Exposure to Other Religions Could Help Stem Science Denial

Insights by Stanford Business, September 5, 2024

by Theodore Kinni


Researchers and educators should think about how scientific information will be perceived by people of different religions, says Yu Ding. | iStock/Aleksei Morozov/JakeOlimb/Rinat Khairitdinov

When someone rejects scientific findings that collide with their religion, it may be seen as a sign of their strongly held beliefs. Yet religiosity alone does not explain why some believers are skeptical of science. A multifaceted new study by Yu Ding, an assistant professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, finds that there is another strong predictor of science denial: how much exposure religious people have to members of other faiths.

As Ding reviewed studies of religious intensity and science denial, he found several unanswered questions. For instance, why don’t all religious people find their faith incompatible with science? Quakers and Jews often have strong religious convictions yet are well represented in the STEM disciplines. Likewise, why does individual religious intensity not account for geographic variations in levels of science denial? A Pew Research Center study found that 42% of Muslim respondents in Tunisia believe there is a “general conflict” between religion and science versus 16% of Muslim respondents in Morocco.

This led Ding, along with professors Gita Johar and Michael Morris of Columbia Business School, to examine a lack of religious diversity as a pathway to science denial. The trio hypothesized that science denial may arise from religious intolerance — an unwillingness to accept any view that contradicts the accepted dogma — and that intolerance may be the result of a lack of religious diversity within a particular area. Read the rest here.

 

Shopping for growth: How to build an urban retail destination

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PWC Strategy&, August 2024

by Makram Debbas, Ramy Sfeir, Sukalp Tipre, and Matteo Amici




As Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states pursue urban transformation and mega projects, they should seize the unrealized opportunity for growth in the retail sectors of their major cities. The region’s annual retail sales are expected to grow to US$300 billion by 2028, a 37 percent increase from 2022. With the right steps, these retail sectors can become global shopping destinations. That would allow retail to make a significant contribution to urban GDP and employment, while improving quality of life for residents and enhancing the offering to tourists.

The prospect of strong domestic retail growth, however, does not guarantee that GCC cities will become global shopping destinations. Indeed, the opposite could occur. Given the ease of foreign travel, rising GCC domestic demand could result in GCC shoppers seeking unique retail experiences outside the region. To prevent that, and to seize the growth opportunity, GCC cities should overcome two categories of challenges: supply issues, such as limited brand and assortment offerings, insufficient talent, and a lack of holistic shopping experiences; and enabling factor issues, such as fragile supply chains, underdeveloped customer and operational technologies, and cumbersome investment regulations.

Cities should create a governance entity that can articulate a compelling and differentiated retail vision and then build the required capabilities through six initiatives... read the rest here.

Open banking is a rich opportunity for GCC incumbent banks

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Finance Middle East, July 28, 2024

by Dr. Antoine Khadige, Nader Haddad, and Marwan Nadda



Banking in the GCC region is undergoing a significant transformation with the growing impact of regulatory-led open banking initiatives. The Central Bank of Bahrain is preparing to enter the second phase of its open banking plan. Saudi Arabia has announced the gradual implementation of open banking use cases. Kuwait is testing open banking products, and the Central Bank of the UAE has initiated an open finance initiative covering banks and insurers.

With open banking regulatory directives, which require the sharing of customer data (with the customer’s consent) with trusted third parties, incumbent banks are entering a new era of competition. New banking entrants such as fintechs and payment providers can access incumbents’ now-exclusive customer relationships and entice customers away with new products and services.

If they articulate the right vision, however, incumbent banks can meet this challenge head-on, adopt the regulatory dictates of open banking and go beyond them. Banks that embrace open banking—which will grow at a global annual rate of 25% to 27%, according to MarkNtel Advisors and Grand View Research—can retain their market share and transform themselves, create new revenue streams, and forge deeper customer relationships. In Saudi Arabia, for example, we project an open banking penetration rate of 20% with retail customers by 2030.

