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In August 2017, the Myanmar military commenced a brutal pogrom of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The genocidal campaign marked the most recent and decisive of a series of ethnic cleansing efforts fueled by contention around race, religion, and national identity. Yet the violence came as a shock to the international world, who had watched Myanmar emerge out of a decades-long oppressive military dictatorship into an economically and socially liberalizing democracy in recent years.<br/><br/> Within three months, neighboring Bangladesh found themselves the home of 750,000 Rohingya who had fled across the border. A developing nation of 165 million, it struggled to allocate resources to what became the largest refugee camp in the world. As the Myanmar government navigated international outcry against and domestic support for the violence, Bangladesh navigated its next steps: should it allow the refugees to remain, or should they send them back? And what role did international actors, many of whom had economic stakes within Myanmar, play in this humanitarian crisis?

Yulife is a digital-first life insurance and rewards company that is seeking to disrupt the centuries-old life insurance market. Its founders are a combination of insurance industry veterans and executives in finance, wealth management and gaming. The challenge the company faces is that it cannot go to market alone: it has to work in some capacity with industry incumbents to achieve the growth it seeks. The case provides detail on yulife's goal of transforming the industry by focusing on the consumer; on improving their health. It also provides an overview of the life insurance industry which, in many ways, has been unchanged since its founding over four centuries ago. The challenge for yulife is how it can navigate the relationships and requirements in the industry so as to allow its consumer- and technology-focused offering to thrive.

In March 2015 London-based management consultancy Clarasys found itself in crisis. Established in 2011, the company had experienced consistent growth since foundation and had expanded staffing levels to service new business accordingly. But it was still in start-up phase and a perfect storm of events had suddenly hit the firm: two potential growth projects were unexpectedly shelved, meaning almost 50% of consultants were no longer on billable client projects, and the company accountants admitted to having made a serious mistake in VAT payments, which meant Clarasys had to make a double payment, for two years' VAT returns, at the same time.

Co-founded by Raghav Kapoor in Singapore in 2014, Smartkarma was an innovative e-commerce-based independent platform for providing investment research - conceived in response to changes in banking industry regulations post the 2008 financial crisis. New industry regulations required investment research to be a separate entity from sales in banks and financial institutions. Consequently, large investment banks looking to slash cost centres had started to outsource investment research. Smartkarma used a Subscription based business model. Independent analysts could publish research content on the platform and client organisations brought monthly subscriptions to access all content. Analysts were paid based on revenues generated from their content, determined by quantified value add (QVA) calculation model. By the end of 2017, Smartkarma had established itself as Asia's largest investment research platform with more than 14,000 insights across several verticals. It had also expanded geographically, establishing offices in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and London. Smartkarma's CEO and co-founder, Kapoor, however, was aware that the firm's business model was susceptible to several risk factors, including very short-term client commitment, economic downturns and industry regulations. Kapoor chose a strategy of quickly acquiring as many clients as possible, as well as continuously building a pool of insight providers to create an early mover market advantage. Would Smartkarma be able to scale from being an Asian leader to dominate globally? Ease of entry, informational efficiency, and simplicity in replicating an independent investment platform, made it extremely difficult for such a business to beat the market on a sustained basis. Would focusing on the quality of research and transparent payment be enough to make Smartkarma the choice for asset managers in large banks? Could the company's subscription-based business model stand the test of time?

Volatility in an industry should concern not only the companies within it but also the people who work for them. To stay ahead of developments that may disrupt your professional life, you must make two evidence-based diagnoses: How volatile is your industry? And what explains the volatility? The answers will equip you to disrupt your own career preemptively

A few Chinese companies recently have challenged the R&D strategies of foreign companies and offered lessons on how to make ideas commercially viable. But another, less obvious force to be reckoned with in China are the thousands of innovative companies that are quietly disrupting numerous industries and developing new products and new business models.

Findings don't have to be earth-shattering to be useful. In fact, obvious insights can help you overcome three barriers to change in your organization: resistance to new data ("But that's not what my experience has shown"), resistance to change itself ("But that's the way we've always done it"), and organizational uniqueness bias ("That will never work here"). You can also gain trust by confirming what people already believe.

