In this article, the Dean of Western University’s Ivey Business School offers reflections on what business leaders should do as AI embeds itself in our day-to-day working lives. This article offers timeless advice because it is about how businesses should adapt in the face of technological change. Externally, leaders have a strategic imperative to create and maintain a distinctive value proposition in the face of strong AI-enabled forces for convergence. Internally, leaders have a moral imperative to ensure that workers continue to have worthwhile, meaningful jobs in an increasingly algorithm-controlled working environment. To ensure their organizations remain competitive, leaders need imagination, unreasonableness (the capacity to believe they are right and everyone else is wrong), and imperfection (i.e., authenticity). It is essential for leaders to ensure humanity remains in the workplace and, based on self-determination theory, this article suggests that autonomy, belonging, and competence should be emphasized. The AI revolution poses a possible schism between consciousness and intelligence, which creates risks for society in terms of inequality and a loss of social cohesion. As this article argues, leaders have the agency and responsibility to prevent this from happening within their organizations. Their job is to recouple consciousness and intelligence, ensure there is a human quality to their products and services, and safeguard the features of work that make it worth doing.

The case, set in 2024, describes the transformation of Digital China, a large IT services company in China that had grown proactively and ambitiously into new digital services, including artificial intelligence (AI). The case briefly describes the company's background so we can see how it has evolved over the years alongside the major technology changes in the broader business environment. It then goes into detail on the shift to data services, cloud computing and AI offerings over the last five years. As well as describing what Digital China does and how it works, the case also showcases the vision and 'theories' of its CEO, Mr Guo Wei. Mr Guo has some interesting and provocative ideas about how the digital revolution is changing the nature of competitive advantage, and the case gives the students exposure to these ideas in a way that should stimulate debate.

When the Dubai Government announced in 2021 that it had processed its last-ever paper transaction, becoming the first government in the world to go paperless, it completed a 20-year journey of digital transformation that changed people's lives across the emirate fundamentally. Since launching its e-Government initiative in 2001, Dubai had been on a mission to digitalise life in Dubai, making city services as easy, efficient and effective as possible, in alignment with the leadership's vision to make Dubai the best city in the world to live in.

A perennial challenge for executives in established firms is deciding how and when to respond to emerging technologies. This article demonstrates that the way emerging technologies play out in established industries differs according to how the business system is affected. Some have primarily a supply-side effect (on how a firm in the industry creates its product), while others have a primarily demand-side effect (on how users consume the product). Supply-side effects play out over relatively long periods of time in a predictable way, with incumbent firms executing similar strategies though at different speeds. Demand-side effects are faster-acting and more volatile, with incumbents often experimenting with a range of different business models as they seek a viable way forward in a changing market. By understanding these important differences between supply-side and demand-side effects and being able to anticipate the typical patterns of responses from incumbents, executives can make better choices in how and when to invest in emerging technologies.

The need for business agility, that is, the capacity to adapt to changing external circumstances (and even to shape them), is high on the agenda of executives around the world, as they face up to increasing levels of uncertainty. But uncertainty still abounds about what business agility is, and most executives still struggle to master this capability. The introduction to this special issue reviews what we know and still do not know about business agility and introduces the six articles and suggests a path for more research.

Big professional services firms appeared to be in the crosshairs of new, technology-fueled competitors a decade ago but many have maintained or even bolstered their positions. How they did so holds lessons for other incumbents aiming to counter threats that are disruptive to their businesses.

Research into how some industrial companies have succeeded at digital transformation shows that those taking a steady, gradual approach may have the best results and the lessons learned apply across other sectors as well. The authors discuss the circumstances in which company leaders might be best served by taking a more incremental approach to digital business, and when they might choose to pursue a more revolutionary change.

