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More than a century ago the merchant John Wanamaker wryly complained, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half." In this article the authors present a solution to Wanamaker's famous quandary. Drawing on a large database supplied by the World Advertising Research Centre to empirically identify what kinds of brand advertising are most effective-both for attracting new customers and for converting them into loyal repeaters-they show that the key to successful brand building is offering a memorable, valuable, and deliverable promise to the customer. What's more, a well-designed customer promise not only translates directly into sales but also provides an effective framework around which to organize a company's activities.

Over the past decade, as a result of the pandemic, political and economic instability, social movements such as Black Lives Matter, and changing workplace technologies, what people expect from leaders has changed. Executive presence (EP) is typically perceived as consisting of three elements in descending order of importance: gravitas, skillful communication, and the "right" appearance. The author's new research shows that while confidence and decisiveness are still paramount for gravitas, pedigree has become less central, and new weight is given to inclusiveness and respect for others. On the communication front, superior speaking skills and the ability to command a room still lead the list of desirable attributes, but comfort on Zoom, a "listen to learn" orientation, and authenticity are on the rise. Projecting authenticity is also key to the appearance component of EP; so are dressing for the "new normal," having an online image, and showing up in person. This article offers a playbook for developing six attributes that increasingly factor into executive presence, citing the examples of a dozen leaders who have cracked the code.

Four new books and a podcast offer insights and advice: Hags, by Victoria Smith; Revolting Women, by Lucy Ryan; Wiser Than Me, hosted by Julia Louis-Dreyfus; Learning to Love Midlife, by Chip Conley; and Radiant Rebellion, by Karen Walrond.

The fashion designer talks about leading a creative life, running her own business for 56 years, and being "wildly excited" about AI.

Age really is just a number! In a wide-ranging interview, the Wharton School's Vice Dean argues that there is nothing naturally preordained about what we should be doing at different ages. The sequential model of life (school, work, retirement) is nothing but a social and political construction, he says. The confluence of rising life expectancy, enhanced physical and mental fitness and technology-driven knowledge and interaction fundamentally alter dynamics over the entire life course, redefining what we can do at different ages. As a result, a 'post-generational' society is emerging comprising 'Perennials' - people who are not characterized by the decade in which they were born. The result: more opportunities for people of all ages to change course, take gap years and reinvent themselves. Those who understand the potential of the Perennial mindset, says Guillen, will enter a new era of unrestricted living, learning, working and consuming.

While generative AI tools like ChatGPT have grabbed headlines, many leaders continue to view such tools as a mere novelty. That is a mistake, says the author. Behind the scenes, organizations are experimenting with 'foundation models,' adapting them for tasks ranging from powering customer service bots to generative product design to automated coding. As these models broaden and extend what we can do with AI, they are enabling companies to transform human-AI interaction and build an entirely new generation of AI applications and services. To leverage these models to drive novel business solutions, companies need to understand their strengths and capabilities and track how they are advancing. The author provides a primer, explaining how foundation models will drive new data practices and transform the nature of knowledge sharing in organizations.

Workplace burnout has become a global concern. In a recent survey, 77 per cent of working people said they had experienced burnout at their current job, while a whopping 91 per cent said unmanageable stress or frustration impacts the quality of their work. Not surprisingly, this has negative implications for employee effectiveness. The author describes his recent research, which reveals that emotional exhaustion usually increases throughout the workday and that these trajectories are influenced by a variety of factors, including previous-night detachment from work and socialization with colleagues. The good news is this: by understanding the variables that relate to growth curves in emotional exhaustion, organizations can design interventions targeting the design of work, social and structural aspects of the environment, and the training of employees on adaptive coping behaviours.

Automated systems: We can't live with them and we can't live without them. AI technology in the wrong hands is inarguably dangerous; but in the right hands it can be beneficial to all. This, say the authors, is the AI dilemma. In this excerpt from their book of the same title, they summarize four 'logics of power' that must be integrated in order for humanity to benefit from AI: engineering logic, social-justice logic, corporate logic and government logic. They show that AI systems consistently raise significant, complex problems that will not simply resolve themselves, and that having diversity of thought and perspective weighing in on these matters is incredibly important. If we want trustworthy AI systems, they conclude, we need to bring all four perspectives together, keep them in mind simultaneously, and make the effort to understand why others feel and think the way they do.

As a digital value-management tool, the blockchain is often considered to be the financial infrastructure for the digital economy. Unsurprisingly, lending and borrowing markets have emerged within this ecosystem. Initially, centralized services led by trading platforms dominated the market, followed by decentralized solutions that use the blockchain's ability to execute code. The authors share findings from their research, which explored how incentive programs offered by lending protocols to attract users are impacting the deposits and loans. Among their key findings: While 'liquidity mining' programs effectively draw activity to their platforms, a considerable fraction of that activity is 'phantom'-created by users that are exploiting rewards from both sides of the market.

