McKinsey technology trends outlook 2024

Despite challenging overall market conditions in 2023, continuing investments in frontier technologies promise substantial future growth in enterprise adoption. Generative AI (gen AI) has been a standout trend since 2022, with the extraordinary uptick in interest and investment in this technology unlocking innovative possibilities across interconnected trends such as robotics and immersive reality. While the macroeconomic environment with elevated interest rates has affected equity capital investment and hiring, underlying indicators—including…

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Three Questions to Ask About Your Digital Strategy

Research Highlight Disrupt or adapt: Which is the best choice for your company? Here’s how to frame the decision. Murat Tarakci, Fabian J. Sting, Jan Recker, and Gerald C. Kane July 16, 2024 Reading Time: 8 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The Research The authors conducted numerous interviews and onsite observations during a period of six years at Australian retail chain Woolworths as it engaged in strategic competition…

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Weighing Digital Tradeoffs in Private Equity: Do Costly Upgrades Pay Off?

When private equity (PE) firms buy a company, they typically follow a standard playbook to create value—streamlining operations, restructuring debt, changing management, and cutting costs. However, as digital technologies and artificial intelligence allow companies to drive productivity and innovation, PE firms are discovering new sources of value creation, new research shows. Moreover, the PE industry itself has become more competitive as the number of PE firms grows, prompting firms to…

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Net-zero electrical heat: A turning point in feasibility

Electrifying heat production is not just good for the planet; it is also technically feasible and increasingly cost competitive. However, enduring perceptions of industrial heat as “difficult to electrify” have hindered progress toward the decarbonization of heat. Electrification can be an accessible and viable option to decarbonize most low- and medium-temperature heat needs across multiple sectors, including food and beverages, manufacturing, and chemicals. High-temperature heat electrification is also ongoing, as…

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Ceasing to be UK Tax Resident – Don’t Get it Wrong!

It is January 2025 and two people are sitting at the departure gate at Heathrow waiting for their (inevitably) delayed flight to the Bahamas. They start a conversation and talk about why they are flying to this Caribbean island. Person A, Mrs Sunseeker, explains to Person B, that she had lived in the UK for a long time as a resident “non-dom,” but that expected changes to the tax rules…

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Sparking curiosity through disagreement

What if instead of trying to win an argument, you aimed to truly understand your opponent? Imagine a world where disagreements were seen as opportunities to expand your own perspective and build empathy – a pathway to cultivating compassion, grace, and humility. This radical approach to conflict was at the heart of PHIL 3: Democracy and Disagreement, a spring quarter course taught by Debra Satz, the Vernon R. and Lysbeth…

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Nature stress test: Assessing exposure of five African banking systems

Africa is both heavily dependent on nature and experiencing rapid nature loss. Some 62 percent of African GDP is moderately or highly dependent on the services that nature provides and 70 percent of communities in sub-Saharan Africa depend on forests and woodlands for their livelihoods. In parallel, momentum is building in the African financial sector in response. This new joint report by McKinsey Sustainability and FSD Africa consolidates the findings…

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Flexport’s CEO on dealing with canal slowdowns

Founded in 2013, Flexport is a global supply chain technology platform and logistics provider. Flexport describes its technology platform as providing services “from factory floors to customer doors,” helping cargo owners manage and monitor end-to-end shipments via sea, air, rail, and road, with customs brokerage, direct-to-consumer fulfillment, wholesale distribution, and other services. In 2023, a year in which Flexport’s technology and services were used to move more than $32 billion…

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Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and Brand Building

Brian Kenny: On March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, launched a communications revolution with the phrase, "just set up my twttr" all lowercase. Little did he know that 15 years, hence almost to the day, those 16 characters would net him $2.9 million. More specifically, a digital image of this first ever tweet was sold at auction as an NFT or Non-Fungible Token. If you're not sure what…

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The Future of BRICS Countries in a Multipolar World: Humanitarian and Long-Term Dimensions

