Extractive summaries of the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision making | Week 218 |November 12-18, 2021
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Shaping Section : Ideas and forces shaping economies and industries
The other metaverse: Companies want to build a virtual realm to copy the real world
The Economist | November 13, 2021
Call it the multiplication of the metaverses. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook—sorry, Meta—laid out his vision in late October for immersive virtual worlds he thinks people will want to spend lots of time in, new ones are popping up all over. An entertainment metaverse will delight music fans, influencers will flock to a fashion metaverse to flaunt digital clothes, and there is even a shark metaverse (it has something to do with cryptocurrencies). Mostly these are the brainchildren of marketeers slapping a new label on tech’s latest craze.
One new virtual world deserves real attention: the “enterprise metaverse”. Forget rock stars and fancy frocks, this is essentially a digital carbon copy of the physical economy. Building living, interactive blueprints that replicate the physical world might, in time, come to shape it. The vision of what this might mean has become clearer in recent days. Microsoft, the world’s largest software firm, earlier this month put it at the centre of its annual customer shindig, as did Nvidia, a big maker of graphics processors, on November 9th.
Corporate virtual worlds are already more of a reality than Meta’s consumer version, where people will get to hang out with their friends at imaginary coastal mansions. Unlike that metaverse, which is populated mostly by human avatars, the corporate version is largely a collection of objects. These are “digital twins”, virtual 3d replicas of all sorts of physical assets, from single screws to entire factories.
Whether the enterprise metaverse becomes a reality is not simply of interest to aficionados of corporate information technology (it). Innovations unlocked through insights gleaned from digital mirror-worlds can help firms become more adaptable and efficient—helping them reduce carbon emissions, for example.
If the enterprise metaverse does indeed take shape, though, it will be an intriguing process. Will it be based on proprietary technology or on open standards (there is already a Digital Twin Consortium)? And then there is the question of how the overall metaverse economy will function. Expect at least as many possibilities as metaverses to unfold.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Call it the multiplication of the metaverses. Ever since Mark Zuckerberg, the boss of Meta—laid out his vision in late October for immersive virtual worlds he thinks people will want to spend lots of time in, new ones are popping up all over. Mostly these are the brainchildren of marketeers slapping a new label on tech’s latest craze.
- One new virtual world deserves real attention: the “enterprise metaverse”. Unlike that metaverse, which is populated mostly by human avatars, the corporate version is largely a collection of objects. These are “digital twins”, virtual 3d replicas of all sorts of physical assets, from single screws to entire factories.
- Whether the enterprise metaverse becomes a reality is not simply of interest to aficionados of corporate information technology (it). Innovations unlocked through insights gleaned from digital mirror-worlds can help firms become more adaptable and efficient—helping them reduce carbon emissions, for example.
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Topics: Technology, Virtual World
Capitalizing on the data economy
By MIT Technology Review Insights | November 15, 2021
Data is growing at a meteoric rate. In fact, the total amount of data generated by 2025 is set to accelerate exponentially to 175 zettabytes. And over the next two years, enterprise data is expected to increase at a 42% annual growth rate.
Hidden within these vast volumes of data are insights into consumer behavior, emerging market trends, even predictors of the future. For organizations, the goal is to make sense out of this rapidly increasing amount of data and find innovative ways to derive sustainable value from it, all while efficiently managing consumption of the cloud services that support data management and analysis. Yet according to a survey of 255 business leaders and decision-makers conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights, 45% of respondents say they use data for only basic insights and decision-making. That’s a missed opportunity.
But that’s changing. The data economy is the global digital ecosystem in which the producers and consumers of data—businesses and individuals—and government and municipal agencies gather, organize, and share accumulated data from a wide variety of sources. By connecting unconnected data across industry boundaries, organizations can glean richer business insights, tap into unexplored markets, serve citizens and consumers alike with data-driven products and services, and monetize their data by sharing it externally with key customers and suppliers.