Incumbent banks can take three actions to take advantage of open banking and position themselves in its vanguard. Read the rest here.

Sustainability in the Spotlight: The Balancing Act of ESG

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Diligent Institute/ Spencer Stuart, June 2024





This year, sustainability in the corporate world has been defined by flux. The debate in the U.S. around ESG (environmental, social and governance) remains fierce. The global issues that ESG aims to address — climate change, human rights and equity, among others — are enormous and only becoming more complex. This is because, in its broadest definition, ESG reflects a set of objectives common to all companies — from managing risk to playing a role in addressing societal issues to identifying opportunities for growth and value creation. The corporate will and effort to address these opportunities and challenges seems to be growing, not shrinking.

The third annual global Sustainability in the Spotlight survey, conducted by Spencer Stuart and the Diligent Institute, asked public and private company directors across industries and geographies about their companies’ sustainability strategies and oversight. We also asked respondents to provide their perspectives on and involvement in defining their organization’s ESG vision and strategy, as well as their role in overseeing results. Download the report here.

Time to increase Qatar’s financial literacy

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:  

Qatar Tribune, May, 16, 2024

by Raed Kombargi, Fadi Adra, Swati Chaudhary, and Rasha Salem

As lifestyle aspirations, easy access to digital credit and loans, and the need to finance education and real estate drive up consumer debt levels in Qatar, the case for bolstering financial literacy is becoming urgent. This growing weight of consumer debt, coupled with the ongoing paradigm shift in the social contract, underscores the importance of financial literacy as a tool for managing debt and ensuring financial stability. Research from the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center finds that countries with higher levels of financial literacy have lower levels of household debt, higher savings rates, and greater resilience during financial downturns than those with lower levels of financial literacy.

Qatari institutions increasingly recognize financial literacy as a critical factor for economic empowerment and financial stability, and have begun to act. Witness, among other efforts, the financial literacy programs launched by the Qatar Central Bank, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education’s decision to add financial literacy as an elective for eleventh and twelfth-grade students, and the Qatar Stock Exchange’s commitment to raising the financial literacy of investors.

While dedicated programs are a good start, meeting increasing financial literacy across the country in a timely manner requires an overarching strategy and a holistic framework that incorporates a multi-dimensional view of life-stages and beneficiary contexts. Read the rest here.

‘I’m Sorry, Dave.’ When AI Writes a CEO’s Apology Letter.

This Week in Leadership, May 8, 2024

by Theodore Kinni




Generative artificial-intelligence programs are already helping professionals write compelling sales presentations, convincing emails, and other difficult business communications. It was only a matter of time before someone tried using it for one of the most sensitive documents of all: an apology from the boss.

Using the widely available GPT-4, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) recently built a model they call “Prompt Engineering for CEO Apology.” The model incorporates a number of variables, including type of event, structure and length of previous apologies, audience, delivery method, and the communication styles of the CEO and the company. The researchers used the model to create apologies for some recent high-profile CEO gaffes, and apparently, AI did pretty well: According to the KAIST study, the notes “conveyed empathy” and “mimicked the same structure and emotional language” of CEO apologies produced by human beings. Read the rest here.

Skills-Based Hiring: Where Did It Go?

This Week in Leadership, March 25, 2024

by Theodore Kinni

If you’ve browsed job postings recently, you’ve probably seen that skills-based hiring is all the rage. Often a bachelor’s degree isn’t even required—only that you have key skills.

But only one word describes how often non-degreed applicants appear to be getting hired: rarely. A new study from the Burning Glass Institute and Harvard Business School’s Managing the Future of Work program uses employment ads to track the progress of skills-based hiring. It found that from 2014 to 2023 the number of roles for which employers dropped degree requirements increased fourfold. But when they studied a sample of 11,300 of these roles, they found that the share of workers hired without a college degree grew by only about 3.5% in 2023. Extrapolating its findings across the hiring universe, the team concludes that “for all its fanfare, the increased opportunity promised by Skills-Based Hiring has borne out in not even 1 in 700 hires last year.” Read the rest here.