It is important that efforts be made in a more tangible and practical way to bolster our common humanity should we seek a shared destiny. Drawing upon the uneven distribution of knowledge competences, it could prove useful for the BRICS+ to utilise their capacities and capabilities in science and technology to provide information and technical solutions on a more socialised basis, Rasigan Maharajh writes.World history is characterised by geopolitical tensions,…

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Embedded finance: How banks and customer platforms are converging

Revenues from embedded finance (EF)—the delivery of financial products by nonfinancial entities within their broader offerings—could surpass €100 billion in Europe by the end of the decade, according to McKinsey forecasts. The distribution of financial products and services, such as loans and insurance, in third-party channels is gaining importance as technology and data allow for instant and seamless customer journeys, and customers increasingly expect to find financial services when and…

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AI Chatbots have shown they have an ‘empathy gap’ that children are likely to miss

When not designed with children’s needs in mind, Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have an “empathy gap” that puts young users at particular risk of distress or harm, according to a study.The research, by a University of Cambridge academic, Dr Nomisha Kurian, urges developers and policy actors to make “child-safe AI” an urgent priority. It provides evidence that children are particularly susceptible to treating AI chatbots as lifelike, quasi-human confidantes, and…

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A new approach to the growing problem of water affordability

Rising water prices are forcing many households in the United States to choose between rationing water or risking shutoff by leaving bills unpaid. A new study in Environmental Research Letters shows government agencies and water utilities may be underestimating the true number of households at risk of losing affordable access to basic water service – and offers a solution. “Water affordability is a growing problem and we need new tools…

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Make a Stronger Business Case for Sustainability

Topics Social Responsibility Sustainability Dan Page/theispot.com Leaders can’t escape the global imperative to reduce the contributions businesses make to environmental degradation, but deep down, many harbor doubts: Can a profit-driven organization also be sustainable? Pressure to grow revenue and control costs is constant. How can a leader feel confident in pursuing more sustainable choices and defending them to boards and shareholders sensitive to the often higher costs of greener approaches?…

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10 financial planning checks for unmarried couples

Protecting your financial position when you’re unmarried may be slightly more complicated. But with some careful checks you and your partner can take steps to ensure you’re not financially disadvantaged. Ed Read Cutting, our Director in Belgium, looks at the key areas to consider. More couples today are co-habiting or in same sex relationships, with marriage rates continuing to fall. As a result there are now 3.6 million unmarried couples…

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Can a family heirloom reduce Inheritance Tax?

Inheritance Tax is one of the most punishing elements in the UK tax system, and many families are keen to do everything they can to reduce or eliminate it. One of the options available is to use a family heirloom to offset an Inheritance Tax bill. Steve Wright, our Estates Director, explains what’s possible. When it comes to dealing with Estates, one of the main areas of concern is Inheritance…

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Aiming higher: Embedding ‘systematic ambition’ to drive UK corporate growth

Only 36 percent of the 500 largest companies in the United Kingdom are publicly listed, a marked shift that has been under way for many years, so a thorough understanding of today’s UK corporate landscape requires looking beyond the “UK plc”. Our research, which goes beyond publicly listed companies to consider the entire UK corporate landscape, indicates that top performers are more adept and purposeful in creating the conditions to…

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Three Lessons from Tech Layoffs on Building Career Agility

The wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley in the past two years is far from over. After a brutal 2023 that saw over 100,000 tech workers laid off in the United States, 2024 shows no signs of letting up.While the headlines are shocking, the human stories behind the numbers are just as important. How do tech professionals respond to layoffs? Do they view it as an opportunity for exploration or are they…

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Five ‘go live’ management lessons

The run up to hitting the deadline for go live can be stressful. Pressure from stakeholders, concerns about the budget or worries the project team will lose face are all key concerns. You might be launching a new product, pressing the green light on a new system or introducing a new service – but guaranteed, the eyes of the business will be on you and you need to get it…

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Quality As Designed

The key to sustained growth relies on an ability to innovate reliably and sustainably. At Skarbek, we are embarking on a journey to unravel the mystery behind what makes the best excel at this. Leveraging our experts’ vast experience and highlighting attributes from our Innovation Fitness Index, we aim to provide unique insights into some of the core factors impacting innovation success. Today’s article is focused on the specific Innovation…

