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In 2018, Fortune's Global 500 ranking included 111 firms headquartered in China--just a handful fewer than the United States' 126. In 1995, only three Chinese firms made the list; in 2018, three were in the top 10. No wonder some observers predict that China will soon overtake the U.S. as the home to the highest number of Global 500 firms. It's entirely possible that this could happen, but the triumph may be fleeting. In the late 1990s, Japanese firms came close to outnumbering U.S. companies on the list, until a combination of a graying workforce and declining productivity caused them to slide back off. Japan's experience, which is similar to that of China today, provides an uncomfortable precedent for the consequences of a slowdown in domestic growth. To keep their places on the Global 500, Chinese companies will have to develop a global mindset more characteristic of multinationals from small countries like Switzerland, a transformation that has to date eluded most Japanese businesses.

The agendas of company boards are so packed that it's hard to get to every question and concern during regular meetings. So between meetings, directors do what members of a team always do in this situation: They start having conversations on the side. Conducted properly, side discussions allow directors to work together efficiently--to trade opinions, share information, and exert influence. But conducted improperly, they encourage political maneuvering, marginalize members with key expertise, foster inappropriate alliances, and lead to poor decisions. They shut out diverse input, and they make boards dysfunctional. The authors started examining side conversations three years ago as part of a larger study of board dynamics. In this article they share what they've learned about how directors should approach them. High-functioning boards, for instance, set clear rules of engagement and regularly review whether they're following them. They create onboarding processes, help directors form personal relationships, and take measures to maintain trust--such as ensuring that every member is briefed on all relevant information before formal discussions restart.

In an era when businesses increasingly have to depend on their suppliers to lower costs, improve quality, and drive innovation, traditional contracts don't work. They often undermine the partnerlike relationships and trust needed to cope with external uncertainty. The remedy is to adopt a totally different kind of arrangement: a "formal relational contract" that creates a flexible framework designed to foster collaboration in complex strategic relationships over the long term. These contracts, which are legally enforceable, specify mutual goals and establish governance structures to keep the parties' expectations and interests aligned. They are especially useful for complex purchasing arrangements, outsourcing, strategic alliances, joint ventures, franchises, public-private partnerships, large construction projects, and collective bargaining agreements. Crafting a formal relational contract involves five steps: laying the foundation, co-creating a shared vision and objectives, adopting guiding principles, aligning expectations and interests, and creating systems for staying aligned.

In many contexts, the firm is no longer an independent strategic actor. Its success depends on collaboration with other firms in a designed ecosystem spanning multiple sectors. In these cases, traditional strategy frameworks are of little help. Instead, the author says, companies should focus on five questions: (1) Can you help other firms create value? Success is as much about helping other firms innovate as it is about innovating yourself. (2) What role should you play? You don't necessarily need to be the chief architect of your ecosystem; sometimes you're better off sharing the role or being a complementor. (3) What should the terms be? There are two key governance choices: who can access the ecosystem, and how exclusively attached your partners must be. (4) Can your organization adapt? Customers' needs and complementors' desire and ability to collaborate can shift dramatically, requiring changes in your allocation of resources. (5) How many ecosystems should you manage? Some successful orchestrators head up multiple ecosystems--each covering a different part of the business, and each leading to a different path for expansion.

Although companies spend billions on formal training for employees, most of the skills needed to perform a specific job can be learned only by doing it. This on-the-job learning (OJL) has long depended on mentorship, with experts coaching apprentices. But today OJL is under threat from the headlong introduction of sophisticated analytics, AI, and robotics into many aspects of work. These technologies are moving trainees away from learning opportunities and experts away from the action. The author describes the "deviant," rule-breaking work-arounds--"shadow learning"--that surgeons in training, police officers, M&A analysts, and others are figuring out on their own to overcome these obstacles and suggests how companies can benefit from studying them.

Whether you're a boss, a colleague, or a friend, you can help the people around you make important life-enhancing changes. But the way to do that isn't by setting targets for them and fixing their problems; it's by coaching with compassion, an approach that involves focusing on their dreams and how they could achieve them. Instead of doling out advice, a good coach will ask exploratory, open-ended questions and listen with genuine care and concern. The idea is to have coachees envision an ideal self (who they wish to be and what they wish to do), explore the real self (not just the gaps they need to fill but the strengths that will help them do so), set a learning agenda, and then experiment with and practice new behaviors and roles. The coach is there to provide support as they strive to spot their learning opportunities, set the groundwork to achieve change, and then see things through.

Head of a culinary empire that now includes 16 ventures, Boulud talks about his boyhood on the family farm, where "everything on [the] table was 95% grown, raised, or made by us"; key lessons from the chefs he trained with; and how he balances being an artistic chef with being a businessman.

The Chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet has been called the Godfather of Silicon Valley. In a wide-ranging interview, he discusses his leadership style, his company's varied initiatives, the best approach to innovation, and why Google is so unbelievably successful. He also touches on the importance of addressing bias in AI and Google's bold plan to bring the benefits of AI to everyone, everywhere.