Evaluating Your Major Gift Program: Three Strategic Questions for Nonprofit Leaders

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Development Guild DDI, March 25, 2024

by Suzanne Battit




When Dr. Ruth Gottesman, Ed.D. – Professor Emerita in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City – announced that she was donating $1 billion to make the school tuition-free, it seemed like a bolt from the blue. But attracting major gifts — even the rare one of this size —is far more likely to be the result of a rigorous approach than a random event.

The long-term success of a nonprofit’s fundraising is almost always predicated on a strong major gift program, and the ability to identify and cultivate donors like Dr. Gottesman is a hallmark of such a program. Major donors have a strong affinity for the mission and impact of an organization and an unyielding commitment to its success. Indeed, at age 93, Dr. Gottesman – the very wealthy widow of an early business partner and long-time investor with Warren Buffett – has been affiliated with the medical school for 55 years and serves as the chairperson of its board of trustees.

While monumental gifts like Dr. Gottesman’s may be an anomaly in the world of major gifts, every nonprofit can assess their major gift program to be as strong and effective as possible. Here are three strategic questions to assess your program so you can elevate it to the next level and beyond. Read the rest here.

What People Really Think About Search Engine Ads. (You Might Be Surprised.)

Insights by Stanford Business, March 7, 2024

by Theodore Kinni


iStock/Nuthawut Somsuk

Revenues from search ads are expected to exceed $300 billion in 2024 — making search the world’s largest advertising channel online or off. The ads are essential to search companies, but their value to users, who collectively make more than 1.2 trillion queries per year on Google alone, has always been something of a mystery.

Some experts argue that search ads are intrusive and even scammy — a distraction users must tolerate in exchange for free access to search engines. Others see the ads as a convenience, enhancing the search experience by offering users additional information and easy access to products and services related to their interests. “The utility of search advertising has been a controversial question and people have written positive and negative points of view on it in the media for a long time,” says Navdeep Sahni, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. “But it is a question that needs to be answered with data.”

Sahni now has that data. Sahni and Charles Zhang, PhD ’22, then a GSB graduate student focused on quantitative marketing, got it from real users and real ads in a large-scale field experiment on a widely used U.S. search engine. While there has been copious research on the efficacy of search advertising for ad buyers, this experiment was unique for its scale and empirical focus on the value of ads to search users.

Collected over a period of five months in 2017, the data reports on queries submitted to the search engine by nearly 3 million unique users. For two months in the middle of the experiment, half of the users saw search results that included the usual number of ads that appear among the top results and in the middle of the page, known as mainline ads. “Whenever there’s a search query,” Sahni explains, “search engines use a proprietary algorithm that scores every ad that could appear with the results. Only those ads whose quality exceeds a certain preset threshold get placed in the mainline positions.” These ads are the most visible on the page and have the most effective positioning.

During the same two-month period, the search engine tweaked its ad-scoring algorithm so that the other half of the user group saw fewer mainline ads with their results. “The experiment increased the threshold cutoff of that algorithm just enough so that 17% of the ads that would have received mainline positions got pushed to less visible positions on the side of the page,” Sahni explains. Read the rest here.

Building a vibrant news industry in the Middle East and North Africa

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

PwC Strategy&/Google News Initiative, Feb. 21, 2024

by Karim Daoud, Karim Sarkis, Martin Roeske, Carla Khoury, and Mazen Sabbagh



Digitization is fueling growth for news organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, presenting both opportunities and challenges that must be addressed.

The news market in the region is promising. News consumption and demand are on the rise. MENA region consumers are willing to pay for the news they want, particularly trustworthy, in-depth, and specialized reporting. Additionally, there is significant room for revenue growth, especially in digital advertising and consumer revenues (digital circulation).