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UPDATE: Texas Judge Swiftly Denies Plaintiffs’ Request to Expand Scope of Injunction in FTC Non-Compete Ban Case

In a rapid-fire response, the Ryan Court in the Northern District of Texas this morning denied Plaintiff and Plaintiff-Intervenors’ Expedited Motion for Limited Reconsideration of the Scope of Preliminary Relief, and Plaintiff and Plaintiff-Intervenors’ Motion for Expedited Consideration of their Motion for Limited Reconsideration of the Scope of Preliminary Relief (for more on these motions, see here). In a three-sentence Order, the Court provided no explanation except that Plaintiff and…

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Arizona’s Minimum Wage: Contrasting Ballot Measures Could Impact State Pay Rates

Quick Hits An advocacy organization recently submitted signatures to put forth a ballot measure to raise the state minimum wage to $18 per hour. Arizona voters will decide a separate ballot measure to alter way the minimum wage is calculated for tipped workers. If passed by voters, both measures would take effect immediately. Arizona voters appear poised to decide on two wage increases via voter ballot initiatives in November. Raise…

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Artificial intelligence outperforms clinical tests at predicting progress of Alzheimer’s disease

The team say this new approach could reduce the need for invasive and costly diagnostic tests while improving treatment outcomes early when interventions such as lifestyle changes or new medicines may have a chance to work best.Dementia poses a significant global healthcare challenge, affecting over 55 million people worldwide at an estimated annual cost of $820 billion. The number of cases is expected to almost treble over the next 50…

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The Perils of Personalized Pricing

Fixed prices for goods and services is a relatively recent invention. In the 19th century, Quaker merchants argued that haggling was morally wrong—it was unfair for two customers buying the same good to walk away having paid different amounts. John Wanamaker, a Quaker and the founder of Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s department store, took it one step further, inventing the price tag by writing a price on a rectangle of cardboard and…

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Connecting strategy, finance, and personal development: A conversation with Marjorie Lao

The CFO is a company’s “connector in chief.” No one else in the organization is more important for ensuring that strategy, financial controls, stakeholder management, technology, and personal development link together for value creation. Marjorie Lao, who served as the CFO of the LEGO Group—and before that, as CFO of the Norway-based public company Tandberg (now part of Cisco Systems)—managed these connections for more than a decade and is now…

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Taiwan hospital deploys AI copilot to lighten workloads for doctors, nurses and pharmacists

TAINAN, Taiwan – It’s a typically busy afternoon at Chi Mei Medical Center’s pharmacy department in this southern Taiwanese city. Staff in white coats work quickly, packing bottles and tablet strips, ready for the lines of patients waiting on the other side of the counter.    Since April, the pharmacists have been getting some help from a generative AI assistant, or copilot, built with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.     One click on…

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The business wants it all and they want it now

How does being in a state of constant change affect how organisations manage their portfolios of projects and programmes so they align to business goals and meet strategic objectives? Steve Clark, Head of UK Project Delivery, Valcon discusses. Technological advancement, business imperatives, regulatory diktats – the pressure on organisations to transform themselves to remain competitive and stay relevant is now greater than ever. The last five to ten years has seen a fundamental…

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3 Reasons Your Hiring Process is Too Lengthy and How to Fix it

Hiring the right person is essential, but a drawn-out hiring process can harm your organization more than you might realize. Missed opportunities, decreased productivity, and losing top candidates to competitors are just a few of the costly consequences. While being thorough in interviews is important, taking too long can be a major setback. If your organization is finding it difficult to fill positions or keeps losing great candidates to other…

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Russia’s Food Assistance to Africa and the Situation on the Global Grain Market

Having chosen The Formation of New Centres of Growth as the Cornerstone of a Multipolar World as its main theme for 2024, the St Petersburg International Economic Forum featured discussions on a wide range of international development matters. The western sanctions against Russia placed food security among the challenges the world is facing today. The President of Russia announced the key objectives in terms of developing agriculture. The first one…