So how can organizations participate in the data economy? One way is by eliminating data silos that can prevent companies from gleaning compelling insights. Another benefit of the data economy is faster innovation. By harnessing data from a wide variety of external sources, organizations can discover innovative approaches to designing products, delivering services—and even solving the world’s problems. And participating in a data economy can improve rates of customer acquisition and retention—gaining new customers and retaining current ones.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Data is growing at a meteoric rate. Hidden within these vast volumes of data are insights into consumer behavior, emerging market trends, even predictors of the future.
- The data economy is the global digital ecosystem in which the producers and consumers of data—businesses and individuals—and government and municipal agencies gather, organize, and share accumulated data from a wide variety of sources.
- By connecting unconnected data across industry boundaries, organizations can glean richer business insights, tap into unexplored markets, serve citizens and consumers alike with data-driven products and services, and monetize their data by sharing it externally with key customers and suppliers.
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Topics: Data, Innovation, Economy
Unable to Win Beijing’s Approval, Fortnite Gives Up on China
By Zheping Huang | Bloomberg Businessweek | November 15, 2021
Epic Games Inc. spent 2018 preparing Fortnite, the world’s hottest video game, for a blockbuster debut in China, the world’s biggest gaming market i.e., worth $46 billion in 2021, vs. $43 billion in North America. When the company released the multiplayer shooter a year earlier, it had already brought in more than $1 billion worldwide. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., an Epic investor and Fortnite’s local publisher, sought to replicate the success in its home country. Things started off on an optimistic note, with 10 million Chinese gamers pre-registering that summer to get access to the game. But it never fully launched in China, and on Nov. 15, Epic will shut down Fortnite’s servers in the country, concluding a three-year trial from which it never made a dime.
The freeze comes at a time when Beijing has said it wants to more closely scrutinize the impact video games have on children. In September the government capped children’s playing time to three hours per week in most cases, encouraging them to instead spend more time outdoors and leaving enforcement largely to companies.
That sentiment corresponds with President Xi Jinping’s yearlong campaign to rein in large technology companies, which has both economic and social objectives. New rules target everything from education and e-commerce to finance, entertainment, and the gig economy, rattling investors and cowing the country’s billionaires.
New video games need government approvals to premiere and sell copies or virtual items in China, and the licensing process is increasingly stringent and often unpredictable. This year has been particularly difficult—the government hasn’t authorized a new gaming release in more than 100 days. For companies eager to tap into China’s enormous population of young gamers, prospects that were already shaky look worse than ever.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Epic Games Inc. spent 2018 preparing Fortnite, the world’s hottest video game, for a blockbuster debut in China, the world’s biggest gaming market. But it never fully launched in China, and on Nov. 15, Epic will shut down Fortnite’s servers in the country, concluding a three-year trial from which it never made a dime.
- The freeze comes at a time when Beijing has said it wants to more closely scrutinize the impact video games have on children.
- That sentiment corresponds with President Xi Jinping’s yearlong campaign to rein in large technology companies, which has both economic and social objectives.
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Topics: Technology, Gaming Industry, China
Leading & Managing Section
These Strategies Will Help You Influence How Decisions Get Made
By Robert C. Bordone and Daniel Doktori | Harvard Business Review | November 11, 2021
In various organizational and political contexts decision rules matter. From the boardroom to the dinner table, negotiators who understand the most common decision rules — majority rule, chair-decides, and unanimity/consensus — and how to navigate each, can drive more favorable outcomes and increase their influence beyond their formal authority or power. In this article, the authors offer best practices gleaned from decades of teaching law students and advising business leaders, government officials, and non-profit executives.
Majority Rule. Majority rule requires more than 50% of a group’s members to approve a course of action. This type of decision-making governs everything from Supreme Court verdicts to the games children play at recess. If you find yourself in a majority-rules scenario, you’ll want to do three things: map the interests of all the decision-makers, target influential fence-sitters, and ailor your message to reach the people you want to reach.
Chair Decides. This scenario lodges authority with a single decision-maker and is often used in business settings where managers have the final call for their teams or organizations. It also applies to households where parents tell children what (and what not) to do — and when asked why, reply simply, “Because I said so.”). To wield influence in such a situation: understanding the decision-maker’s interests, identify the decision-maker’s trusted advisors and don’t neglect other stakeholders.