In August 2019 CEO David Craig was considering the likely benefits and challenges of merging his company, financial-markets data and infrastructure provider Refinitiv, with the London Stock Exchange Group. Craig had led a turnaround of Thomson Reuters' Financial & Risk division (F&R), then used investment from a private equity consortium led by Blackstone to carve out F&R from Thomson Reuters and create Refinitiv as an independent company. The carve-out had been successful, but global financial markets were evolving fast. Initial industry reaction to the proposed deal was positive; however some analysts questioned whether it would be approved by regulators and expressed concern over the complexity of integrating the two companies. With the industry changing so quickly, could the momentum created in Refinitiv be maintained in the new combined entity?

In April 2021, having just raised $70 million in a Series D funding, Francesco Simoneschi, Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, was thinking about expansion plans. Should the company focus on product innovation, broadening its line-up within the 13 countries in which it operated, or should it look to grow beyond its European base? In the five years since its founding in July 2016, the TrueLayer team had made significant progress, winning customers and opening up new markets. Now they needed to chart the next stage of their growth.

Virtual working became the norm for most organizations since March 2020, and it brings well-recognized challenges. But we know little about the impact of virtual working on managerial behavior. This article presents the results of three surveys conducted before and during lockdown to understand what changed. It shows how managers became more blinkered: turning inward, becoming task-focused at the expense of relationship-building, and finding few opportunities to develop new skills. The article offers practical suggestions for how the evolution of managerial work might be accelerated, so that managers can become more effective in this changing environment.

The case study describes the digital transformation of Enel under the leadership of Francesco Starace from 2014 to 2019. Enel is one of Europe's largest utilities, providing electricity to 71 million customers across Europe and South America. It is also an impressive success story. At the time the case is set (June 2020), its market cap of €75 billion was far higher than that of its competitors, thanks in large part to Starace's push into renewable energy and digital technologies.

The case study describes the growth of CI&T, from a start-up in Brazil to a 3,000+ person consulting firm with global reach in 2019. The case describes the stages of growth the company has been through over 25 years, focusing on both the market offering and the internal organisation structure/culture. The case ends in 2019 with the founders facing decisions about their organisational structure, and specifically whether they need to 'pull back' to some degree from the entrepreneurial management model they have created

The case study describes the digital transformation of Zensar Technologies Ltd. under CEO Sandeep Kishore. Zensar was a mid-tier IT services company based in Pune, India; profitable and successful but without any obvious differentiating features and with relatively weak growth. On his arrival in 2016, Kishore made a series of important strategic shifts, first of all narrowing the company's focus to three country markets and three industry segments, then pushing growth in higher-value-added digital services. The case ends in 2020 with the transformation process still incomplete. Good progress has been made, but there is still a gap between the new positioning and Kishore's strategic intent on the one hand, and the reality of Zensar's performance on the other. Students are asked to assess how successful Kishore has been and what he should do next.

This case analyses the evolution of Tencent, now (in early 2019) one of the top 10 listed companies in the world. The case focuses on WeChat, the social networking and lifestyle app created in 2010 and now (in 2019) with more than one billion users. It describes the emergence and growth of WeChat and how it came to dominate large parts of daily life in China; it also provides insight into how WeChat operates and the current strategic challenges facing WeChat. Unlike some case studies on Tencent and WeChat, this case is based on in-depth interviews with executives in the company and in particular Allen Zhang, the founder of WeChat. It therefore provides an in-depth understanding of how WeChat works internally, and it allows the instructor to draw out some general points about innovation in today's mobile-first digital economy.

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.

The case is set in early 2019. Edouard Neviaski is CEO of the Global Energy Markets (GEM) division of Engie, a very large French energy company. He has been pushing a major programme of change over the previous three years and is considering the next steps: how to maintain momentum, what additional initiatives to pursue and whether to encourage other parts of Engie to apply a similar approach in their divisions. The case provides a lot of detail on the internal organisational changes in GEM from 2016-2019. In particular, it focuses on how some parts of GEM adopted 'holacracy' - a self-organising system in which individual teams take full responsibility for defining their own work and how it fits with others. The case also provides a lot of detail on the broader cultural change and the high levels of investment in professional training around new techniques and concepts.

