Harvard Business Review

Should You Let Employees Break the Rules to Make Customers Happy?

Summary.   Some customer service experiences are simple and can be automated. But others, particularly those that involve challenging and complex customer needs, often require creative solutions by frontline employees. In these situations, should employees be empowered to break rules and protocols in order to come to a satisfactory conclusion? Research suggests that certain situations can benefit…

Harvard Business Review

To Build a Top-Performing Team, Ask for 85% Effort

Summary.   An outdated way of thinking about peak performance is: “maximum effort = maximum results.” But research shows that it doesn’t actually work that way in reality. Here’s what actually works: The 85% rule, which counterintuitively suggests that to reach maximum output, you need to refrain from giving maximum effort. Operating at 100% effort all of…

Global Logistics 2023: Supply chains under pressure

Global Logistics 2023: Supply chains under pressure

Summary: Supply chains worldwide will continue to be caught between politics, economics and ecology in the future. Whether there will be more regionalization or nearshoring remains to be seen. The question will linger: Who will win and who will lose in this increasingly tense competition? Then logistics experts discuss the challenges and prospects for global…

What is synthetic data — and how can it help you competitively?

What is synthetic data — and how can it help you competitively?

Why it Matters: Synthetic data — which resembles real data sets but doesn’t compromise privacy — allows companies to share data and create algorithms more easily. Companies committed to data-based decision-making share common concerns about privacy, data integrity, and a lack of sufficient data. Synthetic data aims to solve those problems by giving software developers…

Study: Industry now dominates AI research

Study: Industry now dominates AI research

Why it matters: Industry is taking the lead on artificial intelligence research that has traditionally been the domain of academia. What does this mean for research that is in the public interest? Until the early 2000s, AI research in academia and in industry was split fairly evenly. But over the past decade, the balance has…