The legendary Harvard Business School Professor and disruptive innovation expert discusses the ideas in his latest book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. He introduces the concept of 'market-creating innovations', which create new markets for people for whom either no products existed or existing products were unaffordable or inaccessible for a variety of reasons. These innovations transform complicated and expensive products into ones that are so much more affordable and accessible that many more people are able to buy and use them-and can transform communities. In the end, he shows that if you stay focused on serving 'non-consumers' with affordable solutions, opportunity will be vast.

New innovations today are likely to be more advantageous to college graduates than those who didn't finish high school. In an excerpt from their book, Innovation + Equality: How to Create a Future That Is More Star Trek Than Terminator, the authors argue that new technologies can worsen inequality, which in turn can create a backlash against innovation. To make sure the innovation engine keeps humming, it is vital to ensure that the fruits of growth are available to all.

The author argues that The best way for any organizaton to detect, define and share customer insights is hiding in plain sight: Your own employees can help you create an insight-driven organization. He shows how canvassing the thoughts, fears and experiences of customers with your own managers and employees has three key advantages: The 'researcher' knows the subject matter; he/she can be more creative than an outsider about designing the experience; and you can save untold market research budget dollars. In the end, he shows that in an era of Big Data, 'big qualitative insights' remain a powerful competitive weapon.

Are you ready to build a culture that drives innovation, where people can thrive and create? By embracing three principles (bold leadership, an empowering environment and comprehensive action), the authors show how an organization can prime itself to be more innovative than ever before. Their research at Accenture has found that a culture of equality-the same kind of workplace environment that helps everyone advance to higher positions-is a powerful multiplier of innovation and growth. They show that building a culture of equality is not just an ethical imperative, it is also a business priority. Put simply, if organizations want to innovate and thrive, they have to 'get to equal'.

When do consumers decide to buy something? Why and how do they shop in the first place? Over the past 20 years, a number of macro shifts have drastically altered shopping patterns and buying decisions - presenting new opportunities and challenges for marketers to persuade consumers to spend money and encourage repeat purchases. The author describes her recent research, indicating 12 particular shopper archetypes. She also introduces The Needs Adaptive Shopper Journey Model, which integrates firm actions, technology, peer-to-peer/social and shopper psychology to address shopper well-being.

If it hasn't happened yet, it is only a matter of time before your organization has a 'cyber incident'. The FBI estimates that a cyber incident will occur every 14 seconds this year, ranging from minor, accidental disclosures of sensitive information to a major theft of data and other valuable assets by criminals, state-sponsored actors, or terrorists. The authors show that cyber threats are the result of three interrelated characteristics: those who engage in cyber attacks, or the Threat Actors; the value they expect to extract from the Targets they attack; and the 'Attack Vectors' they will use to attack your organization. Understanding how these three elements interact is critical for every modern leader.

When it comes to problem-solving, the questions we ask often undermine our desire to uncover novel insights. The author describes 'quicksand questions' and the four traps they get us into. He then presents his 'Unstuck Minds Compass', which asks four questions of the individual encountering a complex challenge: Do you want information about the big picture (contextual inquiry) or data about the nature of the problem (critical inquiry)? Should you seek out the perspectives of others (collaborative inquiry) or start by questioning the assumptions behind the framing of the challenge (creative inquiry)? In the end, he shows that diversifying our approach to complex problems by embracing these four types of inquiry can help us become more adaptable and less likely to get stuck.

This article explores the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in aiding personalized engagement marketing-an approach to create, communicate, and deliver personalized offerings to customers. It proposes that consumers are ready for a new journey in which AI is a tool for endless options and information that are narrowed and curated in a personalized way. It also provides predictions for managers regarding the AI-driven environment on branding and customer management practices in both developed and developing countries.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be useful in many applications from automating cars to providing customer service responses. However, though many firms want to take advantage of AI to improve marketing, they lack a process by which to execute a Marketing AI project. This article discusses the use of AI to provide support for marketing decisions. Based on the established Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining (CRISP-DM) framework, it creates a process for managers to use when executing a Marketing AI project and discusses issues that might arise. It explores how this framework was used to develop three cutting-edge Marketing AI applications.

This introduction to this special issue discusses artificial intelligence (AI), commonly defined as "a system's ability to interpret external data correctly, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation." It summarizes seven articles published in this special issue that present a wide variety of perspectives on AI, authored by several of the world's leading experts and specialists in AI. It concludes by offering a comprehensive outlook on the future of AI, drawing on micro-, meso-, and macro-perspectives.

This article explores how a collaboration technology called Artificial Swarm Intelligence (ASI) addresses the limitations associated with group decision making, amplifies the intelligence of human groups, and facilitates better business decisions. It demonstrates of how ASI has been used by businesses to harness the diverse perspectives that individual participants bring to groups and to facilitate convergence upon decisions. It advances the understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to enhance, rather than replace, teams as they collaborate to make business decisions.

The capability of AI is currently expanding beyond mechanical and repetitive to analytical and thinking. A "Feeling Economy" is emerging, in which AI performs many of the analytical and thinking tasks, and human workers gravitate more toward interpersonal and empathetic tasks. Although these people-focused tasks have always been important to jobs, they are now becoming more important to an unprecedented degree. To manage more effectively in the Feeling Economy, managers must adapt the nature of jobs to compensate for the fact that many of the analytical and thinking tasks are increasingly being performed by AI, and, thus, human workers must place increased emphasis on the empathetic and emotional dimensions of their work.