HR Digest

MAY 2, 2019

I was at a conference recently and one of the speakers remarked that “Culture hedges against the risk of uncertainty.” Not only do these approaches fit with our identity as a technology company, but they can actually help reduce bias in candidate vetting. That, I think gets to the heart of what the right culture can do.

Resources 40

Resources Human Resources Learning-by-Doing Leadership Pipeline 40

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 14, 2014

The hedge fund founded and run by billionaire Paul Singer just announced that it now owns 6.2% The company, founded in 1996 by an engineer from Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center , Pradeep Sindhu (who remains its chief technology officer and vice chairman), was one of the highest flyers of the fin de siècle tech stock boom.

Hedge 8

Hedge Chief Technology Officer Maturity IPO 8

Strategy Driven

MAY 25, 2011

And that response is hidden inside ‘business’ behaviors – sandbagging quotas, hedging on stretch goals, and avoiding accountability or commitment. In my book, I describe an incident that took place at a famous, fast-growing technology company.

Company 50

Company Venture Capitalist Film Reputation 50

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 20, 2011

Plural Investments*, a hedge fund started several years ago, had a problem. When Matt Grossman started Plural Investments, his intention was to harness the best efforts of many smart, creative people rather than just rely on the genius of a single founder, as so many other hedge funds do.

Power 16

Power Hedge Chief Operating Officer Kaplan 16

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 24, 2016

Small startup firms are already developing proprietary technologies — such as machine vision, deep learning, and other innovations —– that could help large investors evaluate opportunities and risks with far greater accuracy and efficiency than was previously possible. But right now that’s not happening.

Operations 8

Operations Intangible Assets Venture Capitalist Hedge 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 21, 2018

Beginning with Criticality, they might ask, “How critical is the oil pipeline in Abuja, Nigeria, to the company’s overall operations?” The CSO would rank Criticality like this: 5 – Loss of the pipeline would stop operations. 4 – Loss would reduce operations considerably.

Tools 15

Tools Risk Management Budgeting SWOT 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 3, 2018

In “The Employee Experience” study, we found that 73% of employees surveyed agree that the longer they use their technology devices, the more they desire a visual break such as taking a walk or looking through unobstructed windows to an outside view. The benefits of these elements is is well recognized.

Real Estate 15

Real Estate Call Center Hedge Survey 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 1, 2018

Unlike national oil companies and oil majors that typically take five to 10 years to develop conventional oil reserves, these independent and “unconventional” players have improved their drilling and fracturing technology to the point where they can respond within months to temporary spikes or dips in the market. The soaring U.S.

Offshoring 14

Offshoring Price Transportation Long-term 14

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 5, 2012

Yes, political hacktivists brag about Web pages defaced and customer information released over the Internet, but companies rarely reveal the attacks that result in the loss of valuable intellectual property — business plans, proprietary technologies or fraudulent payments. These attacks can be devastating.

Supply Chain 14

Supply Chain Risk Management Hedge Banking 14

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 24, 2012

The Kahn Academy, founded by Salman Kahn (a former hedge fund manager), is a not-for-profit, online venture that is currently revolutionizing K-12 education. Hart does not quite do what the Kahn Academy does but she operates in the same space. If you want to know how, here is the obligatory TED video. Want to get a taste?

Video 16

Video Education Christensen Learning-by-Doing 16

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 23, 2012

Trend lines, market sizing, and competitive benchmarks that served companies well during periods of gradual market evolution do little good in industries where new technologies create seismic shifts, demand is uncertain, and rivals emerge from left field.

Strategy 16

Strategy CEO Strategic Planning Consensus 16

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 5, 2012

Companies would do better at satisfying and retaining customers if they spent less time worrying about big data and more time making good use of "small data" — already-available information from simple technology solutions — to become more flexible, informative, and helpful. What If Google Had a Hedge Fund? More >>.

CAPEX 15

CAPEX Balanced Scorecard Hedge Software 15

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2017

banks are going to survive the coming wave in financial technology (fintech), they’ll need to finally take digital transformation seriously. Small businesses are starting to demand banking services that have engaging web and mobile user experiences, on par with the technologies they use in their personal lives.

