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Growing, or Not, in an Age of Permanent Volatility

Harvard Business Review

In a recent Accenture study involving 1000 CFOs and CMOs across eight industries and a dozen countries in developed and emerging markets, 85 percent of executives expected their companies to grow at a rate equal to or significantly greater than global growth forecasts. Innovation focused on first-mover advantage, not price point.

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Why We Shouldn’t Worry About the Declining Number of Public Companies

Harvard Business Review

In a parallel development, the number of companies listed on U.S. The number of listed firms can decline because of three developments: 1) bankruptcy, failure, or closure of listed firms, 2) delisting of firms going private or acquired, and 3) decrease in number of initial public offerings (IPOs). westend61/Getty Images.

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A Survey of 3,000 Executives Reveals How Businesses Succeed with AI

Harvard Business Review

And AI success stories are becoming more numerous and diverse, from Amazon reaping operational efficiencies using its AI-powered Kiva warehouse robots, to GE keeping its industrial equipment running by leveraging AI for predictive maintenance. Investment in AI is growing and is increasingly coming from organizations outside the tech space.

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Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn’t Apply to Silicon Valley

Harvard Business Review

Given that news, it seems that businesses that have dominated their markets are learning that the magic elixir of network effects and winner-takes-all advantages are about as reliable as cures for baldness. The message is simple: beware of the siren song of network effects, winner-takes-all, and first mover advantages.

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How AI Will Change Strategy: A Thought Experiment

Harvard Business Review

In this example, it shifts Amazon’s business model from shopping-then-shipping to shipping-then-shopping, generates the incentive to vertically integrate into operating a product-returns service (including a fleet of trucks), and accelerates the timing of investment due to first-mover advantage from increasing returns.

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NewTV Is the Antithesis of a Lean Startup. Can It Work?

Harvard Business Review

The mantra of “ first-mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their markets, became the conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley. Startups now had tools that sped up the search for customers, reduced time to market, and slashed the cost of development.

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What Investors Need to Know About Zimbabwe After Mugabe

Harvard Business Review

Mugabe’s ouster and replacement with his one-time deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was the most significant development in the Southern African nation since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. Most importantly, executives have to follow developments closely. billion a decade later. Now the country is at a crossroads.