The growth is fueled by widespread mobile connectivity, high internet penetration, and social media usage in the MENA region, especially young consumers leading digital lifestyles. To attract and grow revenue from these tech-savvy consumers, news organizations need to transform their business models and methods of delivering content. That transformation must include creating new types of content, formats, and interfaces. Collaboration with governments in the MENA region, regulators, global tech platforms, advertisers, and academia is crucial in creating an enabling environment that supports the growth of regional news organizations. This environment can be achieved through talent development programs, targeted financial support, media literacy initiatives for consumers, and an updated regulatory framework.

Together these transformational efforts can lead to a better news consumption experience, high-performing news organizations, and an overall vibrant news ecosystem in the MENA region. Download the PDF here.

Why It’s Good for Business When Customers Share Your Values

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, February 15, 2024 

by Daniel Aronson 

Carolyn Geason-Beissel/MIT SMR | Getty Images

Values matter. Too often, however, they are relegated to the realm of fables instead of finance.

Take honesty, for example. We tell our children the story of the boy who cried wolf to teach them that when someone is dishonest, others are less likely to believe them the next time. But if we look just a tiny bit below the surface, the financial cost of the boy’s dishonesty immediately comes into focus: It results in the loss of his family’s entire flock of sheep.

If we calculated the loss caused by the boy crying wolf, we undoubtedly would find that it dramatically outweighed the combined gains generated by strategies like using AI-optimized grazing patterns, feeding the sheep a high-growth diet, or using consultant-recommended wool-marketing strategies. And yet, while all those things would clearly be considered business decisions, acting on values is not. But that’s wrong.

There is a very strong business case for acting on values. A $100 billion company I worked with discovered that there was a high return on investment from acting on its values and making sure customers knew about that. In fact, the return was many times greater than the ROI from its investments in upgraded technology or marketing campaigns. Yet the importance of technology and marketing are clearly understood as key areas of the business, while values-related impacts are left off of spreadsheets and are rarely — if ever — used to determine which actions have the highest ROI. Read the rest here.

The Hidden Costs of Clicking the “Buy Now, Pay Later” Button

Insights by Stanford Business, Feb. 2, 2024

by Theodore Kinni


Cory Hall

In the past couple of years, a new payment option has become almost ubiquitous on online retailers’ checkout screens: Buy Now, Pay Later.

This fintech innovation offers consumers instant financing for large and small purchases on a transactional basis. In a typical purchase, a shopper might pay 25% down for that new sofa or this week’s groceries and pay off the remaining 75% in three equal installments — one every two weeks. If they make the payments on time via a bank account or credit card, the loan is interest-free.

Over the past decade, fintech companies such as Klarna, Affirm, and Afterpay have taken Buy Now, Pay Later from a niche alternative to a mainstream choice by signing up tens of thousands of retailers. The retailers offer BNPL as a payment option at the point of sale and pay a small merchant fee, as with credit cards.

Unlike plastic, however, BNPL does not require a rigorous credit check. That’s made it a hit with consumers, especially younger adults without well-established credit. Total loan volume among the largest BNPL providers grew from $8.3 billion in 2020 to $24.2 billion in 2021, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. During the 2023 holiday season alone, shoppers availed themselves of $16.6 billion in BNPL loans. Estimates for near-term growth range widely, though it’s been estimated that global loan volume could reach $1 trillion by 2025.

“BNPL is a pretty slick innovation. It is convenient and it’s basically free credit if you pay it off on time,” says Ed deHaan, a professor of accounting at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

However, it also has the potential for misuse and abuse. Read the rest here.

Moving Beyond Net Zero to Nature Positive

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Boston Consulting Group, November 28, 2023

by Michel Frédeau, Torsten Kurth, Arun Malik, and Marine Swaab




On December 19, 2022, some 195 countries adopted the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) aimed at halting and reversing the global decline of nature and biodiversity. The GBF established 23 targets, including those focused on the protection of freshwater and other ecosystems and the disclosure of biodiversity impacts by companies.