Banking 15

Banking Credit Scoring Stage-Gate Competitive Advantage 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 24, 2017

Also known as “token sales,” this new fundraising phenomenon is being fueled by a convergence of blockchain technology, new wealth, clever entrepreneurs, and crypto-investors who are backing blockchain-fueled ideas. How technology is transforming transactions. Insight Center. Business in the Era of Blockchain.

Venture Capitalist 15

Venture Capitalist Due Diligence Finance Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 13, 2013

Robin Hood, on the other hand, is a grant-making foundation created by hedge fund managers with a penchant for hard numbers. The MCC's approach is even more complex as it operates on a 20-year time horizon. Benefits are expected to begin accruing only after five years, once the infrastructure is built and operating.

Long-term 11

Long-term Metrics Due Diligence Cost-Benefit Analysis 11

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 23, 2014

Today Facebook enjoys three advantages over rivals: technological capabilities, economies of scale in its infrastructure, and most importantly, network effects. The strategic bet here is that a single customer interface is not necessary to maintain or even strengthen Facebook’s technological lead and infrastructure scale.

Strategy 9

Strategy Competitive Advantage Real Estate Brand 9

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 10, 2014

One representative example: April’s Education Innovation Summit , where more than 2,000 people energetically discussed how technology and markets are charting the future of education globally. The transformation in education technology and markets is happening with the business leaders and money-men of higher education barely present.

Real Estate 10

Real Estate Education Asset Management Disruptive Innovation 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 15, 2014

s Co-operative Bank in June 2013. This shortfall resulted in its parent, Co-operative Group, ceding control of the bank to bondholders, including U.S. hedge funds. that has both organizational and technological components. This is clearly where the Co-operative Bank’s program floundered. enterprise architecture ?

Banking 10

Banking Project Enterprise Architecture CIO 10

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2016

AlphaGo’s success is emblematic of a broader trend: An explosion of data and advances in algorithms have made technology smarter than ever before. In addition to executing well-defined tasks, technology is starting to address broader, more ambiguous problems. Remember Long-Term Capital Management ?

Strategy 8

Strategy Supply Chain Technology Engineering 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 27, 2018

Apple and Google, for example, each control a popular mobile phone operating system platform (and key apps on that platform), Amazon controls the largest online merchant platform, and Facebook controls the largest social network platform. Through their leading platforms, a significant volume and variety of personal data flows. Loss of trust.

Company 14

Company Advertising Incentives Price 14

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 12, 2012

Conglomerates are defended for their synergies, and for the benefits of diversity as a hedge against failure in one sector (though this argument is often oversold by management, since shareholders can diversify and thus hedge risk for themselves). But conglomerates are inherently more vulnerable than other companies.

Welch 9

Welch Diversity Hedge Chemicals 9

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 12, 2016

When it comes to preparing organizations for a complex, high-speed future, many people who work in those organizations, or in management science, talk about the imperative for “ continuous improvement ” in operations. One crucial measure of this success is adaptability.

Development 8

Development Company Hedge Real Estate 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 10, 2013

Moreover, firms are often investing in venture capital-type organizations with the hope of striking it lucky with a new technology or offer. As Dell''s public statements have pronounced, these changes will reduce near-term profitability, raise operating and capital expenditures and involve a lot of risk. So we are left with a quandary.

Venture Capitalist 10

Venture Capitalist Competitive Advantage Restructuring Short-term 10

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2013

Yet how do you actually do it, when life and livelihood generally depend on operating inside a box? The rhymes may be about social patterns, the impact of technology, or how nations tend to adapt. Of course, the wisest among us will always hedge our forecasts with qualifiers such as “will likely” or “is apt to.”

Groupthink 11

Groupthink Learning-by-Doing Emotional Intelligence Hedge 11

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2017

The sheer magnitude of Apple’s new headquarters sets it apart from any other technology workspace on the West Coast. Software, like information technology in general, is optimized for speed and upgrades — constant, sometimes radical change. million square feet) called the Ring, designed to house 12,000 employees.

