Klaus Meyer and Saul Estrin focus on a decision tree approach to managing exit strategies. The authors use Russia’s invasion in Ukraine as an example of complex situations that arise from major geopolitical disruptions. As companies try to extricate themselves from a country, they may need to consider whether a buyer can continue using its global names, what to do about promises to current customers (e.g., access to the App Store for Apple phones), and potential harm to the parent company from a sale. They must also consider the sticky issue of how the new owner will use critical assets (e.g., will they supply the military organizations deemed responsible for human rights abuses?).

Joo-Seuk Maing brings us his perspective on an era in which emerging countries and societies no longer blindly follow the West. Based in Seoul, South Korea, Maing is the Korea/Vietnam CEO for a German manufacturer of the wire harnesses that connect automotive components. From his vantage point, he sees several things executives should be paying more attention to, including energy prices, the investment outlook in China, and the need for strong business continuity plans beyond those for natural disasters (i.e., geopolitical tensions or unrest). Maing also believes companies doing business in Asia should consider more local talent for top positions.

Yuriy Adamchuk delves into repercussions from an actual, ongoing war — in Ukraine. The author’s company, Avenga, has 11 offices and 1,300 professionals in the country. Knowing the risks of an attack (based on the 2014 invasion and subsequent expert predictions of escalation), the company developed its Service Endurance Plan. Adamchuk tells us why the implementation and execution of that plan were so successful that no employees were seriously physically hurt in the war and operations continued without interruption. He also describes how the company has taken steps to emerge from the current crisis stronger than before the war began.

Douglas B. Fuller takes on the US’s chip “war” with China. Fuller says the US’s efforts in reshaping the global semiconductor industry by shifting activity away from China proves we are moving away from globalization and into de-risking. In other words, national security and supply chain resiliency now get (or should get) at least equal consideration from major economic powers. The author describes how the battle began (with Huawei’s efforts to expand its 5G infrastructure outside of China), the US’s multipronged regulatory response, and how companies should prepare for this new paradigm.

It is imperative to identify and explore the ways businesses navigate and excel in the face of geopolitical risk. In this issue of Amplify, our contributors explore the challenges raised by geopolitical risk through a variety of angles. This diverse perspective from a group of academics and practitioners provides insights into the impact of geopolitical risk on supply chains, leadership, business planning, and share price.

Modular architecture allows banks to build their value propositions into services, functionalities, and raw data while enabling new distribution and service creation. This Advisor describes a two-dimensional framework that shows how modular architecture enables four distinct roles (integrator, producer, distributor, and platform) to emerge and revolutionize traditional banking.

The benefits of digital twins have been much debated since they first appeared in the space industry in the late 20th century. Fast adoption and benefits flowed in some industries, but many are still questioning their value, including the property and real estate industry. This Advisor looks at how digital twins for places can solve some significant challenges that exist in property and real estate.

Why should business leaders develop strategies focused on biodiversity? First, businesses rely on ecosystems to produce and reproduce the variety of life that enables economic and social systems. Second, biodiversity decline (or collapse) poses reputation risks to businesses, and business leaders must anticipate and mitigate the risk of being targeted by activists. Third, life on Earth has inherent value that managers should help preserve rather than destroy. As we explore in this Advisor, biodiversity mini-publics can help managers successfully engage on all three issues.

Currently, most of the digital transformation work taking place in banks is still managed heuristically. We argue that banks (and indeed companies in every industry) should instead pursue a systematic digital transformation using systems engineering principles. Using this approach, banks can look at value creation in a more goal-oriented manner. This will allow them to successfully transform their business models by integrating stakeholder goals and technologies across an extended partner ecosystem. Of course, this methodology must be underpinned by management optimization concepts.

Over the last four decades, there has been a proliferation of corporate diversity policies. By one estimate, more than 95% of organizations with more than 1,000 employees have some sort of diversity program. Generally, this push toward diversity has largely been prompted by a few interwoven factors. This Advisor takes a closer look at three of those factors.

