strategy+business

Reconfiguring the industrial system to avoid the worst consequences of climate change will take audacity and practicality.

Hear exclusive insights recorded live at the premier annual summit of Asia-Pacific business and government.

Google’s Chief Privacy Officer, Keith Enright, joins the Take on Tomorrow podcast to discuss the unique privacy challenges presented by generative AI.

When it comes to scaling a transformation, co-opting–allowing people to choose different ways of working–rather than persuading or coercing them can lead to success. This method, which starts with giving early adopters easy access to resources and empowering them to own the changes, has been used to encourage Guatemalans to switch from campfires to cookstoves, to move employees of a large tech company to cloud computing, and to entice hospitals to adopt life-saving practices.

In this Inside the Mind of the CEO feature, s+b speaks with the leader of Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that designs and builds robots for a range of commercial and public safety contexts. CEO Robert Playter talks about his company’s transformation from an R&D company to a full-fledged product company, and he dispels worries about the potential harm robots could cause in the workplace and the wider world.

To instill an intrapreneurial culture in a business, it’s not enough to hold one-off events like hackathons. It requires a systemic approach. David Lancefield identifies five foundational building blocks that will nurture the kind of value-creating opportunities that reap significant rewards.

In this Inside the Mind of the CEO interview, s+b speaks with the leader of Sun Life, a financial-services giant in life insurance and asset management. CEO Kevin Strain discusses his strategy for growth and expansion and provides his views on the key role culture will play in helping Sun Life become a more agile and digital company.

Berlin TXL, named for the old Berlin Tegel Airport on which it sits, is a sustainable city within a city, which by 2045 will be home to 10,000 people–a planned community where shops, schools, and doctors will all be a five-minute walk away. It’s a triple-zero strategy: erect buildings that consume zero energy, emit zero carbon, and leave behind zero waste.

Fostering innovation in large companies is a perennial challenge for leaders, no matter where employees are located. So how can leaders move the innovation needle? Lorraine Marchand, former general manager of the life sciences division of IBM’s Watson Health and author of The Innovation Mindset, offers the following suggestions: adopt a personal mindset of innovation, weave innovation into the business, train employees in problem-solving, and make it safe to fail.

The May issue of s+b explores how businesses are finding real-world value in virtual reality.