• Deepfakes: Trick or Treat?

    Although manipulations of visual and auditory media are as old as the media themselves, the recent entrance of deepfakes has marked a turning point in the creation of fake content. Powered by the latest technological advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, deepfakes offer automated procedures to create fake content that is harder and harder for human observers to detect. The possibilities to deceive are endless-including manipulated pictures, videos, and audio-and organizations must be prepared as this will undoubtedly have a large societal impact. In this article, we provide a working definition of deepfake together with an overview of its underlying technology. We classify different deepfake types and identify risks and opportunities to help organizations think about the future of deepfakes. Finally, we propose the R.E.A.L. framework to manage deepfake risks: Record original content to assure deniability, expose deepfakes early, advocate for legal protection, and leverage trust to counter credulity. Following these principles, we hope that our society can be more prepared to counter deepfake tricks as we appreciate its treats.
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  • Artificial intelligence: Building Blocks and an Innovation Typology

    The range of topics and the opinions expressed on artificial intelligence (AI) are so broad that clarity is needed on the the field's central tenets, the opportunities AI presents, and the challenges it poses. To that end, we provide an overview of the six building blocks of artificial intelligence: structured data, unstructured data, preprocesses, main processes, a knowledge base, and value-added information outputs. We then develop a typology to serve as an analytic tool for managers grappling with AI's influence on their industries. The typology considers the effects of AI-enabled innovations on two dimensions: the innovations' boundaries and their effects on organizational competencies. The typology's first dimension distinguishes between product-facing innovations, which influence a firm's offerings, and process-facing innovations, which influence a firm's operations. The typology's second dimension describes innovations as either competence-enhancing or competence-destroying; the former enhances current knowledge and skills, whereas the latter renders existing skills and knowledge obsolete. This framework lets managers evaluate their markets, the opportunities within them, and the threats arising from them, providing valuable background and structure to important strategic decisions.
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  • Beyond Bitcoin: What Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies Mean for Firms

    Blockchain technologies are benefiting from significant interest in both societal and business contexts. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have grown rapidly in user adoption over the past 8 years. However, blockchain technologies, which fuel cryptocurrencies, have the potential to extend to other business applications even more profoundly. Blockchain can be leveraged to drive innovation and increase efficiencies in new domains-including digital arts management, supply chains, and healthcare-but there remain technical, organizational, and regulatory headwinds that must be overcome before mass adoption can occur. In this article, we provide a brief history of blockchain and identify some of the key features that have enabled its popular uptake in the world of cryptocurrencies. We discuss how blockchain technologies have evolved from traditional software and web technologies and then examine their underlying strengths and evaluate new, noncryptocurrency use cases. We conclude with a look at the limitations of blockchain and present several important factors for managers considering blockchain implementation within their organizations.
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  • Go Boldly! Explore Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) for Business

    It is not surprising that managers find it hard to distinguish similar-sounding, IT-based concepts such as augmented reality and virtual reality. To many, all of these constructs mean nearly the same and, as a result, the terms are often used interchangeably. This confusion holds back those eager to explore the different opportunities these new technologies present. This Executive Digest presents six different types of reality and virtual reality-(1) reality, (2) augmented reality, (3) virtual reality, (4) mixed reality, (5) augmented virtuality, and (6) virtuality-as part of our actual reality/virtual reality continuum. We then illustrate their differences using a common example and outline business applications for each type.
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  • Employee Brand Engagement on Social Media: Managing Optimism and Commonality

    This article considers how employees engage with B2B firms on social media, a topic that is largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement on social media, two key drivers of employee brand engagement are identified using the content analysis tool DICTION-namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and -rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media than do their counterparts in bottom-ranked and -rated firms. This permits the construction of a 2x2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources and marketing managers different strategies in each case. We demonstrate how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on the way stakeholders engage with brands.
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  • A Great Place to Work!? Understanding Crowdsourced Employer Branding

    The benefits provided by employment and identified with a specific employing company are referred to as employer branding. We argue that when employees use IT to transmit employer branding-sharing and accessing work-related experiences openly across organizations-their expectations and assessments of workplaces change. We collected 38,000 reviews of the highest and lowest ranked employers on Glassdoor, an online crowdsourced employer branding platform. Using IBM Watson to analyze the data, we identify seven employer branding value propositions that current, former, and potential employees care about when they collectively evaluate employers. These propositions include (1) social elements of work, (2) interest and challenge raised by work tasks, (3) the extent to which skills can be applied in meaningful ways, (4) opportunities for professional development, (5) economic issues tied to compensation, (6) the role of management, and (7) work/life balance. We clarify that these value propositions do not all matter to the same extent, and demonstrate how their relative valences and weights differ across organizations, especially if institutions are considered particularly good or bad places to work. Based on these findings, we show how employers can use crowdsourced employer branding intelligence to become exceptional workplaces that attract highly qualified employees.
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  • Wearing Safe: Physical and Informational Security in the Age of the Wearable Device