This Advisor looks at new generative AI applications and the content they produce. It also explores the paradigm shift created by generative AI as well as its impact on the creative ecosystem.

Recently, Cutter contributor and data business leader Myles Suer asked CIOs some important questions regarding generative AI. This Advisor shares some insights gleaned from those conversations.

 

 

Digital Twins in Practice

June 15, 2023 | 10am-11am EDT | 4pm-5pm CEST (see your local time)

The world is changing rapidly, and we are witnessing a plethora of significant events, including the outcomes of a global pandemic, climate change and extreme weather, global supply chain disruptions, the war in Ukraine, the emergence of innovative technologies, and more and more smart products. These are all shaping the business environment, forcing organizations to adapt and change at unprecedented speeds. Consequently, senior managers are asking themselves how their organization should respond to deal with the technological storm and what steps they should take to prepare the organization for the future. As we explore in this Executive Update, the range of actions managers must take is broad and includes, among others, the development of organizational innovation processes, digital transformation, making the organization agile, adapting ways of doing business that meet new expectations of customers, and more. One theme runs through all of these initiatives — innovation.

Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) is becoming a critical component of operations undertaken in the financial industry. It stems from the growing sophistication of state-of-the-art AI models and the desire for them to be deployed in a safe, understandable manner. Responsible artificial intelligence (RAI) principles ensure that machine learning technology is applied in a transparent way while safeguarding the interest of each player in the financial ecosystem. Not surprisingly, banking and financial services regulators have shown an interest in adopting XAI and RAI techniques to help them meet the need for model governance, operational servicing, and compliance in the digital world.

Amid the 2008 US housing market debacle, I offered some insight into how ineffective risk-mitigation efforts contributed to the financial contagion that spread across the globe. Given the latest banking crisis involving SVB, it might be useful to revisit some of those ideas.

Tim Giuliani discusses how digital twins are being used for regional planning by the city of Orlando, Florida, USA. Here, digital twins are employed via virtual reality to offer an immersive environment so users can experience the impact of various scenarios. The article shows how organizations are bringing together vendors and partners to integrate data, digital twins, and emerging technologies.

Colin Dominish highlights a variety of revenue opportunities that could be realized by applying digital twins to real estate and buildings. He discusses improving building performance and some opportunities to enhance tenant experiences.

Ruth Kerrigan and her colleagues describe the application of digital twins to building-performance twins at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. They discuss tracking electricity and heating performance in campus buildings and lessons learned, many of which are organizational in nature, not technological. The authors conclude with a methodology for the deployment of performance digital twins and recommendations for addressing some of the issues they encountered.

Carl Faulkner presents a mining industry case study with a focus on data collection, integration, and storage challenges. The article includes lessons learned from the application of a solution designed to facilitate user-friendly access to digital twins as well as the importance of connecting digital twins to other business systems to get the most value.

Sustainability has become a recent focus for digital twins. David McKee and Tim O’Callaghan present a case study from a UK town using digital twins to achieve its net zero obligations. The authors discuss the use of tools to visualize historical data and utilizing new data from various sources to simulate possible outcomes and manage risk.

This issue of Amplify takes a lessons-learned approach — revisiting the concept of digital twins with an eye toward how organizations are using digital twins, the implementations, and the challenges encountered. The articles in this issue were selected to provide important lessons about real-world deployments and case studies. They also provide insights about industries where digital twins have gained early traction and what types of organizations are adopting digital twins, including those focused on sustainability and those seeking to enable Metaverse scenarios.

Alexander Weber discusses the use of digital twins in radar systems. This is a good example of using digital twins to simulate products that are costly to build (especially if they are built incorrectly) and their use in addressing compliance requirements. Weber explains how the model was verified and how the simulated data corresponds to the real data.

Jason Radel explores the application of a digital twin framework for the ingestion, application, and visualization of digital twins and the integration of light detection and ranging data, photographs and scans, and other engineering documents. The article includes case studies from the energy and defense sectors, demonstrating how such an approach can be used in managing digital twins in different industries.