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How to Make Organizational Change Enduring

Six Disciplines

Most organizations say their most important assets are their people, but few behave as if this were true. Change initiatives typically devote most budgets to structural issues such as technology and processes, not staff issues. Organizations don''t adapt to change; their people do.

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Why Leaders Are Still So Hesitant to Invest in New Business Models

Harvard Business Review

As technology continues to change and challenge even the most successful incumbent organizations in every industry, the cost of inertia is growing. Consider the dramatic shift in the types of assets that create market value. Despite the shift to intangible assets, executives and their strategists are sticking to the status quo.

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What Younger Workers Can Learn from Older Workers, and Vice Versa

Harvard Business Review

We typically imagine that the young can help the old understand technology and the old can impart general wisdom. What we asked people was, at this point in their lives, are they actively building, maintaining, or depleting their tangible and intangible assets? Coaching and mentoring across age groups makes sense.

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Why Financial Statements Don’t Work for Digital Companies

Harvard Business Review

In a previous HBR article , we argued that, in contrast to physical assets that depreciate with use, intangible assets might enhance with use. So the fundamental idea behind the success of digital companies (the increasing returns to scale) goes against a basic tenet of financial accounting (assets depreciate with use).

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How to Navigate a Digital Transformation

Harvard Business Review

Manufacturers invest most of their capital into physical assets, while high-tech firms invest in R&D to create new intellectual capital. But all assets are not created equal, especially as the technological landscape changes. There’s no question why legacy organizations are tackling digital transformation now.

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How NASA Uses Telemedicine to Care for Astronauts in Space

Harvard Business Review

They determine what material and intangible means of disease and trauma prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are needed for each mission. Medicines, instruments, consumables, and exercise devices belong to material assets; intangible assets involve medical expertise on board and on the ground, processes, procedures, and protocols.

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Startups Could Fundamentally Change the Way Big Investors Operate

Harvard Business Review

Small startup firms are already developing proprietary technologies — such as machine vision, deep learning, and other innovations —– that could help large investors evaluate opportunities and risks with far greater accuracy and efficiency than was previously possible. But right now that’s not happening.