Unanimity and Consensus. Unanimity requires the affirmative agreement of 100% of the deciding group, while consensus means that none of the negotiating stakeholders actively object. We need to: ensure opposing voices feel heard and acknowledged; raise the costs associated with intransigence; change the rules of the game.
Wherever you sit in an organizational hierarchy, there will be times when you seek to influence the choices and preferences of others. In these negotiation moments, use decision rules to your advantage. Tailor your strategies to the particular circumstances of each decision rule (and where possible, advocate for one decision rule over the other based on your understanding of the dynamics each creates) to drive better outcomes.
2 key takeaways from the article
- In various organizational and political contexts decision rules matter. From the boardroom to the dinner table, negotiators who understand the most common decision rules — majority rule, chair-decides, and unanimity/consensus — and how to navigate each, can drive more favorable outcomes and increase their influence beyond their formal authority or power.
- Wherever you sit in an organizational hierarchy, there will be times when you seek to influence the choices and preferences of others. In these negotiation moments, use decision rules to your advantage. Tailor your strategies to the particular circumstances of each decision rule (and where possible, advocate for one decision rule over the other based on your understanding of the dynamics each creates) to drive better outcomes.
Extractive Summary of the Article
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Topics: Decision-making, Organizational Behavior
Six Overrated Human Traits According To Science
By Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic | Forbes Magazine | November 16, 2021
Talent is a critical asset to organizations. But how can we tell if a person has talent? Although the science of talent identification is well-established,we are generally not very good at detecting talent either in ourselves or others. This is partly due to the wrong choice of methods though there’s arguably a bigger problem: more often than not, we also focus on the wrong traits. For instance, here are six work-related traits that are usually praised and celebrated as critical markers of human talent or potential, despite rather little scientific evidence for their actual importance as drivers of high job performance or productivity.
- Confidence: No trait is as overrated as confidence, especially in the Western world. People universally list it as a key ingredient of leadership potential, career success, and personal likability, yet in any domain of talent there is less than 10% overlap between people’s confidence (how good they think they are) and their actual competence (how good they actually are).
- Growth mindset: The tendency to believe that you are in control of your destiny. It has recently become one of the favorite competencies in the world of business and HR, despite little scientific evidence for its incremental contribution in the prediction of job performance.
- Authenticity: There’s not much value in being “authentic”. In fact, every important instance of life requires as to engage in significant impression management, social desirability, and effective interpersonal behavior.
- Engagement: The best meta-analysis on this subject suggests that employee engagement only accounts for 9% of the variance in company performance. In other words, 91% of the variability between organizations’ performance is caused by factors other than employee engagement.
- Charisma: Our tendency to pick leaders on charisma is akin to picking style over substance, and explains why most countries – including democratic societies – are led by despotic incompetent leaders, and why narcissistic and psychopathic dictators tend to start their careers as charismatic and visionary leaders.
- Intuition: Intuition is the most important trait on this list: not just because we are more likely to label people as talented when they are guided by their intuition rather than deliberate, data-driven, and evidence-based rationality; but because of our tendency to overrate our own intuition. Our ability to distrust our instincts is negatively correlated with the tendency to overrate any of these six traits.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Talent is a critical asset to organizations. But how can we tell if a person has talent?
- Although the science of talent identification is well-established,we are generally not very good at detecting talent either in ourselves or others. This is partly due to the wrong choice of methods though there’s arguably a bigger problem: more often than not, we also focus on the wrong traits.
- The following six work-related traits that are usually praised and celebrated as critical markers of human talent or potential, despite rather little scientific evidence for their actual importance as drivers of high job performance or productivity. These are confidence, growth mind-sent, authenticity, engagement, charisma, and intuition.
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Topics: Personal Development, Organizational Behavior, Performance Management
Entrepreneurship Section
The Reason Your Organization Is Underperforming?
By Rebecca Hinds | Inc Magazine | November 10, 2021
Over the past two decades, the time that managers and employees spend in collaborative activities has skyrocketed by 50 percent or more. But much of the collaboration that happens in organizations today is inefficient and dysfunctional. In fact, 20 to 35 percent of value-added collaborations come from only 3 to 5 percent of your employees. Now that organizations are steeped in collaborative dysfunction, how do they course correct? As a leader, clarity should be your North Star metric.
