In this Advisor, ADL’s Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, and Michael Papadopoulos question whether AI will deliver on its promised productivity gains. While GenAI has surged in prominence, real-world efficiency improvements remain elusive. To maximize AI’s potential, leaders must take a strategic, human-centric approach — analyzing how AI can enhance key roles while preserving the professional skills needed to harness it effectively.

This Advisor explores the deep connection between organizational culture, leadership, and power dynamics. It highlights how cultures often develop unintentionally, reinforcing existing leadership behaviors — both good and bad. While many organizations rely on coercive or reward-based power, a shift toward collaborative and participatory leadership fosters adaptability and long-term success.

This Advisor explores how leading companies are advancing AI-driven large world models (LWMs) to enhance robotics and AVs. It examines the efforts of start-ups and tech giants, highlighting their innovations in virtual world simulation, AI training, and real-world applications. While LWMs remain an emerging technology, their rapid development is poised to revolutionize AI-powered automation, decision-making, and interaction in complex environments.

In this Advisor, Cutter Expert San Murugesan reflects on the enduring legacy of Steve Jobs, a visionary innovator who transformed technology and redefined industries. As he would have turned 70 this month, we revisit his pioneering spirit, unconventional leadership, and relentless pursuit of excellence.

This Advisor introduces a practical, scalable, and sustainable data analytics tool developed by the data science team at Sanofi. The tool helped the pharmaceutical manufacturing team transition from reactive modes of data analytics to a proactive approach through prescriptive analytics.

Establishing and maintaining corporate purpose is not limited to grand gestures but is shaped by everyday actions and governance decisions. This Advisor presents five principles that can help organizations guide deliberation about corporate purpose.

Cutter Expert Curt Hall explores the transformative potential of large world models (LWMs), advanced AI systems designed to simulate real-world environments. LWMs use massive datasets to create virtual, 3D representations of the physical world, enabling more accurate and efficient training for robotics and autonomous vehicles (AVs). Their applications include improving navigation, enhancing perception, optimizing obstacle avoidance, and enabling greater autonomy for robots and AVs in complex or hazardous environments.

As this Advisor highlights, purpose is vital for direction and unity. Beyond foundational steps, the ability to say no — empowered refusal — is essential for aligning decisions with organizational identity. By fostering this skill, organizations can ensure their actions consistently reflect their stated values.

This Advisor highlights how AI transforms agri-food supply chains by enhancing forecasting, optimizing processes, and enabling proactive risk mitigation. With AI-powered tools, organizations gain real-time insights for planning, adaptability, and resilience across all stages — readiness, responsiveness, recovery, and adaptability.

This issue of Amplify looks at how leaders can best balance digital era stewardship and growth. That future hinges on strong management in the next five years. Each article addresses the universal question that challenges boards and C-suites: will leaders shape the future, or allow it to define them?

This issue of Amplify looks at how leaders can best balance digital era stewardship and growth. That future hinges on strong management in the next five years. Each article addresses the universal question that challenges boards and C-suites: will leaders shape the future, or allow it to define them?

Arthur D. Little’s Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, and Michael Papadopoulos address talent management and career planning by asking, “Someone using AI will replace you, but who will replace them?” Their intriguing piece explores which everyday tasks can be augmented or automated by AI. They extend the discussion by examining skills needed across professions and encourage workplaces to reflect on and assess talent needs. Imagining future workflow, technology needs, and employee composition is an overdue dialogue — especially as AI capabilities accelerate.

Cutter Expert San Murugesan spotlights AI’s worrisome “dark side.” Specifically, he outlines a wide array of concerns related to AI’s inherent complexity, scalability, reliability, and ethical issues. More importantly, Murugesan sets forth a trust framework that can underpin responsible and effective AI design, development, implementation, and application.

Cutter Expert San Murugesan spotlights AI’s worrisome “dark side.” Specifically, he outlines a wide array of concerns related to AI’s inherent complexity, scalability, reliability, and ethical issues. More importantly, Murugesan sets forth a trust framework that can underpin responsible and effective AI design, development, implementation, and application.

