Books in the Management on the Cutting Edge series

How organizations can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act faster when the time is right; with rich examples including Adobe, MasterCard, and Amazon.When turbulence is the new normal, an organization's survival depends on vigilant leadership that can anticipate threats, spot opportunities, and act quickly when the time is right. In See Sooner, Act Faster, strategy experts George Day and Paul Schoemaker offer tools for thriving when digital advances intensify turbulence. Vigilant firms have greater foresight than their rivals, while vulnerable firms often miss early signals of external threats and organizational challenges. Charles Schwab, for example, was early to see and act on the promise of "robo-advisors”; Honeywell, on the other hand, stumbled when Nest Labs came out first with a "smart” thermostat. Day and Schoemaker show leaders how to assess their vigilance capabilities and cultivate insight and foresight throughout their organizations. They draw on a range of cases, including Adobe and Intuit's move to the cloud, Shell's investment in clean energy, and MasterCard's early recognition of digital challenges. Day and Schoemaker describe how to allocate the scarce resource of attention, how to detect weak signals and separate them from background noise, and how to respond strategically before competitors do. The challenge is not just to act faster but to act wisely, and the authors suggest ways to create dynamic portfolios of options. Finally, they offer an action agenda, with tips for fostering vigilance and agility throughout an organization. The rewards are stronger market positions, higher profits and growth, more motivated employees, and organization longevity.

The definitive book on leadership in the digital era: why digital technologies call for leadership that emphasizes creativity, collaboration, and inclusivity.

Cutting through the hype, a practical guide to using artificial intelligence for business benefits and competitive advantage.In The AI Advantage, Thomas Davenport offers a guide to using artificial intelligence in business. He describes what technologies are available and how companies can use them for business benefits and competitive advantage. He cuts through the hype of the AI craze—remember when it seemed plausible that IBM's Watson could cure cancer?—to explain how businesses can put artificial intelligence to work now, in the real world. His key recommendation: don't go for the "moonshot” (curing cancer, or synthesizing all investment knowledge); look for the "low-hanging fruit” to make your company more efficient.Davenport explains that the business value AI offers is solid rather than sexy or splashy. AI will improve products and processes and make decisions better informed—important but largely invisible tasks. AI technologies won't replace human workers but augment their capabilities, with smart machines to work alongside smart people. AI can automate structured and repetitive work; provide extensive analysis of data through machine learning ("analytics on steroids”), and engage with customers and employees via chatbots and intelligent agents. Companies should experiment with these technologies and develop their own expertise.Davenport describes the major AI technologies and explains how they are being used, reports on the AI work done by large commercial enterprises like Amazon and Google, and outlines strategies and steps to becoming a cognitive corporation. This book provides an invaluable guide to the real-world future of business AI.A book in the Management on the Cutting Edge series, published in cooperation with MIT Sloan Management Review.

One of Forbes's Top Ten Technology Books of the YearHow to redesign ‘big, old’ companies for digital success—featuring a survey of 300+ business leaders and 30+ global organizations, including Amazon, Uber, LEGO, Toyota North America, Philips, and USAA. Most established companies have deployed such digital technologies as the cloud, mobile apps, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence. But few established companies are designed for digital. This book offers an essential guide for retooling organizations for digital success through 5 key building blocks: • Shared Customer Insights• Operational Backbone• Digital Platform• Accountability Framework• External Developer Platform In the digital economy, rapid pace of change in technology capabilities and customer desires means that business strategy must be fluid. As a result, business design has become a critical management responsibility. Effective business design enables a company to quickly pivot in response to new competitive threats and opportunities. Most leaders today, however, rely on organizational structure to implement strategy, unaware that structure inhibits, rather than enables, agility. In companies that are designed for digital, people, processes, data, and technology are synchronized to identify and deliver innovative customer solutions—and redefine strategy. Digital design, not strategy, is what separates winners from losers in the digital economy.Designed for Digital offers practical advice on digital transformation, with examples that include Amazon, BNY Mellon, DBS Bank, LEGO, Philips, Schneider Electric, USAA, and many other global organizations. Drawing on 5 years of research and in-depth case studies, the book is an essential guide for companies that want to disrupt rather than be disrupted in the new digital landscape.

How leaders can recast innovation's toughest trade-offs-efficiency vs. flexibility, consistency vs. change, product vs purpose-as productive tensions.Why is leading innovation in today's dynamic business environment so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90 percent of high-potential ventures don't reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80 percent of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their innovation performance. Should leaders aim for Steve Jobs-level genius, shower their projects with resources, or lean in to luck and embrace uncertainty? None of the above, say Christopher Bingham and Rory McDonald. Drawing on cutting-edge research and probing interviews with hundreds of leaders across three continents, in Productive Tensions Bingham and McDonald find that the most effective leaders and successful innovators embrace the tensions that arise from competing aims: efficiency or flexibility? consistency or change? product or purpose? Bingham and McDonald spotlight eight critical tensions that every innovator must master, and they spell out, with dozens of detailed examples of both success and failure, how to navigate them. How do you excite customers about a product they've never imagined? When is it wise to accept what the data is telling you, and when should you ignore the data and plow forward anyway? How can you maintain stakeholders' trust and support during radical unforeseen course corrections? Bingham and McDonald guide readers through innovation's thorniest tensions, using examples drawn from the experience of organizations as varied as P&G, Instagram, the US military, Honda, In-N-Out Burger, Slack, Under Armour, and the snowboarding company Burton.

"An exploration of the future of work featuring real-world profiles of changing jobs and work arrangements in light of human/AI interaction"--

"A framework for navigating disruption that crosses industry boundaries, through the development of ecosystems"--