Business
Uber’s New Focus, Using VR To Improve Your Business, Innovation Measurement, Business Ethics, And More Of This Week’s Best Thought Leadership
Up To The Minute
What Is Up To The Minute? A collection of our favorite pieces of writing from the past week. A thought leadership showcase. A wealth of knowledge. Your new weekly go-to source of insight from voices big and small across industries.
1. Author, speaker, and consultant Justin Bariso: “Uber’s come a long way in just two years.”
Uber claims it currently holds over 65% of the world’s ridesharing market in the U.S., Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand—despite its fair share of scandals and setbacks. And they’re on the up-and-up. How? They recently restrategized and began focusing on one key thing.
Find out what exactly that is here: Uber Quietly Changed Its Business Strategy to Focus on 1 Thing—and It Was a Stroke of Genius
2. Author Ben Lyttleton: “The value of any organization is wrapped up in the quality of the decisions its people make. Access to tools that can help refine this previously hard-to-measure metric can have a measurable effect on development.”
Here, we explore what the utilization of VR systems by professional soccer teams can teach us about how to best use VR in business. In soccer, VR helps players learn when to shoot, pass, etc. In business, VR can help improve decision-making skills, too.
Here’s how: How virtual reality is improving decisions in soccer and in business
3. David Gann, Vice President of Imperial College and Mark Dodgson, Professor of Innovation Studies at the University of Queensland: “Innovation drives productivity, and productivity is what drives jobs growth and the wealth that pays for our health, education, defence and social security systems.”
Is it possible to accurately measure something as ambiguous as innovation? While the measurement process is certainly complex, we have to try, assert Gann and Dodgson. And we have to get better at it, too, they say. Here, they explore how several innovative organizations are working to create better innovation measurement systems and discuss how innovation measurement is changing.
Read: We need to measure innovation better. Here’s how
4. Tech, leadership, and innovation reporter Lydia Dishman: “The conventional strategy of mapping out a single career path needs a radical rethink.”
For career nomads, the allure of trying something new professionally pulls in a new direction every five or 10 years. While conventional wisdom tells us to stick with one field in order to leverage our expertise and see how far we can go, many have proved switching industries once in a while can work out well—and keep you growing and inspired. But there are right and wrong ways to set yourself up for a varied career path, says Dishman.
Read: How to plan for two or three (or seven) different careers in your lifetime
5. R. Edward Freeman, professor of strategy, ethics, and entrepreneurship at The Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and Bidhan (Bobby) L. Parmar, associate professor at The Darden School of Business: “The division that many people make between the business case and the ethics case of a transaction should not be a given in business.”
As society begins to expect more of companies socially and ethically, more corporations are focusing on the ethics of their business strategies. For any company, it’s important to draw a line between self-interest and ethics—just how far are you willing to go to increase profits? While the debate as to what exactly is and isn’t ethical in business is as old as business itself, its consideration is more important today than ever before.