Arthur D. Little’s Michael Eiden, Philippe Monnot, Armand Rotaru explore how knowledge graphs (KGs) help connect and extract value from big data. While widely adopted by tech giants, KGs shouldn’t replace relational databases outright; the choice depends on factors like data exploration speed and scalability needs. KGs enable visualizing connections for deeper insights, uncover hidden interdependencies through algorithms, and allow flexible scaling by starting small and expanding over time.

Jeremy Blain offers a thought-provoking demarcation of digital detachment and determination. He identifies the pitfalls of widespread tepid and failed transformation projects in recent years and trumpets the imperative for credible leadership that forges meaningful digital era readiness. The article equips senior executives with the insights they need to ask meaningful questions and take substantive actions to ready their organizations for the decade ahead.

Jeremy Blain offers a thought-provoking demarcation of digital detachment and determination. He identifies the pitfalls of widespread tepid and failed transformation projects in recent years and trumpets the imperative for credible leadership that forges meaningful digital era readiness. The article equips senior executives with the insights they need to ask meaningful questions and take substantive actions to ready their organizations for the decade ahead.

In his article, Noah Barsky explores the criticality of financial insight and responsibility. Timely and timeless financial acumen is as crucial as ever in the digital era, as it can quickly reveal which enterprises are, in reality, only technologies in search of a sustainable business model. Despite the fluid and fleeting lexicon of business buzzwords, leaders of well-run organizations honor fiscal stewardship, deliver competitive returns, and communicate with clarity and candor.

In his article, Noah Barsky explores the criticality of financial insight and responsibility. Timely and timeless financial acumen is as crucial as ever in the digital era, as it can quickly reveal which enterprises are, in reality, only technologies in search of a sustainable business model. Despite the fluid and fleeting lexicon of business buzzwords, leaders of well-run organizations honor fiscal stewardship, deliver competitive returns, and communicate with clarity and candor.

Part II of this Advisor series on change management focuses on the critical role of a reimagined change management office (CMO) in driving successful digital transformations. It examines the CMO’s solution catalog, levels of program engagement, and essential enablers for effective change management, offering actionable insights to enhance organizational adaptability and transformation outcomes.

Part II of this Advisor series on change management focuses on the critical role of a reimagined change management office (CMO) in driving successful digital transformations. It examines the CMO’s solution catalog, levels of program engagement, and essential enablers for effective change management, offering actionable insights to enhance organizational adaptability and transformation outcomes.

In this Advisor, we explore how AI tools are transforming sustainable agriculture by integrating with traditional farming practices. Through three case studies, we highlight how farms are leveraging AI for disease detection, weather prediction, and crop management while addressing challenges such as infrastructure gaps and community skepticism. By blending technology with local knowledge, these farms demonstrate pathways to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable agricultural outcomes.

In this Advisor, CIOs highlight the importance of IT projects that, while lacking direct business impact, deliver critical strategic benefits such as resource optimization, technical debt reduction, and infrastructure support. They discuss the challenges of managing ROI in environments constrained by limited resources, emphasizing the CIO’s role in balancing cost-efficiency with human impact and explore the often-overlooked accountability of reallocating resources to higher-impact projects, reinforcing the broader value IT contributes to organizational goals.

Armand Smits, an assistant professor of organizational change and design at Radboud University, the Netherlands, tackles one of the most pressing issues in digital sustainability: the rising energy and environmental cost of data centers. Digital sustainability approaches and AI rely on large amounts of data that are increasing exponentially and must be stored and processed in data centers. Smits provides a deep dive into the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP) to help managers and policymakers understand how to limit the environmental impact of data centers.

Angela Greco, assistant professor of innovation management at TU Delft, and Andrea Kerstens, a TNO scientist and PhD candidate in innovation management at TU Delft, draw on their experience with Syn.ikia, an EU-funded Innovation Living Lab for positive-energy building districts that leverage energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Digital innovations like digital twins have been essential to unlocking positive-energy districts. For instance, digital twins that combine physical models of buildings and AI models of user behavior allow building districts to predict and optimize usage of excess solar energy. Their article presents three lessons learned from the project.