As examples from Southwest Airlines and Delta illustrate, there is a critical need for CIOs to address technical debt within mission-critical systems. Frequent Cutter contributor Myles Suer recently spoke with a group of CIOs about this need and the steps leaders can take to protect these systems. This Advisor shares some of those insights, emphasizing enterprise architecture’s role in eliminating tech debt.

Organizations that are highly effective at strategic portfolio management are twice as likely to achieve better business outcomes as those that aren’t. This case study from a Fortune 500 organization reflects strategic portfolio management concepts in action and illustrates the value that a capability perspective can bring to project portfolio decision-making.

Digital twins have been widely adopted by the aerospace and manufacturing industries, but their potential benefits in the mining industry are only starting to be realized. This Advisor presents a mining industry case study with a focus on data collection, integration, and storage challenges.

Philippa White, bestselling author of Return on Humanity: Leadership Lessons from All Corners of the World, challenges today’s leaders to outgrow the past, stating that “companies are working as if it’s still the Industrial Age.” As leaders come to care less about how much money a company makes and more about how they make that money, they discover many returns to purpose, including better relationships with employees and communities.

As one’s invisible purpose yields visible returns, many others may be inspired to follow suit. Anica Zeyen explains how leaders can catch and pass on their purpose by recognizing and revealing their vulnerability. The article describes how the six protagonists showcased in Zeyen’s documentary Invisible experienced purpose contagion in their own lives and looks at how featuring the documentary can facilitate similar ripples in educational institutions, consulting firms, and policy circles. As a disabled academic, activist, and documentary maker, Zeyen’s purpose contagion can reach and serve 1.3 billion people with disabilities worldwide.

Michael Messenger explains how faith and calling weaved a purposeful path that took him from a partner at a leading law practice to president and CEO of the charitable organization World Vision Canada. He reminds leaders that a sense of calling is not limited to social justice activists or nonprofit leaders. All leaders follow their calling when they see their jobs as a way to align their values, vocation, and beliefs with a deep, purpose-driven commitment to a mission, a passion for their work, and a desire to positively impact the world. Messenger reminds us that commitment grows when purpose gets deeply personal, stating: “My faith informs my calling and thereby amplifies my sense of purpose.”

In their piece, Hannes Leroy, Johannes Claeys, Mirko Benischke, and Daan Stam feature a powerful component of the leadership development programs at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, the Netherlands: the “I Will” statement, which connects individuals’ personal ambitions with the challenges of today’s society. The authors share three sequential steps of scaffolding purpose, inviting us to move from “I Am” (discover purpose) to “I Will” (commit to purpose) and arrive at “We Will” (engage others with your purpose).

In this article, Bill Fox shares his journey to purpose. The inner leader’s journey is all about leadership of oneself. Fox shifts our attention from what leaders do to who leaders strive to become in the greater service of humanity. By describing his 13 steps to scaffolding purpose (including principles he extracted from his journey, personal experiences, and pointed questions for the readers), Fox invites us to awaken our own inner leader.

Dee Corrigan, Lauren Elliott, Gethin Hine, and James McCarthy highlight The Purpose-in-Practice Community (hosted by A Blueprint for Better Business, a UK-based charity). Together, more than 200 business leaders are charting a path to putting purpose at the heart of business. Their article coaches leaders on how to drive purpose, how to become a purpose driver, and how to steer clear of purpose traps on their lifelong journey to success. The authors share key practices and set guideposts in the journey toward purpose.

Coro Strandberg urges us to radically reimagine the purpose of business. She calls for “social purpose” and blueprints the purpose economy. The article offers multiple strategies (identifying, consulting, and engaging the social purpose community; deploying purpose economy levers of change; and providing tools and resources for the business community and ecosystem actors) that can help regions and nations begin the process of architecting the purpose economy. Strandberg showcases the Canadian Purpose Economy Project, which aims to accelerate Canada’s transition to the purpose economy and explains how ecosystem builders can help social purpose companies start, transition, thrive, and grow.