How do incumbent firms respond over time to a potentially disruptive technology? This article documents the strategies of 12 large pharmaceutical firms over 25 years as they addressed the opportunity/threat of biotechnology. All showed awareness of biotechnology's potential, but their response profiles varied dramatically in terms of timing (early/late) and focus (external/internal). Late movers mostly made large acquisitions to "catch up," but early movers maintained their lead in terms of biotechnology-based drug sales and profitability, and those with a more "open" response profile performed better. This response involves a three-step process: building awareness (sensing), building capability (responding), and building commitment (scaling).

The case describes how Mike Bracken, the newly appointed head of the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), took on the massive challenge of setting up, from scratch, a centralised team to deliver online public services efficiently online across all of the government's digital channels. This involved not merely overcoming great operational and technical challenges - legacy IT systems, lack of recognition and reward for specialist skills - but instigating deep cultural change and securing senior-level buy-in to make the necessary changes happen. The case illustrates how to approach implementing large-scale change across a highly bureaucratic organisation; in this case, the UK government. As such, it is a beautiful illustration of where agile works well. One key point to note is that, rather than focusing on the specifics of agile working, it demonstrates when agile methods can be a very powerful tool for enabling change. It also illustrates the importance of a decisive leader in getting an agile way of working implemented (and to some extent, risk-taking on the part of Mike Bracken and his sponsor in government). We will discuss the pros and cons of this approach.

The case describes how Bayer, one of the oldest and largest life-science companies in the world, recognised that innovation driven solely by the traditional R&D process that characterised the sector would not be sufficient to remain competitive, given the major changes underway in pharma and crop science and the broader trends in digital disruption. This recognition came from the very top, CEO Marijn Dekkers, who took the decision in 2015 to instigate a major corporate restructuring: Bayer would focus on its core life-science businesses (pharmaceuticals, consumer health and crop science) and spin off its material science business as a completely separate company. Beginning in 2016 under Board member Kemal Malik, Bayer began to put an innovation strategy in place that deliberately sought a systemic approach, meaning company-wide, to make innovation the responsibility of all Bayer employees. The question then arose how to put this vision into effect. How could Bayer promote greater innovation throughout the company, given that it had more than 100,000 employees spread over 75 countries? What actual initiatives could be undertaken to make innovation more effective and impactful? The case details how Monika Lessl, who reported directly to Malik, put in place a cross-divisional and cross-functional team to identify the most important areas to tackle and how, by 2018, the innovation programme she oversaw had "real momentum", with more than 1,000 people having some sort of formal role in support of innovation, more than 5,000 involved in innovation training, and more than 35,000 connected through the company's innovation portal.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In this article, the author examines agile as a management practice through a case study of ING bank in the Netherlands, which has adopted agile across its headquarters in Amsterdam. The research is based on in-depth interviews with 15 ING executives and many front-line employees. The article highlights key learnings at ING, largely from the point of view of the senior executives of the bank, and explores the challenges of implementing agile in an established organization, focusing on five lessons: 1. Decide how much power you are willing to give up. Agile shifts power away from those at the top and puts ownership in the hands of those closest to the action. Unless top executives are willing to accept that they are surrendering some status and power, agile will not be a good fit. 2. Prepare stakeholders for the leap. ING executives had to sell agile to nervous stakeholders, including board members, employees, and bank regulators. For example, executives assured regulators that finance, compliance, and legal functions would continue to be managed in the traditional way. 3. Build the structure around customers -and keep it fluid. Like other approaches to management, agile is focused on customers. ING in the Netherlands has tried to keep its organizational structure fluid so that it can evolve to do what's best for customers. 4. Give employees the right balance of oversight and autonomy. A quarterly goal-setting process is part of the agile structure at ING in the Netherlands. This has been a learning process. Initially, groups defined goals that were comfortably achievable, and executives had to urge them toward more ambitious targets. 5. Provide employees with development and growth opportunities. The team-based structures used in agile can be scary for employees used to having their personal development and career progression mapped out by HR departments or the mainstream career trajectories of a given industry.