More than one third of new investors use social media to research investment advice. If such advice is independently produced by a variety of different contributors, it can benefit investors, because research shows that averaging independent judgments generally improves accuracy. This is known as 'the wisdom-of-the-crowd effect.' However, social media platforms disseminate information using engagement algorithms that are influenced by popularity bias. The authors share findings from their research, which reveals that information on social media displays excessive optimism about future outcomes on earnings announcements and leads to price run-ups.

In the developed world, we have a far greater environmental impact than people in the developing world. But there is great political pressure in the developing world to increase material wealth, which will lead to increased environmental impact. That according to Steven A. Cohen, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute. In a wide-ranging interview he argues that the world's political stability and security depend on the maintenance of material wealth where it exists and economic growth where citizens are poor. But to achieve these goals, we construct an economy that does not destroy our planet's ecosystems. The good news, says Cohen, is that we have the capacity to develop methods of production and consumption that are less damaging to the planet-and create a circular economy in which all materials are reused rather than discarded. This transition has already begun, he says. We just need to speed up our progress.

Family businesses are infamous for nepotism and infighting, especially when it's time to appoint a new CEO. But when global talent adviser Claudio Fernández-Aráoz and colleagues set out to help family firms improve their leadership transitions, they were surprised to find that large family businesses had much better succession practices than their nonfamily counterparts, and they outperformed on several measures after new appointees took the reins. Four practices could help other types of businesses ensure successful CEO transitions: approach succession proactively rather than in reaction to short-term performance issues, bring on a few long-term directors and empower them to lead the process, don't obsess about formal procedures but double down on rigor, and empower new leaders from day one.

Though evidence suggests that conservatives are generally more risk-averse than liberals are, the reverse is true when it comes to foreign expansion. A recent study showed that conservatives leaned toward overseas acquisitions, which are more perilous than alliances (an approach liberals favored). Why? Because acquisitions gave them greater control, and the desire for it outweighed their fear of loss.

Digital technologies challenge incumbent firms to rethink their established approaches to customer relationships. This article examines how a corporate bank reconfigured its relationship-oriented business model to benefit from digital transformation. The case analysis reveals a gradual transition toward a blended service model that first replaces, then complements, and finally augments physical with digital in increasingly complex customer interactions. While replacing and complementing human-enabled services with digital offerings are necessary steps of the digital transition, the associated competitive advantages are perceived as unlikely to endure. In contrast, augmenting human-enabled services with sophisticated digital technologies holds the potential for sustainable competitive advantage.

Organizations that practice open innovation draw on external resources to develop new ideas for products and services. Since the term’s introduction 20 years ago, open innovation has had many proven successes, but organizations must recognize and address a potential barrier: an inability to move knowledge across internal functional, departmental, or geographic silos. Author Henry Chesbrough suggests ways to overcome the obstacles imposed by these organizational boundaries.

While the cybersecurity landscape remains full of increasingly sophisticated threats, new regulations are encouraging boards to do better at managing such risks. This article aims to help boards identify and evaluate appropriate director candidates by detailing five sets of critical skills required of an effective board cyber strategist.

Embedded with artificial empathy, artificial intelligence (AI) companions (ACs) can create, communicate, and deliver value to customers. This article analyzes current and emerging ACs in order to explore AI's role in transforming customer journeys and establishing long-lasting customer relationships. It also identifies existing business challenges in developing user-AI companionship and offers a remedial strategy matrix. Purely functional or emotional capabilities lead to interest in the companion plummeting with time. The findings reveal the need to design holistic ACs with a hybrid of functional, emotional, and conversational capabilities to mitigate the uncanny valley problem.

Today’s senior business managers have the power â€" and the responsibility â€" to prevent AI project failures. But in order to do so, they need to know how to evaluate the data sets and models being used. This article offers a framework for identifying the right data set for your business problem and suggests six tough questions to ask developers before and during the deployment of artificial intelligence models.

Historically, customer engagement and product fulfillment occurred in the same place â€" a traditional retail store. But today, retailers are beginning to explore how they can create opportunities for customers to engage with products in native environments. A related approach is to use nontraditional spaces for inventory storage, potentially speeding fulfillment. While it’s still early days, retailers should proactively consider these strategies’ potential risks and opportunities.

The leaders of business are a continued focus of interest in management research and in the broader society. Their attributes speak to social mobility, inequality, and who holds positions of power and influence in society. This article examines the attributes of the ten highest-ranked executives of the largest corporate enterprises in the United States-the Fortune 100-and compares how they have changed over the past 40 years, a period when many assumptions about businesses and the people who run them have changed. While there has been significant change in some areas, such as the increase in the proportion of women and foreign-born executives and the rise in outside hiring, there is no evidence of an increase in younger leaders who advance faster than their predecessors and spend an ever-shorter time with their employer. In fact, top executives now are as old as their peers were in the 1950s, and their tenure with their employer is rising.