Do most leaders “have” purpose? If so, how do they “hold” it as they traverse various levels (individuals, teams, organizations, partnerships, sectors, regions, countries, continents) in their quest for success? The goal of the seven articles in the first installment of this two-part Amplify series is to demystify leaders’ journey to purpose. The focus of this issue is detecting and connecting purpose at various levels across the lifespan of purpose-driven leadership. The main takeaway is that having and holding purpose helps leaders shift from surviving to thriving in an inequitable world.

There are many perspectives on what constitutes “good” nonprofit organization (NPO) governance. Even so, most agree that, given the behavioral expectations faced by NPO board members, strong judgment (informed by the dimensions of leader character) must combine with instrumental skills to underpin all decisions made by the board.

Competing factors come into play to determine our tolerance to AI hallucination. This Advisor stresses that understanding context is crucial to making informed decisions about strategically adopting and implementing emerging technologies and provides key takeaways that can help us balance the potential value of the opportunity with our risk tolerance.

Cutter contributor and data business leader Myles Suer recently spoke to a group of CIOs to discuss lessons learned from last month’s CrowdStrike debacle. This Advisor shares their insights and provides key takeaways for business leaders about crisis management and resilience.

As this Advisor explores, GenAI looks promising for providing advanced AI edge computing capabilities in space. Although still in experimental stages, applications from Booz Allen Hamilton and the European Space Agency demonstrate the possibilities of integrating GenAI capabilities directly on spacecraft by facilitating natural language–based data retrieval and analysis, improved data transmission efficiency, and real-time decision-making.

Airports can be viewed as microcosms of cities and, as such, offer important lessons to public sector entities around the world. Specifically, emulating the strategies used by airports during the pandemic can help municipalities and others become more resilient. In this Advisor, Denver International Airport CEO Phillip Washington offers a firsthand view into how airports were able to survive, rebound, and move forward after the pandemic-induced downturn.

As AI systems advance and produce increasingly sophisticated and innovative output, the question of how to treat this output under IP law becomes more pressing. The characteristics of some AI systems, including the self-improving nature of certain AI models and the difficulties associated with attributing their outputs to human creators, challenge the existing framework and necessitate a thorough rethinking of what rules will result in the greatest social value.

Women of color are equipped with tried-by-fire strengths that stem from endurance, perseverance, and survivorship. By utilizing these qualities, businesses can expand and grow to meet the diverse needs of their customer base.

In this issue of Amplify, we delve into the ways organizations are developing analytical capabilities that lead to valuable insights and create business value. We also explore the shift from being a data-driven organization to a data-centric one. The latter places data science at its core; data is a primary, permanent asset used as the starting point to determine organizational action. As we explore this shift, it becomes evident that organizations that exploit analytics (and data in general) tend to view it as more than a means to an end — they harness it to create a data-centric culture, establish synergies within and across functions, and deepen relationships with myriad stakeholders.

Bill Schmarzo opens the issue with a thought-provoking article about how companies can unleash business value and economic innovation through AI. Drawing on the seminal work of Adam Smith, Schmarzo explains that “the essence of economics is the creation, consumption, and distribution of wealth — or value” as a baseline for economic innovation. The author brilliantly balances his extensive industry experience and published works to highlight cultural empowerment as a way to foster an inclusive environment to demonstrate value. He identifies 10 critical characteristics of cultural empowerment in the context of leveraging AI and generative AI (GenAI) for economic innovation. Schmarzo also offers the “Thinking Like a Data Scientist” methodology to help business leaders maximize AI to create new sources of customer, product, service, and operational value. The article concludes with an example of integrating GenAI with the methodology to create an economic innovation force multiplier.

