KnowledgeBrief Hot Topic

We say that our most valuable asset is the knowledge of our employees. However, organisations can often become too focused on using data to create insight and miss out on the intuitive insights of their best managers and experts. According to Dr. Viktor Dörfler, University of Strathclyde, it is all about getting the best of both worlds: analysing data where appropriate (Smart) and using intuition of experts when that is more promising (Art), as well as how the two can help one another (SmArt).

Sometimes we are too close to our work and our business to understand the full potential for both unlocking hidden value and managing potential risk. We are often too engrossed in doing “legacy activities” – working the way we’ve always done. According to Professor Victor Newman, University of Greenwich, there is a technique based on a simple law of success in the business jungle: think ahead of your competitors, anticipate their arrival as well as their strategy to protect yourself from danger

Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data – so much that 90% of data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. When data sets get so big that they cannot be analysed by traditional data processing application tools, we have ‘Big Data’. Today, Big Data are woven into every sector, used to creating transparency, enabling experimentation, improving innovating, supporting decisions, increasing segmenting, etc. However, although organisations may hold an enormous amou

Augmented reality, or AR, has the ability to overlay the physical world with digital information, and have the two interact in real time. Pokémon Go is a famous recent example, but AR is more than a game. If used well, AR may have the capacity to deliver far-reaching strategic, service improvement and cost saving benefits. Whether in the private or public sector, AR is providing new opportunities for businesses and organisations to engage with customers, present and promote products and services

Computers are great at processing, storing and letting you search through huge amounts of information, but not so great (yet, anyway) at empathy, emotion, and being creative without human assistance. Digital tools offer the potential to exploit a range of different media or share information with people who can’t physically join a brainstorming session, but do these advantages out-weigh the potential downsides, including the time needed to learn new tools and their operational requirements.

A recession, a supply-chain disruption, a technology break-down, an industrial accident. These are all examples of crises that may have negative implications for organisations. Crises have been defined as low probability events that have severe consequences, generating ambiguity and decision-making time pressures for businesses. For this reason, the response of an entrepreneur or management team to a crisis can mean the difference between business survival or failure.

Cutting-edge research in neuroscience is highlighting the mechanisms underpinning decision-making and corporate performance. Neuroscience is an exciting, expanding field providing valuable insights into how the mind operates. The big question is: What are the practical takeaways for executives and great leaders?

Some industries are experiencing a switch from focusing on products and production, to service and holistic solutions for their customers, clients, citizens, etc. This focus is offering a new way to be financially sustainable and yet, despite this growing recognition, the adoption of servitization is still moving quite slowly. In part, this is because it involves not only business model innovation, but also organisational change and new technologies to be adopted.

When looking to embed high performance and change, and improve areas such as creativity and innovation, there are important distinctions for leaders to make between climate and culture.

Researchers from London Business School emphasise the significance, especially for established firms, of developing a new digital mindset to stay competitive. They describe it as a ‘fast/forward’ mindset. Fast, in this context, means alert, agile, experimental and capable of decisive action. Forward means proactive and searching, and it also means seeking to create a meaningful connection with customers and other business partners.

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communications refer to autonomous communication between devices or machines. Advances in these areas are well underway, and they bring major new and different leadership and management challenges.

Although open innovation can help companies tackle complex business problems that they can’t solve on their own, pushing problems to a vast group of strangers can seem risky to many managers. But excluding crowdsourcing from the corporate innovation tool kit could mean losing a great opportunity.

In business, many people say that it is impossible to predict the future; that all we can do is prepare for uncertainty. But what if managers could now acquire the skills to make some predictions of the future, to better defend or create their organisation’s competitive advantage? According to researchers at London Business School (LBS) this is possible.

While public relations and communication professionals have often focused on how to repair a damaged reputation, October’s Guest Expert, Dr. Thomas Roulet, looks beyond defensive perspectives with his statement: “there may be no point repairing a bad reputation when it is actually an asset for an organisation and a driver of change.”

“Agile” techniques usually make little reference to established creativity theories and techniques, and integrating creative thinking into agile processes is a challenge.

Cognitive biases are often a result of our attempt to simplify information processing. They are rules of thumb that help us make sense of the world and reach decisions with relative speed. These personal rules are very often unconscious.

Research suggests that creativity is less mysterious than we seem to believe. In any population, the distribution of creativity follows the normal curve. It is an ability that can be developed and, therefore, taught. This means that in a given context, creativity can be shut off — or turned on, if the environment dampens or supports creativity in the right way.

Persuasion has received some bad publicity over the years and, for many, persuasion conjures up images of manipulation, deceit, or brainwashing. However, the superpower of persuasion is directly relevant in all of our day to day experience and even more to those leading change and transformation.

Social network analysis provides the capacity to map and understand the patterns of linkages between individuals, projects, project teams, departments, business functions, entire organisations, or even documents, databases and regulations.

Today, trust is the basis for every business exchange and all customer behaviour. Creating customer loyalty puts customer value, rather than maximising profits and shareholder value, at the center of business strategy.

In the current turbulent environment, many organisations are prioritising risk management as never before. However, according to the newly released Global Risk Report 2016, organisations are still not fully internalising cyber security risks. Despite cyber‐dependency being stated as one of the most important trends shaping global development over the next 10 years, organisations are only just waking up to the technological risks involved.

Successful radical innovations are rare – and most attempts at them fail. High uncertainty and the risk of failure lead many senior managers to stay in their comfort zone: they resist radical innovation and instead focus on incremental improvements to existing offerings.

Effective governance is essential for steering, managing and sustaining a complex, cross-functional and multidisciplinary activity like innovation. Innovation governance itself can be thought of as “a system of mechanisms to align goals, allocate resources and assign decision-making authority for innovation, across the company and with external parties”.

Like products and services, management innovations have their own lifecycle: they’re new and exciting at first, but their decline is inevitable. In their prime, they may be perfectly relevant – but this can’t last as situations and environments change over time.