    Wearable computing devices promise to deliver countless benefits to users. Moreover, they are among the most personal and unique computing devices of all, more so than laptops and tablets and even more so than smartphones. However, this uniqueness also brings with it a risk of security issues not encountered previously in information systems: the potential to not only compromise data, but also to physically harm the wearer. This article considers wearable device security from three perspectives: whether the threat is to the device and/or the individual, the role that the wearable device plays, and how holistic wearable device security strategies can be developed and monitored.
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  • Game on: Engaging customers and employees through gamification

    Managers are frequently tasked with increasing the engagement levels of key stakeholders, such as customers and employees. Gamification--defined as the application of game design principles to change behavior in non-gaming contexts--is a tool that, if crafted and implemented properly, can increase engagement. In this article we discuss how gamification can aid customer and employee engagement, and delineate between four different types of customers and employees who act as 'players' in gamified experiences. We include illustrative examples of gamification and conclude by presenting five lessons for managers who wish to utilize gamification.
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  • We're leaking, and everything's fine: How and why companies deliberately leak secrets

    Although the protection of secrets is often vital to the survival of organizations, at other times organizations can benefit by deliberately leaking secrets to outsiders. We explore how and why this is the case. We identify two dimensions of leaks: (1) whether the information in the leak is factual or concocted and (2) whether leaks are conducted overtly or covertly. Using these two dimensions, we identify four types of leaks: informing, dissembling, misdirecting, and provoking. We also provide a framework to help managers decide whether or not they should leak secrets.
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  • CGIP: Managing Consumer Generated Intellectual Property

    Two related trends characterize the recent past: value propositions are migrating from the physical to the informational, and value creation is shifting from firms to consumers. These two trends meet in the phenomenon of " consumer generated intellectual property" (CGIP). This article addresses the question: " How should firms manage the intellectual property that their customers create?" It explores how CGIP presents important dilemmas for managers and argues that consumers' intellectual property should not be leveraged at the expense of their emotional property. It integrates these perspectives into a diagnostic framework and discusses eight strategies for firms to manage CGIP.
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  • Is it all a game? Understanding the principles of gamification

    There is growing interest in how gamification--defined as the application of game design principles in non-gaming contexts--can be used in business. However, academic research and management practice have paid little attention to the challenges of how best to design, implement, manage, and optimize gamification strategies. To advance understanding of gamification, this article defines what it is and explains how it prompts managers to think about business practice in new and innovative ways. Drawing upon the game design literature, we present a framework of three gamification principles--mechanics, dynamics, and emotions (MDE)--to explain how gamified experiences can be created. We then provide an extended illustration of gamification and conclude with ideas for future research and application opportunities.
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  • Disruptions, Decisions, and Destinations: Enter the Age of 3-D Printing and Additive Manufacturing

    Until recently, most manufacturing processes have been 'subtractive' in that matter is removed (e.g., scraped, dissolved, turned, machined) from a substance in order to produce the desired product. 3-D printing turns traditional manufacturing on its head in that it uses an 'additive' process. Similar to laser and inkjet printers, 3-D (three-dimensional) printers produce pieces by depositing, or adding, layers of material--plastic, polymer filaments, metals, and even foodstuffs--until the desired product is realized. This means that the creation and production of 'one-offs' is not only easy, it is also economically viable. 3-D printers are becoming ever more affordable, and it is not hard to envision them being as common in most homes in the near future as their two-dimensional counterparts are today. This article presents a 3-D printing primer for non-technical managers. It then considers the profound impact that 3-D printing will have on firms of all kinds as well as on individual consumers. In addition, it raises the substantial questions that 3-D printing will pose to policy makers from both intellectual property and ethical standpoints.
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  • Five Hole for Food: Entrepreneurial Strategy

    The founder of a non-profit organization that ran a cross-country ball hockey tournament in support of Food Banks Canada had to discuss the future of the organization with his team as it headed into its third year of operations. Foremost in his mind were questions about whether to continue Five Hole for Food as it had run for the first two years - organized exclusively on social media, managed completely by volunteers and funded by sponsorship donations - or else restructure it as a more formal organization, either independently or under the corporate social responsibility umbrella of a large corporation. The founder also faced serious challenges in assembling and organizing his management and operations teams: as the organization continued to grow, relying only on volunteer labour was going to become increasingly problematic. But if he started hiring and paying people for their time, would that change the organic nature of Five Hole for Food's culture? He also wondered whether he should start to formalize the structure of the organization more, so it was less dependent on him as an individual. Could Five Hole for Food, which had raised over 50,000 pounds of food in its first two seasons, ever continue without him at the helm?
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  • Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media

    Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly, however, consumers are utilizing platforms-such as content sharing sites, blogs, social networking, and wikis-to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content. This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a firm's reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this form of media because they don't understand what it is, the various forms it can take, and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputations, and sharing. As different social media activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks, we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to different social media activities.
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