not confident that my current staff members have the skills and drive required. How can I field a championship team when I don’t have any all-star players? It’s easy for managers to succumb to a scarcity mentality and believe that their people aren’t good enough — but it’s important not to nurture this mindset. When we look closely…
When Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer of deep learning, quit Google recently, he made it clear that he is worried about the risks of artificial intelligence. He is not alone. Following the launch of ChatGPT-4, thousands of artificial intelligence experts signed a letter calling for a pause in the development of more-powerful AI systems. On the other hand, excitement about the opportunities arising from large language models (LLMs) and their speed…
Deep tech — the innovative use of emerging physical technologies enabled by digital technologies to solve large-scale problems — has the potential to create transformative growth opportunities for businesses. By tapping into these advanced technologies, leaders are better positioned to address large-scale problems and reshape entire markets. Consider the impact of synthetic biology; by 2030, this rapidly advancing field could affect industries that account for as much as 30% of…
Sooner or later, most successful companies face the challenge of updating a cherished old product. Make no changes, and you risk becoming irrelevant to new customers. Change too much, and you may alienate your most loyal customers. So how do you leverage a historically strong brand with sensitivity to heterogeneous customer preferences? To explore this question, we studied Italian opera companies, which face this dilemma every season. Many of the…
Companies worldwide are launching interventions to create innovative organizational cultures that support effective responses to shifts in their business environments. But many well-intentioned programs aimed at cultural change fail to affect employees in a meaningful way, leaving organizations unfit for transformation despite having invested hundreds or even thousands of employee hours. Unlike most types of culture initiatives, a skills-based approach can more effectively infuse new culture components into scale-ups and…