Nature is also at the heart of the COP28 agenda, with thematic programming that includes creating nature-positive cities, protecting and restoring marine and coastal ecosystems, and more.

The private sector will play a vital role in achieving the targets of the GBF. This means working to become nature positive—ensuring that the sum of an organization’s actions and impacts on nature will contribute to the reversal of the global decline in biodiversity by 2030, followed by full recovery by 2050. As our interviews with business and other leaders acting on the tenets of the nature positive movement indicate, the need to expand these efforts is pressing, and the financial first-mover advantage is likely considerable. We lay out an action plan for leaders to seize that advantage. Read the rest here.

Diversity Nudges

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, November 21, 2023

by Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio

Roy Scott/Ikon Images

Despite their commitments to diversifying their workforces, many companies continue to struggle with attracting, hiring, and retaining employees from underrepresented groups.

Achieving workplace diversity is not easy, but leaders can target, address, and nudge specific data points and thoughtfully incentivize behaviors that support it. These interventions are often small, easy to implement, and inexpensive, but when they are applied to choices, processes, and organizational levers in the attraction, recruitment, onboarding of people and along the employee path cycle, they can help make a workplace more diverse and inclusive.

Nudges That Attract Diverse Talent

The conversion rates (CRs) at one e-commerce giant were below target within certain segments of shoppers, including lower-income people of color and middle-income LGBTQIA+ people. Meanwhile, the company’s primary competitor had successfully hired more women, Black and Latine people, Pacific Islanders, and LGBTQIA+ persons in marketing, behavioral analysis, and other roles, and their diverse perspectives were translating into higher CRs.

The company launched a major campaign to attract diverse talent. It engaged a search firm that cast a national net and ran print and digital ads that highlighted the company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Then leadership sat back and waited for those diverse candidates to appear. Views of the online job posting peaked around three and a half weeks after the advertising blitz but flatlined by the seventh week. Fewer than 11% of site visitors applied for a position. Only three applicants were interviewed; two received offers, one of which was declined. In other words, if you build it — with impressive resources and at great expense — they still might not come.

As this company discovered, it is not enough to simply gain the attention of the potential candidates you seek to attract. Converting appropriate talent to applicants and candidates requires additional outreach and cultivation. Individuals from underrepresented demographics — including people of color, those who identify as LGBTQIA+, and people with disabilities — often have fewer contacts at competitive employers and know fewer people who can help them navigate the application process. Organizations that want to increase diversity can attract more candidates from underrepresented groups by using nudges — modifications in the language and content presented in the talent acquisition process — in ways that help generate a diverse candidate pool, maintain the pool throughout the process, encourage top candidates to accept job offers, and help keep them onboard.

Nudges can help build trust and reduce information asymmetries early on. In one such intervention, a company displayed the numbers of women and underrepresented individuals among its leadership, as well as its diversity and inclusion goals and a timeline, beside an online job posting. A video at the bottom right of the screen featured the CEO speaking about his commitment to inclusion and diversity. This intervention increased the percentage of women and underrepresented groups that applied by 22% in the short term and 18% over the long term. Candidates from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds rose by 17% overall. And, importantly, the conversion rate from applying for a job to accepting a position rose by 8 percentage points. Read the rest here.

How to Productively Disagree on Tough Topics

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, November 13, 2023

by Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow

Neil Webb/theispot.com


Conversations about identity, diversity, and justice are some of the thorniest human interactions of our time. Consider Uber’s head of diversity, who hosted a workplace event titled “Don’t Call Me Karen” to highlight the “spectrum of the American White woman’s experience” and foster an “open and honest conversation about race.” Following backlash from employees of color, she was placed on a leave of absence.