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Will AI Help or Hurt Sustainability? Yes

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 Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images The proverbial ship of artificial intelligence is moving ahead at warp speed, icebergs and societal risks be damned. The pace of change in what it can do is staggering. Breathless predictions say AI will add trillions of dollars to the…

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Enlist AI in your fight against email overload

Consider this: according to our 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report, email overload remains a persistent issue for Microsoft 365 users—85 percent of emails are read in under 15 seconds, and the typical person reads four emails for every one they send. But users can’t simply declare email bankruptcy. For most people, emails still contain vital information and updates—but wow, do the messages pile up fast. What is the opportunity…

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Name Protection Rights: Toto, more than a stage name

By PI order of December 27, 2023, the IP Specialized Division of the Court of Rome provided some interesting remarks regarding the legitimacy of name protection rights when using a third-party stage name as a company name, insignia, and de facto trade mark. In particular, the Court has ordered an Italian pizzeria to remove all references to the name of the famous Italian actor. Totò (Antonio Griffo Focas Flavio Angelo…

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A low-tech, inexpensive way to convince politicians to debate

Debates can play an important role in democratic elections. They educate voters and give politicians a chance to set themselves apart from their opponents. Yet it’s not always easy to get candidates to agree to face off with each other. That poses a problem in countries like Sierra Leone, where voters do not have many sources of election information. In 2012, an NGO in the small West African nation ran…

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The Results of Foreign Policy Season: A Multipolar Whirlpool

On July 10, 2024, the Valdai Club hosted an expert discussion, titled “Russia in the World: Results of the Foreign Policy Season 2023-2024”. Moderator Ivan Timofeev called this season quite eventful. He highlighted the emergence of the concept of a Eurasian security structure in Russian foreign policy philosophy, the expansion of BRICS, Vladimir Putin’s visits to the DPRK and Vietnam, deepening interaction with Iran, joint exercises with China, Russia's presence…

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Bends in the East: Russian Policy in Asia Becomes More Flexible

It is now most promising for Russia in Asia to focus on dialogue with individual countries in the region, taking into account the interests of each of them and its own. But strengthening relations at the country level is a matter of painstaking work by diplomats and business, of little interest from the point of view of public policy and the media, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Timofei Bordachev. The…

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Helping boards manage geopolitical risk with Jon Huntsman Jr.

Assisting management in navigating today’s geopolitical complexity has become one of boards’ most important and difficult tasks. In this episode of the Inside the Strategy Room podcast, Ziad Haider, Celia Huber, and Jon Huntsman Jr. discuss how boards can address this challenge. Huntsman spent nearly two decades in US public service at the state, national, and international levels in roles including deputy assistant secretary of commerce for Asia and US ambassador…

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Cambridge experts bust myths about family, sex, marriage and work in English history

Sex before marriage was unusual in the past – Myth! In some periods, over half of all brides were already pregnant when they got married.The rich have always outlived the poor –Myth! Before the 20th century the evidence for a survival advantage of wealth is mixed. In England, babies of agricultural labourers (the poorest workers) had a better chance of reaching their first birthday than infants in wealthy families, and life expectancy…

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Don’t Sacrifice Employee Upskilling for Productivity

Intense monitoring of individual output doesn’t lead to more productive employees and can limit workers’ professional growth. Stacia Garr and Priyanka Mehrotra July 10, 2024 Reading Time: 4 min  Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images Reports that U.S. productivity was up 3% in the fourth quarter of 2023 were seen as good news for the economy. But to understand what’s really happening — and avoid the perils of misplaced confidence…

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In the long run: What leaders can learn from an Olympic gold medalist

Alistair Brownlee, two-time Olympic gold medalist, four-time triathlon world champion, three-time Ironman winner, and bestselling author, isn’t one to shy away from making a mantra his own: “If you want to achieve something no one has achieved before, you have to approach the challenge in a way no one has before.” In a keynote fireside chat at the Unleashing Disruptive Growth event in Barcelona, Alistair sat down with McKinsey’s Philipp…

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