Clarity is a precursor to both healthy collaboration and a host of other organizational outcomes. And it is one of the most powerful indicators of success in today’s organizations, especially as they become increasingly distributed. There are three fundamental drivers of clarity. As a leader, it’s important that you understand–and be able to measure–these key drivers.
- Establish connectivity. Work often happens through informal structures, rather than through formal organizational structures like roles, functional teams, and hierarchies. And so, collaboration cannot be understood by looking solely at these formal structures. Instead, connectivity involves how your employees are connected through tasks, cross-functional projects, ad-hoc teams, goals, and different technologies across formal and informal channels. By leveraging new technologies such as work management systems, you can start to understand how your employees are connected.
- Provide visibility. Visibility involves ensuring that your employees understand and are able to track how their work contributes to broader company goals, as well as your company mission. This understanding is ever fleeting in organizations today. Visibility breeds clarity and helps your employees understand why their work matters.
- Encourage efficiency. By many accounts, efficiency is the new productivity. Productivity is output per unit of time, whereas efficiency is the best possible output per unit of time. As we embark on new ways of work, it’s no longer about executing the greatest volume of tasks–it’s about doing the right tasks in the best possible way. Efficiency is enabled by both connectivity and visibility.
3 key takeaways from the article
- Over the past two decades, the time that managers and employees spend in collaborative activities has skyrocketed by 50 percent or more. But much of the collaboration that happens in organizations today is inefficient and dysfunctional.
- Now that organizations are steeped in collaborative dysfunction, how do they course correct? As a leader, clarity should be your North Star metric.
- Three fundamental drivers of clarity are: establish connectivity, provide visibility, and encourage efficiency.
(Copyrights)
Topics: Productivity, Collaboration, Teams
Obstacles Are Opportunities: Use Them to Take Your Business to the Next Level
By Daniel Todd | Entrepreneur Magazine | November 12, 2021
Only after we overcome struggles does it become clear that success can come as a direct result. In fact, dealing with obstacles of varying degrees and urgency is a requirement to succeed in both life and business. Once you get through enough, you realize that even the worst-case scenario can have a positive solution. According to the author, it may have taken him a few years to understand, but now, he sees obstacles as opportunities, and without them, he wouldn’t be where he is today as a successful entrepreneur. He offers four pieces of advice:
- Embrace the challenges. Attempting to do anything hard comes with challenges, so embrace them. If we look at obstacles as opportunities to turn problems into progress, we increase our chances of success. Confronting obstacles forces you to assess the situation with new eyes and innovate creative solutions. You end up wiser with new skills and experiences. Challenges force us to access our full potential.
- Change your perspective. Instead of avoiding them, view obstacles as opportunities to improve. Panic and fear in the face of struggle can feel normal. Fail once, and you can easily fall into the trap of believing you’ll always fail. So, change your perspective from helplessness in the face of a challenge to try to learn how to be industrious through overcoming them. When you can separate the thoughts that cause fear from those creating solutions, you have greater control over handling problems.
- Be humble and transparent. When you nurture transparent and honest relationships, you end up with more people willing to help you when you need it. It can be hard to admit when times are tough, but if you try to make the situation not seem as bad as it is, people are much less likely to step up and help.
- Take action, take control
The first challenge you overcome is the most important because it’s the one you’re least prepared to handle, but each time you take one on, you come out more capable of handling anything. Give yourself the mental fortitude it takes to struggle through it because, number one, it’s possible, and number two, after you do it once, it becomes easier. Once you’ve overcome enough, you learn that turning obstacles into greater opportunities always leads to success.
2 key takeaways from the article
- Only after we overcome struggles does it become clear that success can come as a direct result. In fact, dealing with obstacles of varying degrees and urgency is a requirement to succeed in both life and business.
- Four pieces of advice can help to turn obstacles into opportunities. These are: embrace the challenges, change your perspective, be humble and transparent, and take action, take control.
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Topics: Personal Development, Entrepreneurship, Startups
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