The Wrap #5 | The news you may have missed
A shot of thinking fuel, brought to you each month by Futurestate Design Co.
Welcome, January. Q1 is always a good time to plan and take stock on the previous year’s performance, and plan for future resilience and success.
This month, we’ve chosen articles that can help frame your thinking as you plan business innovations, whether relevant legislation to keep an eye on, organisational models or new markets.
Managers don't make great leaders
What’s going on?
This article explores how Apple’s remarkable rejuvenation coincided with Steve Jobs putting experts at the head of a functional organisation model, replacing traditional managers with subject experts in their area of operation.
Why it matters
When companies undertake digital transformation programmes, new organisational designs are at the heart of making them work, and that extends to the nature of the people put in key roles. Think along functional lines and ensure that subject matter experts are leading the line: you’ll see greater impacts on innovation and pace of change. In a digital business, you need leaders that teams respect for their expertise, and an org design that favours functional innovation and cross-team collaboration over effective reporting and line management.
Read the original article on Harvard Business Review
Arguments over monopolies
What’s going on?
With the European Digital Strategy, the European Commission has proposed new legislative initiatives with a view to get ahead of challenges and opportunities surfaced by the digital industry. Offering a legal framework, these initiatives will protect online consumers’ safety and rights, alongside promoting fairness and challenging monopolisation within digital.
Why it matters
Britain’s chance of taking a leading role in the digital single market is long-gone, but it’s worth underscoring the fact that the new regulations that will take shape won’t only apply to EU nations, but also to the UK, where the DSM is largely extraterritorial. This is a subject that appears most focused on the digital giants but will actually impact all digital businesses. It’s definitely a subject to stay on top of in the year ahead.
Read the original on Innovation News Network
Language gateways, not barriers
What’s going on?
London-based startup, PaperCup, has raised over £10million for its AI and ML speech technology, which enables translation of video content into multiple languages.
Why it matters
PaperCup is one of a growing stable of companies whose technologies are making the world a genuinely smaller place. With tech like this, we are getting close to expert-level real-time translation services with all their obvious benefits for communication and trade with a global customer base. Less obvious is the impact it will have on how we work, breaking down international barriers for teams and massively accelerating the opportunities to diversify team makeups and mindsets. Now a pandemic has broken down physical barriers, companies like PaperCup will take us another big step toward a single, global workforce.
Read the original on Evening Standard