After beginning the day with talks on competition, social robots, and attention, and then learning about the power of simplicity, the banking industry’s existential crisis, and why machine learning is not vibranium, we wrapped up BRITE 2019 with a series of fascinating conversations. 1. We’re finally ready for XR. The third session began with Ori…
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Machine Learning Is Not Vibranium (and Other Takeaways from BRITE 2019)
After a stimulating start to the conference, BRITE 2019 continued with a series of fascinating presentations that demonstrated the power of simplicity, reimagined the future of banking, and debunked some major myths around artificial intelligence and machine learning. These are the three biggest takeaways from the second session: 1. Simplicity pays off. Session two was…
3 Takeaways From BRITE 2019
There were some very stimulating and fascinating presentations at the Brand Innovation Technology Conference (BRITE), held at Columbia Business School on March 4, 2019. Here are just a few of the event’s major highlights and my key takeaways: 1. Don’t underestimate the power of perspective. My colleague Adam Galinsky gave a wonderful talk titled “Friend…
Seeing Around Corners: Workshop at Columbia’s BRITE conference
I’m just putting the finishing touches on the deck and interactive materials I’m going to be using for my workshop at the BRITE conference. I’m going to present for about 30 minutes on how you can take measures to prevent being surprised by an inflection point in your environment. Then we’ll dig in to a…
Netflix and the Battle for Your Disposable Time
In my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners (now available for pre-order wherever you buy books), one of the major themes is that a major blind spot for organizations is that they tend to see the world through the lens of their existing industry. There are a lot of good reasons for this, but it can…
When Hierarchy Is Not an Option: A New Organizational Model for Fast-Moving Contexts
Earlier this month, I spoke at the Human Resources Directors Conference in the United Kingdom. At the conference, I shared some material excerpted from my forthcoming book, Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen, about how easy it is for executives to get trapped into an old way of…
10 Ways to Prepare for Career Changes in the Transient Advantage Economy
In the world of strategy, there’s been a long-held belief in a sustainable competitive advantage—you find an attractive place in an attractive industry, throw up entry barriers, and exploit the advantage for a long period of time. However, in more and more parts of our economy, competitive advantages just aren’t lasting as long as they…
How to Lead an Organization Through an Inflection Point
I was recently at a conference with Curt Carlson, a brilliant leader of innovation who for many years ran SRI, the research organization responsible for the invention of Apple’s Siri and many other multi-billion dollar products. The SRI story is one of an astonishing turnaround—when he took over as CEO in 1998, the organization had…
Decoding why digital is so disruptive
My colleague, Ryan P. McManus, is at CES this week and is much in demand for his perspective on why digital is so disruptive. He traces the evolution of digital from its 4G impact on consumer products and media through its current impact on business models. For a more detailed explanation, have a look at…
Preparing for Time Zero Events in Banking
We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare in advance. So how do you develop early warning signs that things are about to change in an industry? One technique for identifying leading indicators is envisioning time zero events—concrete events that represent things that could have a big impact on a business. As an example,…