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The art of bian lian -or "face changing"-is integral to Sichuan opera: A main character changes masks to avoid capture by foes. The transformation is quick and surprising, the new face clearly different. In the theater of business, Chinese performers are undergoing a rapid transformation of their own as they seek to evolve from backroom producers to the world's leading face of innovation.

The dramatic rise of China's digital leaders has put the squeeze on Western internet giants. Western players must learn quickly if they are to get back in the game in the world's fastest growing digital market.

Companies that rigidly adhere to traditional approaches to goal setting may be driving their business in the wrong direction. More than ever, goals must be set in relation to the competitive environment.

To prevent email from feeling like a burden, teams should develop shared practices to enable it to help -not harm -employee productivity. This begins by developing an understanding of the relative effects of congruent vs. incongruent messages.

The conventional wisdom of goal setting is so deeply ingrained that managers rarely stop to ask if it works. The traditional approach to goals -the annual cycle, privately set and reviewed goals, and a strong linkage to incentives -can actually undermine the alignment, coordination, and agility that's needed for a company to execute its strategy.

Less than 5% of companies are using AI to reinvent how they do business, but the competitive intensity surrounding the technology suggests that a wait-and-see strategy could be a costly mistake. To get a share of the global profit pool of $1 trillion that AI will produce by 2030, the McKinsey Global Institute says companies should begin adopting it at scale within the next three years.

We are entering a new era in additive manufacturing, or "3-D printing." It has major implications for the adoption of the technology and for the choices of business models available to companies that take the plunge, says the author. Advances in the technology's capabilities and expansion of the available materials and the supplier ecosystem have made it possible to produce a much broader range of affordable things--from the soles of running shoes to turbine blades--and, in many cases, in much higher volumes. As a result, 3-D printing is moving from a limited role (such as prototyping and making conventional machine tools) to a central place in manufacturing for a growing number of industries. Strategically, that means additive is becoming a full-fledged competitive weapon: It can be used to hold on to market leadership, to dethrone the dominant player, and to diversify by exploiting a printer's capability to make products for different industries. Consequently, leaders need to understand additive's capability and potential and the choices open to them in the near future. This article presents them with a playbook and explores six possible business models that have emerged.

Artificial intelligence is transforming all sectors of the economy, but there's no reason to fear that robots will replace all human employees. In fact, companies that automate their operations mainly to cut their workforces will see only short-term productivity gains, say the authors. Their research, involving 1,500 firms in a range of industries, shows that the biggest performance improvements come when humans and smart machines work together, enhancing each other's strengths. People need to train AI agents, explain their outputs, and make sure they are used responsibly. AI agents, in turn, can assist people with information gathering, data crunching, routine customer service, and physical labor, thereby freeing them for higher-level tasks that require leadership, creative thinking, judgment, and other human skills. To get the most out of AI, companies need to redesign their business processes. After deciding what needs improvement--their operational flexibility, speed, or scalability; their decision making; or their ability to personalize products and services--they can devise appropriate solutions. That will mean not only implementing AI technology but also developing employees who can work effectively at the human-machine interface. The authors describe how a number of firms are already taking these steps and optimizing collaborative intelligence. But many more should follow their example.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has penetrated many organizational processes, resulting in a growing fear that smart machines will soon replace many humans in decision making. To provide a more proactive and pragmatic perspective, this article highlights the complementarity of humans and AI and examines how each can bring their own strength in organizational decision-making processes typically characterized by uncertainty, complexity, and equivocality. With a greater computational information processing capacity and an analytical approach, AI can extend humans' cognition when addressing complexity, whereas humans can still offer a more holistic, intuitive approach in dealing with uncertainty and equivocality in organizational decision making. This premise mirrors the idea of intelligence augmentation, which states that AI systems should be designed with the intention of augmenting, not replacing, human contributions.

Koperasi Mitra Dhuafa (KOMIDA), the second largest microfinancing institution in Indonesia, was to launch its digital mobile platform by the end of 2018. The trial in selected field offices had begun. Among the many objectives, the new platform had to improve the efficiency and reliability of KOMIDA's nationwide field operations. The operational director, the point person for this initiative, had to make sure that the operations department back in its Jakarta headquarters could work well with more than 200 KOMIDA field offices nationwide. He keenly remembered the recent failure of a smart card pilot. It had to be scrapped due to cost concerns and a lack of acceptance from KOMIDA's clients. How could he ensure that the coming trials would lead to a successful rollout? What should he watch out for to keep things progressing smoothly? This case describes KOMIDA's motivations behind such an initiative and its challenges in managing the project and their vendor, TBOP. It discusses how IT project management should be mindful of the prevailing cultural and industry norms in a country. By focusing on digitalisation and the promise of deep analytics, it also discusses how an organisation can become "digital-ready".

