The current tax year ends on 5 April 2024 with the 2024/25 tax year kicking off a day later. With the end of the tax year approaching, it’s a good idea to begin to plan what you need to do to ensure your taxes are in good shape. Peter Webb,…
In 2023, global beauty market retail sales grew to $446 billion, up 10 percent from 2022. In the year since the release of our inaugural state of beauty report, published in collaboration with The Business of Fashion in May 2023, the industry—comprising fragrance, makeup, skin care, and hair care—beat expectations…
Anuj Shrestha The Research The authors first studied openly accessible documents concerning the COVAX initiative to understand the organization’s functions, vaccine procurement process, and allocation framework. They then conducted semi-structured interviews online with representatives of COVAX stakeholders, including pharma companies, public health organizations, NGOs, and grant-making organizations. Informants were selected…
Engage students with interactive Hispanic Heritage Month lessons that highlight the rich heritage and impactful leadership of Hispanic figures. As we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in the US from September 15 to October 15 each year, Microsoft is committed to honoring and amplifying the voices and contributions of the Hispanic…
For decades, the Business Roundtable, a professional association and lobbying organization formed by CEOs from many of the largest companies in the United States, asserted that companies exist to create value for shareholders. So, it was noteworthy when, in 2019, the leaders of 181 companies signed onto the organization’s revised…
Enterprises are looking to Global capability centers (GCCs) as critical innovation hubs to stay ahead in the competitive landscape, but the difficulty lies in aligning strategic priorities with the capabilities of GCCs to maximize their impact. In this episode of McKinsey Talks Operations, host Daphne Luchtenberg is joined by McKinsey…
The business transformations that generative AI brings come with risks that AI itself can help secure in a kind of flywheel of progress. Companies who were quick to embrace the open internet more than 20 years ago were among the first to reap its benefits and become proficient in modern…
The tools we now have to identify trends and shifts in such data are allowing us to develop crucial insights into the effects that human activity is having, and will have, on the natural world. Professor Joss Wright, Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Programme on Wildlife Trade If companies…
As many of you already know, and for those CEOs of small public companies that do not know, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been investigating the convertible toxic note industry for a few years and has recently filed several high profile enforcement actions against several of…
The Four Guardrails That Enable Agility Nick van der Meulen Key Insight: Defining constraints can help large companies foster employee autonomy and agility while maintaining organizational and strategic alignment. Top Takeaways: Organizational agility requires that employees be empowered to make fast decisions, take risks, and consider new ideas, but companies…
Understanding dilution is crucial for founders, particularly as they seek investment and scale their businesses. When high-growth companies attract investor capital, some level of dilution is expected. So here are five essential points every founder should know about dilution. 1. Definition and Impact What is Dilution: Dilution occurs when a…
The statistics for the University of Cambridge are available on the website as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and openness around the use of animals in research.This coincides with the publication of the Home Office’s report on the statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in Great Britain in 2023. The…
Topics Column Our expert columnists offer opinion and analysis on important issues facing modern businesses and managers. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Business doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Sometimes external conditions exert a much larger force than usual. That is certainly the case today, with political and environmental…
On September 4, 2024, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law an amendment to New York’s warranty reimbursement statute, N.Y. Veh. & Traf. Law § 465, requiring manufacturers to compensate dealers for labor using the “reasonable” time allowances contained in third-party labor time guides “reasonably utilized” by dealers for customer-pay…
Quick Hits A recent decision from the NLRB found that consent orders undermine the NLRB general counsel’s prosecutorial authority and fail to facilitate a mutual resolution of labor disputes. For now, the NLRB will no longer accept consent orders, which are settlement terms unilaterally proposed by a respondent (typically an…
Together with Oracle, we’re announcing upgrades to Oracle Database@Azure, giving customers the ability to run or build new cloud applications that combine Oracle Database services with native Microsoft Azure services and benefit from extremely low latency and high performance. This blog is co-authored by Kambiz Aghili, Vice President, Oracle Cloud…
AI can help you become a better writer, coder, and researcher. But can the powerful technology boost business acumen and economic performance?Sort of, says a recent study. An experimental artificial intelligence (AI) mentor designed to answer business questions from Kenyan entrepreneurs helped some become more successful—but led others down the…
A decision driven by pragmatic considerations… The problems afflicting Jakarta include overpopulation, pollution, subsidence and flooding. With 12 million people living there – 30 million if you include the entire metropolitan area – Jakarta is overpopulated. It’s one of the world’s most densely populated cities, with more than 16,000 people…
Joan Tabachnick ’86 has worked in the field of child sexual abuse prevention for more than 30 years and developed widely used educational tools and programs. She serves on the advisory council of Stop It Now, and recently retired as the executive director of MASOC—the Massachusetts Society for a World…
Radar Research finds that companies have been slow to adopt generative AI and that the technology’s labor impacts have not been widely felt. Kaushik Viswanath September 09, 2024 Reading Time: 2 min Topics Data, AI, & Machine Learning AI & Machine Learning Radar Brief insights on emerging trends in management…