Or consider Stanford Law School’s associate dean for diversity, who tried to “de-escalate” student protests during a speech by conservative judge Kyle Duncan. The dean tried to placate the students, who were angered by the judge’s anti-LGBTQ+ views, while giving the judge the space to finish his talk. But her intervention led to a public furor due to a perception that she had prioritized students’ feelings over the judge’s right to free speech. She, too, was placed on leave.

If these conversations stymie senior diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professionals, what hope do ordinary leaders have? More than you might think.

We lead a research center at the New York University School of Law dedicated to issues of diversity, inclusion, and belonging. Together and separately, we’ve taught tens of thousands of individuals from all walks of life to have more meaningful and effective conversations across their differences. We focus our efforts on coaching people in positions of power because they have the greatest opportunity to transform the dynamics of these interactions — to foster empathy instead of provoking fear and division.

While the people we coach struggle with many types of identity conversations, disagreements are often the most agonizing. It’s relatively easy to participate in identity conversations when you and the other person are aligned. When you disagree, you’re likely to be flooded with angst and self-doubt. You might wonder: Am I as enlightened as I thought I was? Will people feel hurt or betrayed by me?

You might be tempted to respond to such angst by capitulating to whatever your conversation partner says. Yet that approach is often not desirable, because it compromises your dignity and authenticity. We believe it’s still possible to disagree on identity issues, even in today’s polarized and overheated political climate. The key is to do it respectfully. Here’s how. (Read the rest here.)

The art of the turnaround—circa 27 BC

strategy+business, July 31, 2023

by Theodore Kinni

Photograph by Viacheslav Peretiatko

The ranks of companies that have faced existential crises and succumbed are legion. When industries disappear and markets dry up, turnaround leaders who are charged with picking up the pieces and transforming for the future might find some perspective and inspiration in Virgil’s Aeneid.

“The song of the Aeneid is meant for moments when people desperately need to wrap their heads around an after that is shockingly different from the before they’d always known,” writes Andrea Marcolongo, an Italian journalist and former speechwriter for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, in her book about the 2,000-year-old epic poem, Starting from Scratch: The Life-Changing Lessons of Aeneas (translated by Will Schutt). “In the parlance of forecasters: The Aeneid is warmly recommended reading for days when you’re in the eye of the storm without an umbrella.”

The Roman emperor Octavian commissioned Virgil to write the Aeneid at just such an unsettling moment. The Roman Republic had disintegrated into a series of civil wars, which eventually resulted in Octavian establishing himself as its first emperor in 27 BC. He wanted Virgil to create a piece of work that reinforced his claim to power and reassured the empire’s subjects about their prospects under his rule. Virgil did this by linking Octavian’s divine authority to the origin story of Rome.

The reluctant hero of this tale is Aeneas, the son of a prince and the goddess Venus, a character Virgil borrowed from Homer. In Homer’s Iliad, Aeneas fights in the Trojan War against the Greeks. In the Aeneid, Troy has fallen after a long siege (that darn horse).

As Aeneas surveys the wreckage, he steels himself for a fight to the death. At this moment, Venus appears and tells him to face reality. The gods have abandoned Troy, she says, Aeneas should salvage what he can and save his family and companions. Her son is still reluctant to give up on Troy, until the ghost of his dead wife prophesizes that in doing so, he will eventually “come to Hesperia’s land, where Lydian Tiber flows in gentle course among the farmers’ rich fields. There, happiness, kingship and a royal wife will be yours.” Finally, Aeneas gets the message. He gathers his compatriots (the Aeneads); they build a fleet of boats and set sail. Therein lies the first lesson for turnaround leaders: when your industry or the markets your company depends upon are in ruins, don’t double down. Move on. Read the rest here.

GCC governments focus on service fee reform

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

Trends: The International Media on Arab Affairs, July 18, 2023

by Paolo Pigorini and Talal Salman

WAM File

DUBAI, UAE — As GCC governments have sought to fund a plethora of services over decades, fees for hotel stays, roads, medical licenses, and other things have proliferated into a tangle that does not serve governments, businesses, or residents well. In many cases, fees have unintentionally become a long-term tax on GCC businesses and residents. Sometimes, the fees have undermined their intended purpose as a cost recovery tool for the provision of a service. For instance, toll roads have become a hidden tax as the tolls collected exceed the cost of the road’s construction and maintenance.