In April 2016, the Chinese tech giant Tencent made an ambitious foray into the enterprise market by launching WeChat Work, an enterprise social network app adopted from its immensely popular consumer app WeChat. To increase WeChat Work adoption, Tencent leveraged on the 1-billion user base of WeChat and its strong consumer IT capabilities. Despite the initial success, WeChat Work faced intense competition from many other firms, including Alibaba's DingTalk. The socialisation needs of enterprise workplace vary significantly from those of consumers. How can Tencents address these challenges? Can Tencent's strong consumer IT capabilities be as effective in driving the adoption of WeChat Work in the enterprise market?

Dylan Smith, Co-Founder and CFO of Box, describes the various stages of founding the enterprise digital document and data storage company. At each financial raise, beginning with the very earliest family-and-friend money all the way through IPO, Smith describes the options and the thought process that went into each decision.

New emotion-sensing technologies can help employees make better decisions, improve concentration, alleviate stress, and adopt healthier and more productive work styles. But companies must address important privacy issues.

New studies show that companies can derive significant value from free digital goods such as open source software, especially when they pay their own employees to contribute to their creation -even if these assets become available to competitors.

Using examples from companies the authors have studied or advised, the article describes a four-step process for leveraging technology that involves: (1) characterizing the technology, (2) identifying potential applications, (3) choosing from among the identified applications, and (4) selecting the best entry mode. The first step involves "de-linking"the technology from the specific products in which it is currently used. To do this, the authors explain, companies need to identify the functions the technology can perform. A good characterization can broaden the scope of the potential opportunities and allow people to focus clearly on the technology's abilities and limits. In many settings, this step requires extensive testing and R&D investment. As they explain, "You can't look for new applications until you know what your technology can do vis-à-vis what competing solutions do." Once companies have specified what the technology is, they can begin exploring new settings where it might be applied. Although the authors recommend starting with desk research, the biggest benefits often come from getting out of the office and interacting with people. Trade shows, they say, provide an excellent way to see firsthand where the technology and its alternatives might be applied, and to hear about the pain points of the existing technologies. Another approach is to tap into communities of problem-solvers who might be able to provide suggestions. Although identifying opportunities with the most promise may appear to be straightforward, in practice, the authors note, it can be more involved. Companies often underestimate the challenges of applying the technology, which may be revealed only by building early prototypes. In bringing technology to new markets, the goal should be to find new application areas where your technology performs better on existing performance dimensions, introduces a new performance dimension, or delivers the desired outcome at a lower cost.

This puts even the best incumbent companies in a weak position when the market finally embraces the new technology, something the authors call the "hybrid trap." This article takes a close look at the auto industry's transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles (EVs) and compares it to precedents in other industries. Several incumbent automakers, such as General Motors Co. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd., entered the EV market early, but they backed away from these projects in favor of continued emphasis on established engine technology. Gradually, most of them focused on hybrid cars that combined old and new technologies. This opened the door to new competitors, notably Tesla Inc., which focused solely on the EV technology. By mid-2017, nearly every old-line engine producer was playing catch-up on EV technology, working to release new electric models in the next two to five years. Although it is too early to know if Tesla will be successful in the long run, the Tesla example, in the authors'view, points to a fundamental weakness in how incumbents respond to industry transformations. In the 1960s, U.S. electronics companies responded to the introduction of Japanese transistor radios by developing products that blended transistor technology with traditional vacuum tubes. In the early 1990s, Kodak Ltd. tried to sell a "film-based digital imaging"product, which merged film photography and digital technology. And a decade ago, BlackBerry Ltd. tried to respond to the challenge of the iPhone by releasing a phone that had both a touchscreen display (like the iPhone) and a traditional keyboard (like earlier BlackBerry phones). The answer for incumbents, the authors write, isn't to walk away from products based on the old technology and jump headlong into the new. But they need to take precautions so that the company's legacy operations don't hamper their ability to pursue new technology.

As the digital revolution rages on, every business leader must become technology literate. This guide provides executives with an introduction to the technologies that are transforming our world.

Companies used to spend years clarifying business requirements before they would even think of launching new software. Today, cheaper cloud-based apps mean that implementation decisions are made on the fly -and there's no going back.

IT alignment can produce inertia -unless it's accompanied by the right culture. Sure, closely aligning IT with the rest of a company's strategy can cut costs and improve the ability to collect data, facilitating the creation of early-warning systems and operational dashboards. But a less regimented approach has its place, too, allowing responses to changing business and economic conditions that are swift and creative.

ZBJ.com (ZBJ), an online platform that connects knowledge workers to small and medium-sized enterprises, is China's largest outsourcing platform. Founded by Mingyue Zhu in 2006, ZBJ had grown into a unicorn with 4,000 employees and a daily transaction volume of RMB15 million by 2017. During the company's 11-year history, ZBJ had launched ten transformation campaigns to overcome various challenges by changing its products, operations, and business model. For example, it encountered winner-takes-all competition, disintermediation (when service providers and clients took transactions off the platform to avoid the platform's 20% commission fees), the rise of fake transactions, member management issues, and difficulties in delivering satisfactory services to large enterprises. Zhu must decide how to use the next campaign to address challenges that had emerged since the last campaign and how ZBJ should expand globally.