Today’s workers carry smartphones, tablets and laptops that connect them with colleagues and job tasks wherever they go. Collaboration apps have exploded in recent years, and now even most basic business software — to make spreadsheets, documents and presentations — has become cloud-based and portable.The result is a truly mobile workforce that can accomplish virtually anything without setting foot in [...]
Despite some resistance from middle management and the occasional exception like Yahoo, remote work is becoming the norm — and for good reason. A 2014 study conducted by researchers at Stanford University found that remote employees experienced greater contentment, increased productivity and were less likely to quit. The author of the study, Nicholas Bloom, states, “The more robotic the work, the greater the [...]
Cybersecurity breaches and cybercrime have been recognized as an area of immense risk for at least five years. Organizations ranging from the government to corporations have had data compromised or stolen. Currently, cybercrime alone is a business estimated by $445 billion, according to the Harvard Business Review. Technology news reveals that the average company deals with 200,000 attempts against security [...]
The average full-time American employee spends one third of their day working, five days a week, according to the Center for Disease Control. That means your coworkers, your daily tasks, and the work culture you surround yourself with can be just as important as the relationship, activity, and environmental decisions you make with the other two thirds of your [...]
Collaboration drives so much in a workplace. Collaborative teams have a deeper sense of trust, are more willing to take risks, and are supportive of each other more consistently. It’s a powerful trait to infuse into any work team. How best to collaborate depends on many factors: the teams, the work, the need and the project. Yet there are common [...]
It’s clear that digital technology can power business and that many digital companies have disrupted entire industries with the way they deliver products and services for the better. But can technology be part of solving social issues as well as business ones? Can it disrupt models of organizations where progress on social issues has been made? In the last [...]
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is an important business metric. It provides management with a view of how much repeat business they can expect from customers. In turn, the revenue projection arising from that calculation can provide an overview of how much they need to spend on retaining customers. Typically, CLV is computed as follows:(Average Value of Purchase) x (Number of Repeat [...]
Artificial intelligence is a popular topic in boardrooms and C-suites today. As AI becomes one of the most-discussed opportunities, businesses are making significant investments in technologies designed to innovate new business models and improve business processes.Yet if history proves anything, many companies will swing and miss at this latest business strategy. Why? From the dot-com boom and bust in the [...]
In 2017, artificial intelligence and machine learning have moved out of the movies and into the mainstream. Commercials highlight intelligent in-home assistants (think Amazon's Alexa) and smart products learn how we behave and give us better search results or product recommendations.Today, the most innovative and pioneering companies in artificial intelligence include some of the world's best-known brands and new players [...]
Our world is hyperconnected, driven, in part, by advances in digital technology and wireless functionality. The convergence of these innovations is called the Internet of Things. It is transforming the way we live, work and play. Just what is the state of the Internet of Things right now and where is it headed? Put simply, the Internet of Things is a [...]
Most social media platforms operating today have been built with scale as a dominant metric in their business strategy. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and their kin wanted to build out as big as possible to keep revenues flowing. Yet increasingly, social media is becoming more than social media if, by that, we mean that media that connects friends and communities. [...]
E-mail is a dominant mode of information dissemination in many corporations. It’s just as dominant overall, of course. But increasingly, communications from upper management to the company at large, from supervisors to their reports, among team members, and between departments are all shared via e-mail. E-mail is often the default mode of communication. The adoption of e-mail [...]
We all know that communication in meetings -- especially virtual meetings -- is often less than optimal. The number of questions, differing perspectives, repetition, and multiple points of view often creates a kind of static where it’s difficult to say what goals were furthered during the meeting time. Meeting goers don’t always remember what was said. The Wall Street Journal indicates [...]
How much time do you devote to onboarding your new employees? The duration of a couple of presentations? A day or two?The process for hiring new team members should not end with receiving a signed offer letter, nor should it be over after the Day-1 orientation. Management and organizational experts suggest that successful onboarding processes can last as long as [...]
Finance companies are not always linked with digital innovation in the way that, say, social media or technology companies are. However, digital innovation is affecting the industry, from venerable investment banks to blockchain developers. Fast Company annually publishes a list of the world’s 50 Most Innovative Companies, but it also breaks the list into sectors. Want to know who the most innovative [...]