A good psychometric test can easily outperform a räsumäscan and interview at predicting job performance and retention. Yet personality testing and other ways of analyzing potential present some significant challenges: For instance, not all assessments are accurate, and people's personalities vary from moment to moment, often depending on the challenge at hand. We need a finer-grained understanding of human potential.

Asking people to rate themselves has obvious disadvantages: They could fake their way to a higher score, or they might lack self-awareness. But self-report surveys make data collection efficient and offers access to respondents' thoughts, feelings, and behavior. Another benefit many people don't consider: The act of answering the questions can promote greater self-awareness, opening the door to self-development.

Now that companies have replaced rigid hierarchies with flatter, more fluid structures to promote agile ways of working, they have also made it harder for employees to chart a path for growth and advancement. This challenge is also a concern for employers,who must - for the sake of engagement and retention - show high performers how they can progress within the organization. Analytics can help highlight opportunities for getting ahead.

In the messy real world of ambiguous evidence and contentious objectives, organizational decisions - especially those about the people you're hiring, developing, managing, and trying to retain - usually hinge on relationships and trust. So, if you work in people analytics, you must learn to traffic in that currency to make an impact. It's not enough to be right. You also have to sell your model or idea. These tactics can help.

Many of us assume that the leadership handbook must be completely rewritten for the digital age. Is this true? Or are we overly focused on what's changing and thus neglecting the fundamentals? There is something to be said for both arguments. While many core leadership skills remain the same, the demands of digital disruption call for certain new ones, as well. This article explores which are which and what we can learn from organizations that are digitally maturing.

Companies whose boards of directors have digital savvy outperform companies whose boards lack it: Among companies with over $1 billion of revenues, 24% had digitally savvy boards, and those businesses significantly outperformed others on key metrics such as revenue growth, ROA, and market cap growth. Companies can improve their boards by knowing what characteristics to look for in existing and new board members, managing board agendas differently, and cultivating new learning opportunities.

Judgment bias has long been recognized and studied, particularly in the context of decision-making about hiring. Whether it's a one-time decision or something that recurs, limiting decision-making bias is a clear benefit to the outcome. The authors suggest a practical, broadly applicable approach to reducing errors in strategic decision-making: the Mediating Assessments Protocol (MAP).

Many decisions about strategy require that senior executives make evaluative judgments on the basis of extensive, complex information. A disciplined, sequential approach can mitigate common errors and improve the quality of both one-off and recurrent decisions in an array of business domains. The process described in this article is easy to learn, involves little additional work, and (within limits) leaves room for intuition.

High-skilled immigration is dramatically transforming the tech sector in the United States. U.S. tech workers over age 40 have good reasons to be concerned. In addition to competing with greater numbers of skilled foreign workers, older tech workers are now also more likely than younger workers to lose their jobs when technical work moves overseas.

Prioritizing process improvement, redefining performance, and committing to digitization, DBS Bank revitalized its performance management strategy and turned itself into one of the world's most successful global digital banks.

Although most manufacturers are beginning to flirt with digital technologies, not one has successfully pulled off a digital transformation. CEOs still have to figure out its art - and science - forcing them to draw up their game plans on the fly, which inevitably leads to tension and trauma. But they are learning. Here's how GE has navigated its own digital transformation process.

When a business is growing fast, decisions can get lost in the fray - especially if it's unclear that a decision even needs to be made. People in the workplace bring recommendations to four audiences: a manager or top executive (those who approve a recommendation), and peers or a broader set of stakeholders (those who execute a recommendation). To sell an idea and get others to take action, you have to understand what your particular audience needs to hear.

Many people have come to view disruption as a synonym for innovation. This single-minded focus leads companies to overlook an alternative path to growth: the nondisruptive creation of brand-new markets where none existed before. It's time to embrace the idea that companies can create without destroying - and expand the conversation about the problems they can solve and the opportunities they can seize.