Author: John Sammarco

Amazon.com has held advanced discussions about the possibility of opening its highly sought-after second headquarters in Crystal City, including how quickly it would move employees there, which buildings it would occupy and how an announcement about the move would be made to the public, according to people close to the process.

Many common corporate activities and thought processes actually promote mediocrity and inhibit needed business-model transformations, a new book contends. What if it turned out that best practices were not “best” after all? What if adhering to best practices actually signaled a company’s mediocrity? Those aren’t frivolous or absurd musings. They’re central tenets of a quite serious new book, “Detonate” (Wiley, May 2018). It aims to help organizations “spot traditional business activities that need to be questioned” during an era when business is increasingly defined by disruption.

When board members in big firms make critical decisions about their organisations, it is almost always behind closed doors. So exactly how and if senior leaders draw on big data factors in their decision-making is largely unexplained. Researchers studied top-level decisions by board managers at 19 organisations in manufacturing, finance, consultancy, IT and air travel. “Our study identified a shortfall in capabilities for dealing with the challenges of big data,” said Dr Ana Canhoto at Brunel Business School. “There is a gap in the knowledge and understanding organisations need, in order to avoid the cognitive biases and overloads big data can bring.”

Many businesses have core values that are intended to serve as a guide for all their internal and external operations. Unfortunately, some companies give little more than lip service to their values and treat them as a branding tool rather than a moral and ethical compass.