Hossein Sahraei, Ramila Peiris, Luc Nguyen, and Olivier Moureau describe how global healthcare company Sanofi transitioned from reactive modes of data analytics (descriptive, diagnostic) to a proactive approach through prescriptive analytics. The authors, who are part of Sanofi's process data science team, provide a refreshing account of their experiences, challenges, and successes, beginning with an acknowledgment that digital transformation goes beyond adopting new technologies to fundamentally change how organizations operate, think, and innovate. They highlight the importance of developing a growth mindset, challenging established norms, and seeing uncertainty as a catalyst for innovation. The authors also explain how the organizational strategy prioritized practicality (an approach based on business needs and limitations), scalability (a framework that can be used in different areas with minimal effort), and sustainability (manageable execution, maintenance, and updates) in product design and deployment. The article reports on the economic value of empowering decision makers, along with benefits such as increased job satisfaction and helping workers maintain a healthy work-life balance.

This Advisor explores key technologies for more accurate tracking of space objects of all sizes, monitoring software that automates collision warnings, and technology that remotely removes objects in orbit. These include two systems that cause decaying orbits, one that uses a specialized satellite to push space objects and one that moves objects into a different orbit from Earth.

Daniel J. Rees, Roderick A. Thomas, Victoria Bates, and Gareth Davies examine the transformational impact that healthcare-related technologies (e.g., AI, wearable sensors, clinical and genetic data) have on the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. These technologies can potentially transform healthcare business processes, resulting in faster, more efficient decision-making, human-error reduction, and accelerated product development cycles that can lead to faster product launches. The authors gained insights from 48 senior managers in healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations to both identify best practices and understand the challenges related to using healthcare-related technologies and data-centric decision-making to deliver value to stakeholders. Best practices, such as governance (memorandum of understanding), incentives (monetary and nonmonetary), scalability, and collaboration between pharmaceutical makers and technology companies, are identified as key enablers. Such practices enable stakeholders to mitigate challenges like culture (trust, reputation, time, risk aversion), governance (contracts), and scalability. The article concludes with recommendations to ensure the right individuals choose tools and processes that can lead to successful partnerships and transformational initiatives for the benefit of patients, society, and the wider economy.

Antoine Harfouche explains how AI and big data analytics enable smart farming, focusing on the hydroponic forage market. With a current market value of more than US $5 billion, hydroponic systems that leverage technologies like AI, Internet of Things, satellite imagery, and data analytics can optimize environmental controls, improve resource management, and enhance crop resilience. He also outlines the advantages and disadvantages of several such technologies. By combining data, including genomic (epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics), phenomic (plant height, leaf shape, angle, growth trajectory), and environmental (weather and soil, solar radiation, relative humidity), AI can enhance predictive accuracy and decision-making in breeding programs to enhance climate resilience. Harfouche explains the importance of the data value chain, which consists of data capture, data storage, data transformation, data analysis, data interpretation, and feedback. These stages are then instantiated into a framework to demonstrate how AI and big data analytics can be used to improve hydroponic cultivation and improve the sustainability of hydroponic farming. The article concludes with a call for increased collaboration among researchers, farmers, and policy makers to harness these technologies to create a sustainable and secure food production system for the future.

Enjoud Alhasawi, Denis Dennehy, Yogesh Dwivedi, Guoqing Zhao, and Sean Coffey highlight a growing concern about how supply chain disruptions negatively impact both developed and developing countries. The authors provide insights from practitioners at four companies located in Ireland and Kuwait that operate in large, complex agri-food supply chains. They focus on understanding how AI enables resilience in agri-food supply chains. Building on the four dimensions of supply chain resilience (readiness, responsiveness, recovery, and adaptability), the authors show how the companies used robotics and expert systems to mitigate the threat of supply chain disruptions. Drawing on secondary data, they acknowledge that other functions of AI (machine learning, machine vision, natural language processing, and speech recognition) can be applied to various elements of the supply chain, including forecasting, optimization of processes, supplier selection, automation, and decision support for configuration, design, and planning. Anticipating that future supply chain disruptions will threaten the global agri-food sector, the authors call for concerted efforts between industry, the public sector, and academic researchers to build more resilient supply chains.