Advisors provide a continuous flow of information on the topics covered by each practice, including consultant insights and reports from the front lines, analyses of trends, and breaking new ideas. Advisors are delivered directly to your email inbox, and are also available in the resource library.

What’s Behind the Push for Diversity?

David Lee
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.

Reducing Methane: New Developments in Waste Management & Recycling

Curt Hall
In Part II of this Advisor series on reducing methane, we examine several developments designed to help reduce methane emissions originating from waste in landfills.

Generative AI & the Future of Content Creation

Aswani Kumar Cherukuri, Mukul Patnaik, Sudhir Patnaik
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.

The Promise & Risks of Generative AI: What Do CIOs Think?

Myles Suer
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.

Boosting Biodiversity Action with a Refreshed Vocabulary

Anna Heikkinen, Ari Jokinen, Johanna Kujala
Businesses control substantial resources and knowledge that can, and must, be harnessed for biodiversity action. Business’s response to biodiversity decline has the power to accelerate activities across our societies or, through inaction, hamper societal responses. This Advisor suggests that new phrases are needed to catalyze this biodiversity action. The term “nature-based stakeholder engagement” is discussed in this article as a potential candidate, as it connects two powerful notions.

Opportunities for XAI in the Financial Sector

Cigdem Gurgur
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.

Silicon Valley Bank: When It Comes to Risk, We’ve Been Here Before

Robert Charette
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.

Nature & Business: An Intimate, and Important, Connection

Eva Zabey, Erin Billman
Business won’t function if nature continues to decline. Resources like water, soil, food, fiber, and minerals, and ecosystem services like crop pollination, water filtration, and climate regulation all contribute to business success and human livelihoods. Take these away, and companies will cease to function effectively. The opposite is also true. When harnessed responsibly, natural abundance and regenerative natural systems translate into productive growth, both for companies and the communities they serve. Business and finance, therefore, have a critical role to play in protecting and restoring nature.

Expanding the Talent Pool in the Tech Sector

Matthew Walsh
In this Advisor, Matthew Walsh explores the results of in-depth research conducted to identify the inequities that women of color experience in the technology industry. If employers can tap into a skills-similar, tech-eligible workforce revealed by the Equation for Equality, there would be nearly 250,000 more women of color in tech jobs today, double the number currently in tech.

Study: Communication Plays a Vital Role in IT Project Success

Shasheela Devi Karuppiah, Ezuria Nadzri, Govindan Marthandan
We conducted an empirical study in Malaysia with IT practitioners and confirmed that communication plays a vital role in project success. Our study probed the influence of five communication characteristics: content, method, velocity, process, and frequency, and how they can propel a team toward success. With the exception of frequency, the findings showed that the remaining characteristics influenced project success.

Reducing Methane: New Developments in the Agriculture Sector

Curt Hall
This two-part Advisor series examines new developments in methane reduction. Here in Part I, we look at efforts to reduce methane emissions in agriculture, the largest industry contributor (from human-related activities) to methane in the atmosphere.

The Technology Agora: A Space for Collaborative Innovation in Banking

Antonios Kaniadakis
In this Advisor, we argue that disruption in banking is not being driven by technological achievements like artificial intelligence, decentralized platforms, or mobile computing. Rather, changes are the result of: (1) technology commoditization and (2) industry actors pursuing strategic interests and repositioning themselves within the sector as disruptors, innovators, and fashion-setters. Envisioning a technology agora where technological artifacts are developed and commoditized and interested parties exercise influence over innovation choices, we will see that fintechs and banks are not so much competing with each other as they are collaborating.

Flexible Work Is No Longer Just a Perk

Tony Ponton

In a previous Advisor, I talked about asynchronous-powered workplaces being both the now and the future of remote/hybrid companies’ success. In this Advisor, I talk about another element that complements this and cannot be understated: flexibility.


Tackling Business Biodiversity Challenges with Science

Jessica Deichmann, María José Andrade Núñez, Alfonso Alonso, Francisco Dallmeier, Tremaine Gregory, Reynaldo Linares Palomino, Karim Ledesma, Ximena Velez, Anna Feistner
The case study presented in this Advisor demonstrates the scientific approach to solutions for business biodiversity challenges and highlights how the resulting evidence can be channeled into nature positive management actions.