Moreover, different ministries and agencies impose and set fees — hampering attempts to rationalize them and avoid unintended consequences. For example, imposing and raising fees on family members who accompany migrant workers to the GCC can raise revenues. Yet these fees can cause migrant workers to keep their families in their home countries, thereby depriving GCC economies of wages and consumption that instead leave the region as remittances.

GCC governments have become increasingly aware of the problems associated with service fees as part of fiscal reforms. Leaders noted when the IMF recommended phasing out burdensome and regressive fees, and exploring alternative revenue models more conducive to small- and medium-sized enterprise development. GCC governments have seen how Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore are reviewing their fees constantly and systematically to ensure that they are business-friendly, not unduly burdensome, and connected to policy objectives. At least for the past decade, Singapore has been introducing initiatives to reform its fees in terms of types and levels, with mechanisms to set, review, and update them. The result: lower business costs, enhanced fee transparency, and a reduced administrative burden on the government. (Read the rest here.)

Risk Intelligence and the Resilient Company

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, June 13, 2023

by Ananya Sheth and Joseph V. Sinfield

Simon Prades

Building the resilience of large, complex enterprises is critical in today’s uncertain and interconnected world. At a time when a container ship grounded in the Suez Canal can bottle up 12% of the world’s trade, or a virus can disrupt the global flow of commodities, components, and talent, a corporation’s ability to quickly adapt in the face of unfolding events is essential to its survival and prosperity.

Business resilience is a dynamic property that is retrospectively measured by the stability and longevity of corporate value across changing contexts. In real time, it manifests in an enterprise’s timely adaptation to both immediate and gradual changes in the business environment.

Our work, which employs a complex adaptive systems view of businesses, shows that resilience derives from three fundamental adaptive capacities: sensing and monitoring, to recognize emerging changes in the business environment; business model portfolio development, to build and test capabilities across operating contexts; and fundamental capability development, to drive growth with longevity and avoid corporate stall. Moreover, each of these capacities hinges on the development of a capability for risk intelligence.

We define risk intelligence as the honed ability to rigorously interpret risks and the consequences or opportunities they pose for a company. It allows leaders to see through environmental complexity and systematically identify, categorize, and interpret risks. This enables them to look beyond known risk factors and intentionally explore yet-to-be-known risks, thereby embracing rather than avoiding uncertainty. Importantly, risk intelligence brings recognition that individual risks or the forms in which they manifest matter far less than the often-shared consequences they have on a company’s value exchange system — that is, the manner in which it manages, identifies, creates, conveys, delivers, captures, protects, and sustains value. And finally, it provides leaders with a network view of risks that enables more effective allocation of risk mitigation resources by illuminating not just the direct consequences of risks but the manner in which they could cascade across the company’s value exchange system. In this article, we break down risk intelligence into actionable elements that leaders can pursue to help toughen their organizations for the long term. Read the rest here.

How to move the needle on innovation

strategy+business, June 5, 2023

by Theodore Kinni


Illustration by Luis Alvarez

As CEOs continue to call employees back to the office, their rationales often include remote work’s deleterious effects on innovation. There is some basis for these claims: a recent study found that the number of email exchanges between research units at MIT dropped by 38% during the pandemic lockdown. Its authors equated email volume with the weak ties that are crucial to the diffusion of information and ideas in networks, and thus concluded from the drop in traffic that remote work hinders innovation. But no matter how much weight you assign this finding, it’s a stretch to peg the success—or failure—of a company’s innovation efforts to the number of rears in seats.