The IoT allows for the measurement, collection, transmission, and usage analysis of countless objects, from cars to clothes. For marketers and business strategists, the IoT generates massive amounts of data that exposes the behaviors and passions of millions of customers and potential customers. In this time of great concerns over privacy and security, the question remains, regarding the Internet of Things: [...]
WeWork’s coworking spaces offer fruit-infused water, lively designs, and an open community. As Andrew Rice described it in Bloomberg, “WeWork has cast itself as a new kind of workplace for the post-recession labor force and a generation that has never known a cubicle. It aspires to make your job a place you never want to quit.” There’s no office politics [...]
A concern that machines will replace workers animates much discussion about the future of technology. Robots, drones, and virtual reality all seem to portend a time not far distant when machines do work once done by humans. Indeed, in some instances, that future is already here. Proponents of augmented reality (AR), though, are increasingly saying that AR will improve employee [...]
It is universally acknowledged that good data can help company performance. In the human resources field, for example, data can help identify why top performers leave, what might be done to retain them, and how to make more employees satisfied going forward. In operations, it can help identify what processes are more productive. Across the board, data can be used to pinpoint [...]
One of the key factors that can enhance collaboration in a workplace is to identify the work styles of each member of a team. Each member of a team may have different work styles, which involve personality, focus, and even the way in which information is processed. Although the word “diversity” in corporate life is often used to refer [...]
Americans have more access to better food and food for a sophisticated palate than ever before. Great meals can be had everywhere from airline terminals to 5-star restaurants specializing in haute cuisine. Most people are aware of the rise in the foodie culture, where people from 18 to 75 pursue sophisticated foods ranging from roasted squab to artisanal chocolate to craft beer. [...]
Every year, Fast Company compiles a 50-company list of “The World’s Most Innovative Companies.” It surveys the business universe for companies whose products and business strategies have made the greatest impact.Innovation in social media likely has one of the most significant impacts of any digital workplace. Why? Social media is increasingly expanding the category of social media itself. Think of it as [...]
Senior management in a digital workplace can become concerned about time management when important goals are not being met, yet their people are clearly working. Some employees are even working late, yet rollouts and shipments have both been delayed.A recent article in the Harvard Business Review explores whether this scenario might be a result of focus challenges among the staff, not time [...]
With the rise of social media, business strategy in marketing departments followed the "like." Endorsements on social media channels like Facebook was thought, axiomatically, to lead to increased sales. That's one of the reasons that so many organizations have social media pages.Social media engagement, so the theory goes, leads to more sales, both to "likers" and their social networks.What Is [...]
Businesses worldwide are losing “digital IQ” at a rapid rate, according to a yearly survey conducted by PwC. The Digital IQ survey tabulates responses from business leaders at over 2,200 companies and defines Digital IQ as “the measurement of an organization’s abilities to harness and profit from technology.”In 2016, 67% of businesses surveyed self-rated their digital IQ as strong. In 2017, which [...]
Most people know that their behavior on a computer screen can be monitored. The sites they visit, how long they look at a particular page, and long-term patterns can all be explored, measured, and quantified. Online retail sites, for example, can determine customer preference and make recommendations based on browsing patterns as part of a business strategy - and they [...]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently the focus of technology news. There is a marked tendency, however, to treat AI as if it were a singular thing. The Varieties of AI It isn't. A recent article in Wired points out that there are many varieties of artificial intelligence. If you hear of deep neural networks, for example, you are reading about a [...]
Many digital technologies use images for security, along with consumer-specific knowledge-based authentication (KBA) such as passwords. However, sound is increasingly moving to the fore in technology news as a means of providing digital security. In the Call Center and Outside It: Detecting Fraud One reason is that some digital fraud is committed via the sound of a voice. Call [...]
Artificial intelligence (AI) is frequently the focus of technology news. There is a marked tendency, however, to treat AI as if it were a singular thing.The Varieties of AIIt isn't. A recent article in Wired points out that there are many varieties of artificial intelligence. If you hear of deep neural networks, for example, you are reading about a pattern recognition system. [...]
Snap Inc., the company that brought us the social media app Snapchat, is going public shortly. In the materials for its initial public offering (IPO), Snap described itself as a "camera company." The description caused no small amount of commentary, largely because Snapchat is a social media smartphone app, not a camera.Snapchat uses cameras, of course - one of the [...]