A Look at DAOs Through a Music Industry Lens

Diego Alvarez, Pietro Cortellini, Emily Munchak
To address the gap between DAO awareness and adoption, along with the prevalent misconceptions and skepticism surrounding them, we seek to understand why some DAOs succeed and others fail through an industry-specific lens.

Leading Through Turbulent Times

Paul Clermont
This Advisor enumerates classic leadership mistakes made in turbulent times and provides guidance on how to adapt to this turbulence.

Brownfield Revitalization Through a Biodiversity Lens

Christine Miller, Benjamin Langey, Scott Bush
Legacy industrial sites ("brownfield sites") can be found across the US. Brownfield site redevelopment is commonplace, especially along the Eastern Seaboard, a stronghold of former industrial sites. Many of these sites have undergone a level of ecological succession during decades of unuse. This, combined with their proximity to major waterways, makes them prime locations for occupation by endemic (local) species. This Advisor provides an overview of brownfield redevelopment through a biodiversity and species-conflict lens.

Generative AI in the Enterprise: Early Uses & Cutting-Edge Systems

Curt Hall
Generative AI systems have exploded on the scene, and companies are using them for business. Currently, the more common enterprise uses of the technology include for automating design and for providing semiautomated responses to customer requests. That said, companies like Audi are employing generative AI to develop cutting-edge applications that can give them a leg-up on competitors.

Stuck in Execution? Here’s How to Break Free

Dave Martin
As we explore in this Advisor, breaking free from the execution trap is often the single biggest thing leaders can do to increase their impact. Even better, breaking yourself free from the execution trap can also help break the whole organization free.

Regenerative Agriculture: Much More Than a Buzzword

Saeed Rahman, Natalie Slawinski, Monika Winn
The time is right for innovative tools, metrics, frame­works, and models that can convince businesses, governments, investors, and practitioners that systemic change is both needed and possible. For agriculture in particular, regenerating and revitalizing the entire ecosystem of the farm can and needs to contribute to mitigating climate change effects, strengthening biodiversity, and ensuring a satisfactory livelihood for farmers.

Solving Problems with Knowledge Graphs and GCI

Andy E Williams
Human-centric functional modeling (HCFM) is a way to allow computers to solve general problems. HCFM represents problems via constructs called “functional state spaces.” These hypothetical functional state spaces are special types of knowledge graphs used to model systems. Functional state spaces are required for general collective intelligence (GCI) and are of unprecedented importance if, as predicted, GCI can exponentially increase our capacity to understand systems.

Strategies for Sound Decision-Making in Turbulent Times

Michael Roberto
As we explore in this Advisor, several strategies form the foundation of sound decision-making in turbulent environments. These strategies involve creating a culture of candor, encouraging constructive conflict, fostering disciplined experimentation, and making systematic reflection a habit in the organization.

Developing a Carbon-Offset Project for Coastal Ecosystems

Rob Campbell—Watt
Although coastal wetlands cover less than 2% of the total ocean area, they account for approximately 50% of all carbon stored within ocean sediments. Consistent efforts are needed to ensure that such ecosystems are neither degraded nor damaged. This would result in the loss of their carbon-sink capacity, resulting in the release of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. Projects to conserve, manage, and/or restore coastal ecosystems are essential to preventing this.

Generative AI for Customer Service & CX Management

Curt Hall
This Advisor explores the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems and other large language models for customer service and CX management. These systems are expected to significantly increase the ability of customer service platforms to provide detailed responses to customer service requests. Generative AI systems are also widely applicable for supporting and enhancing customer engagement as well.

Understanding DAOs Can Benefit Leaders of Traditional Organizations

Michel Avital, Nina Birte Schirrmacher
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a new form of organization that aims to orchestrate work and appropriation of shared capital independently of central control to attain espoused objectives through self-executing rules encoded in crypto tokens. Understanding how digital tokens govern work and organizing in virtual organizations can unravel important questions for leaders and managers of traditional organizations.