Real Estate 8

Real Estate Technology Hedge Project 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 10, 2018

Those analyses rely on publicly available data sources, but software providers have accumulated growing amounts of private data on almost every aspect of their customers’ technology, operations, people, and strategies. It is even possible to hold up the data mirror to individual technology users.

Benchmarking 8

Benchmarking Software B2B Comparison 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 1, 2017

To wit, 45% of financial intermediaries , such as payment networks, stock exchanges, and money transfer services, suffer from economic crime every year; the number is 37% for the entire economy, and only 20% and 27% for the professional services and technology sectors, respectively. How technology is transforming transactions.

Finance 8

Finance IPO Banking Venture Capitalist 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 14, 2014

Herbalife After Big Bet, Hedge Fund Pulls the Levers of Power The New York Times If you’re looking for the corporate-governance version of House of Cards, this is probably the closest you''ll get (though there''s no strategic murdering here, as far as I know). Crisis management Information & technology Technology'

McGregor 9

McGregor Information Technology Crisis Management COO 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Clean energy can provide a hedge against rising and more volatile electricity prices. In a recent, high-profile example, HP announced in July that it will power all of its Texas data centers with wind energy for 12 years while lowering its operating costs. electricity already procure 14% of it from renewable sources.

Energy 8

Energy Globalization Hedge Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 1, 2017

You have to consider salaries, marketing budget, office size, technology services, and on and on. After managing a sleeve of a successful hedge fund in London for five years, and building ample savings, Colin was ready for his own shop. Let’s examine two cases, one a former colleague and the other a close friend.

Strategy 9

Strategy Budgeting Cost Price 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 20, 2016

The auto industry is facing a trio of disruptive technologies: electric batteries, autonomous vehicles, and the mobile phone. They can’t hedge, like Ford is doing. The first two have been long-standing threats, relatively speaking, and are embodied in one company, Tesla. You want it separate but connected.

Christensen 8

Christensen Hedge Bureaucracy Film 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 3, 2014

While the rest of the stock market world was still operating in terms of minutes and seconds, the HFTers (led by two Chicago-based firms, hedge-fund giant Citadel and upstart GETCO, now called KCG ) found a whole new world of profit in the milliseconds and microseconds between when orders were placed and filled.

Long-term 9

Long-term Open-book Marketing Hedge 9

N2Growth Blog

AUGUST 12, 2010

Decisioning by consensus usually results in no decision being made, or an intellectually dishonest, watered-down decision that is so full of compromises, hedges and caveats that a non-decision might have been preferable.

Consensus 388

Consensus Team Building Blog Team 388

Harvard Business Review

JULY 22, 2016

For most organizations, this is the least risky option, and a good middle road, despite the fact that many traditional organizations often see digital network operators as threats rather than allies. However, this may have been a hedging strategy as Starbucks built up its own digital capability, including a popular app and payment system.

Real Estate 8

Real Estate Business Model Short-term Incubator 8

N2Growth Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

It was Andy Grove the former Chairman and CEO of Intel and Time Magazine’s 1997 Man of the Year who said “You have to take action; you can’t hesitate or hedge your bets. A close examination of truly great leaders will reveal that, to the one, they all have a strong bias toward action.

Blog 387

Blog Learning-by-Doing CEO Strategy 387

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Even in the most hard-nosed of private equity firms or hedge funds you will find that people align with strategies that mean something to them, that they’re passionate about. Noble: Economies and business operate in very complex systems. Private equity or hedge funds through the ‘80s and the ‘90s, exactly the same story.

Insurance 11

Insurance Bond Hedge Bottom-up 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2012

But with the coming of Big Data, we are going to be operating very much out of our old, familiar ballparks. What If Google Had a Hedge Fund? We live in an era that builds on centuries of science, and our methods of building systems, governments, organizations, and so on are well defined. The "Human Understanding" Problem. More >>.

Hedge 9

Hedge System Health Care Transportation 9