The truth is innovation in large companies is a perennial challenge for leaders, no matter where employees are working. The late Clayton Christensen and other researchers detailed the obstacles to innovation that arise when industry-leading companies confront disruptive technologies. Large companies also struggle to transform innovation investments into financial results: in 2018, consultants from Strategy&, PwC’s global consulting business, examined 15 years of data drawn from the firm’s Global Innovation 1000 research—an annual analysis of the 1,000 publicly held companies that spend the most on R&D—and concluded, “There is no long-term correlation between the amount of money a company spends on its innovation efforts and its overall financial performance.”

So how can leaders move the innovation needle in big companies? I turned to Lorraine Marchand for answers. Marchand served in a variety of executive and board positions, including a former stint as general manager of the life sciences division of IBM’s Watson Health (now Merative), before writing The Innovation Mindset: Eight Essential Steps to Transform Any Industry — a practical guide to building innovation prowess across an organization — and founding her own innovation consultancy.

Here is her list of ways to make your company more innovative. Read the rest here.

The Missing Discipline Behind Failure to Scale

Learned a lot lending an editorial hand here:

MIT Sloan Management Review, April 12, 2023

by Andy Binns and Christine Griffin


Dan Page/theispot.com

In 2018, Best Buy announced that it would enter the health market. It was an unexpected move for a consumer electronics retailer, but it was consistent with then-CEO Hubert Joly’s passionate advocacy for making Best Buy a company with a deep sense of purpose. Starting with a focus on helping the elderly to age safely at home, the company broadened the strategy to make Best Buy Health a provider that “enables care at home for everyone.” It was also a lucrative opportunity: Home health is forecast to be a $265 billion market by 2025.

Over the next few years, Best Buy Health tested its key assumptions about the opportunity, seeking out the sweet spot that would allow it to build a new business to sit alongside the company’s existing retail franchise. By 2022, it was a $525 million business, projected to grow at a 35% to 45% compound annual growth rate through 2027. The initiative created a new growth vector for its parent company and gave it a measure of resilience in the turbulent consumer retail sector.

Best Buy succeeded where many companies fail. It moved through the three innovation disciplines required to build new businesses: ideation, incubation, and scaling. It came up with a new idea for solving the customer problem of aging safely at home, incubated it by running in-market experiments to test value propositions, and then scaled it to a revenue-generating business unit. This is a relatively rare accomplishment. Our research finds that while 80% of companies claim to ideate and incubate new ventures, only 16% of companies successfully scale them.

A key contributor to this problem is the almost exclusive focus that companies place on the first two innovation disciplines. The ways and means of ideation and incubation — embodied in methodologies such as design thinking and lean startup, and disseminated by an army of trainers and consultants — are well known and readily available. However, when it comes to scaling, there are few methodologies to guide corporate decision-making.

Scaling is the missing innovation discipline. Indeed, when we assessed the innovation frameworks used by 15 large corporate incubation units, we found that only four mentioned scaling. For example, one large IT company’s incubation unit has a highly evolved process for ideation, validation, and incubation, but its framework stops at scaling. Scaling is considered outside the remit of such units: It becomes the kind of blind spot that author Douglas Adams characterized as “somebody else’s problem.” This leaves a critical gap in the ability of companies to build new businesses. After all, ideation and incubation generate value only when scaling succeeds.

To learn how to bridge this gap, we studied Best Buy and 30 other successful and unsuccessful corporate ventures. We found that most of the successful companies followed a similar approach to scaling new ventures that we call a scaling path. It requires a clarity of ambition; an understanding of the assets needed to access the customers, capabilities, and capacity required by the new business; and a willingness to use a variety of techniques to assemble those assets into a coherent strategy for attaining scale. Best Buy, for example, leveraged its existing assets — its stores, customers, and Geek Squad technical assistance team — and combined them with a $2.2 billion investment in acquisitions to scale its health business.

In this article, we offer five key lessons for building a scaling path that are drawn from both successful and unsuccessful corporate ventures. Read the rest here.