Quick Hits The right to switch off would give workers the right to not have to engage with work correspondence (including emails, phone calls, and work-based messaging services) outside their contracted working hours. This right is intended to give “workers and employers the opportunity to have constructive conversations and work…
With stricter domestic violence laws being introduced, a common question being asked is whether financial abuse is a crime. While this has previously been seen in the context of family law proceedings, the introduction of coercive control as a criminal offence has expanded the consequences of financial abuse. This is…
On September 9, the Valdai Discussion Club presented the report “Neither East, Nor West: How Iran’s Economy Copes With Sanctions”. The discussion was moderated by Ivan Timofeev, the Club’s programme director, who noted that Iran remains one of the key cases for those studying the use of sanctions, and that…
Topics Radar Brief insights on emerging trends in management from the opening pages of MIT Sloan Management Review’s quarterly print magazine. More in this series subscribe-icon Subscribe Share Courtesy of Mathematica Akira Bell is senior vice president and CIO at Mathematica, a research and data analytics consultancy. Bell was a…
It was a brief dalliance, just a few weeks in length, over text and video only.The end of the affair was nonetheless just the beginning for Stephen Easterbrook, the McDonald’s CEO who went from being hailed as the company’s “savior” by doubling its share price in less than five years…
With climate change increasing seasonal temperatures and causing more frequent heatwaves, understanding these effects has become more crucial than ever. Hormones play a role in nearly all biological functions, yet the influence of environmental factors on hormone release and action is not well characterised. Researchers from the University of Oxford,…
According to McKinsey analysis, between 2023 and 2030, ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) and high-net-worth (HNW) families in the Asia–Pacific region are set to experience an intergenerational wealth transfer estimated at $5.8 trillion. UHNW families are expected to account for about 60 percent of the total wealth transfer (Exhibit 1), and many are…
In the current business landscape, artificial intelligence offers unprecedented opportunities for innovation and growth. Our experts answer the most common questions when it comes to developing an AI strategy to gain a competitive advantage. This article covers key considerations, potential risks and best practices for integrating AI into your business.…
One thing we’ve learned about AI at work: if you want to see true business transformation, you need to get a critical mass of your organization using the technology every day. And that means encouraging dozens, hundreds, thousands of people to build entirely new habits, which can be a start-and-stop…
Seeing what’s going on inside a body is never easy. While technologies like CT scans, X-rays, MRIs, and microscopy can provide insights, the images are rarely completely clear and can come with side effects like radiation exposure. But what if you could apply a substance on the skin, much like…
We’re starting to roll out AI Studio in the US as a place for people to create, share and discover AIs. Built with Llama 3.1, AI Studio lets anyone create and discover AI characters and allows creators to build an AI as an extension of themselves to reach more fans.…
Quantum computation is a rapidly maturing technology with significant disruptive potential. Over the last 4 years alone, the record number of stable qubits has grown by a factor of nearly 18×, with quantum computers used to demonstrate proof-of-concepts in finance, pharmaceuticals, and manufacturing – among other sectors. If this growth…
Segmentation – identifying which image pixels belong to an object – helps with tasks like analyzing scientific imagery or editing photos. Our original Segment Anything Model released last year inspired new AI-enabled image editing tools in our apps, such as Backdrop and Cutouts on Instagram. SAM has also catalyzed diverse…
The HR function plays an important—if often unrecognized—role in M&A. When it comes to bringing together separate businesses, structures, and cultures, “people make all the difference,” says Lisa Blair Davis, the global head of HR for Johnson & Johnson (J&J) MedTech. Davis has seen and helped drive substantial growth in…
Seyfarth Synopsis: Minnesota joins the growing number of states to adopt statewide legislation requiring employers to disclose starting salary ranges and other forms of compensation and benefits in postings for open positions. The law becomes effective January 1, 2025 and applies to employers with 30 or more employees within the…
This commentary originally appeared in Fortune. Writing in the journal Public Opinion 1951, Yale researchers Carl Hovland and Walter Weiss labeled their postwar studies on the trick of persuasive messaging regardless of the truth as “the sleeper effect.” They found that a message lingers through repetition, even if factually unfounded.…
Lasting performance improvements that establish a competitive advantage: What organization doesn’t want that? For a company undergoing transformation, cultivating employee “will” to change the way it operates is critical for success. Organizations that focus on generating this will, along with building critical skills, executing with rigor, and setting a holistic…
How bad is housing affordability in the U.S.? Is it actually a crisis? There are many ways to define housing affordability, but common indicators point to much higher costs of both owning and renting than what we have seen since pre-COVID times. Average home prices grew more than twice as…
On 14 April 2024, the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited published conclusions to its consultation on the enhancement of climate-related disclosures under its environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) framework. With effect from 1 January 2025, a new set of rules mandating climate-related disclosures (the “New Requirements”) will be added…
Quick Hits On September 4, 2024, Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law the New York Retail Worker Safety Act, a comprehensive measure intended to increase worker safety and address the hazard of workplace violence in retail settings. The act, which applies to retail employers with at least ten employees and…
