strategy+business

How can companies tackle big societal problems while creating value? Three PwC authors show how a select group of companies–dubbed game changers–can harness powerful technologies and marry them to a disruptive business model. They demonstrate how companies in the healthcare sector are already using exponential technologies such as AI and big data, which scale rapidly, to attack the thorniest healthcare challenges.

Labs, rather than fields, will be the new source of materials for sustainable fashion. Big name brands are collaborating with startups to use everything from bacteria and fungi to seaweed to produce the fabrics of the future for an industry that could be worth US$2.2 billion by 2026.

A step-by-step approach that builds momentum incrementally is a good strategy for companies trying to implement firmwide transformation. Brad Borkan uses examples from the past (the US National Wildlife Refuge System) and the present (software giant SAP’s move to the cloud) to prove his point.

In PwC’s second Chief Data Officer Study, we found more chief data officers appointed by the world’s leading companies–and evidence they’re having a positive impact on performance.

Nadi Albino, from the public-private-youth partnership Generation Unlimited, and Chaitali Mukherjee, the people and organization lead partner with PwC India, talk about why upskilling youth is so important for the world and why businesses should play a part.

Azeem Azhar, founder of the future-focused podcast and newsletter Exponential View, and Annie Veillet, national data and advanced analytics lead partner with PwC Canada, discuss how we can ensure humanity stays ahead of technology, and what’s at risk if it doesn’t.

As the FIFA World Cup kicks off in Qatar, every team taking part is likely to be using data analytics to try to gain an edge, particularly in penalty shoot-outs. As Ben Lyttleton shows, soccer clubs in pro leagues are now in a race to find the best data analytics talent off the field to identify what they should do on it.

Sheila Bair, an author and former chair of the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and Vicki Huff Eckert, a retired PwC US partner and former vice chair for PwC’s US technology, media, and telecommunications sector, talk about how blockchain, and the cryptocurrencies that exist because of it, could affect financial systems and transform business and society–ready or not.

The powerful trends of digitization have transformed the way collaboration in innovation ecosystems works. IMD professor Louise Muhdi writes that in order to be successful, such collaboration must rely on new matchmakers, empower people, and focus on value creation.

Drawing on lessons from the development of other breakthrough technologies, Ken Gabriel, the COO of Wellcome Leap and former acting director of DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), talks with PwC UK’s head of disruption and innovation, Leo Johnson, about the future of innovation for some of society’s biggest challenges and about the crucial issue of trust.