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As organizations become more global, matrixed, and complex, they are requiring employees to collaborate with more internal colleagues and external contacts than ever before. According to research, most managers now spend 85% or more of their work time on e-mail, in meetings, and on the phone. And although greater collaboration has benefits, it also leaves significantly less time for focused individual work, careful reflection, and sound decision making. Organizational solutions are, of course, necessary to eradicate collaborative overload across the board. But research shows that with some strategic self-management, individuals can also tackle the problem on their own, clawing back 18% to 24% of their collaborative time. The first step is to understand why you take on too much work for and with others; this often involves challenging your identity as a "helper," a "team player," or a "star performer." Next, figure out how you add-and from where you derive-the most value and eliminate any collaborations that distract from that work. Last, ensure that the collaboration you continue with is as productive as possible.

High-profile, emotionally charged projects--from the Jewish Museum in Berlin to the Ground Zero reconstruction--have made Libeskind's reputation. In this edited interview, he talks about how he stays motivated (even when a project takes more than a decade to reach completion), how he collaborates, how he delegates, and how he manages from afar.

In the eyes of many leaders, artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies are the most disruptive forces on the horizon. But most organizations don't have a strategy to address them.

In response to increasing consumer demands for faster deliveries without added cost, more companies are implementing IT solutions that enable access to real-time sales data and inventory data across the whole enterprise. Real-time sales and inventory information, coupled with advanced analytics enables networks to accommodate fluctuations and changes in the business environment quickly, a quality the authors call distribution agility.

Researchers have identified six distinct mindsets that contribute to leaders' portfolio of leadership styles by asking one simple question: Whom do the leaders serve? Identifying these mindsets can help companies recognize how the leader's styles are helping -or hurting -their performance.

As digital disruption expands, many legacy businesses seek partnerships with tech companies to maintain competitiveness in the digital sphere. But instead of a centralized "hub"partnership, some companies find greater success through an adaptive ecosystem model, where partners develop significant projects or innovations together. This type of strategy requires imagination and flexibility.

The seductive clamor of social media is a workplace reality from which there's no retreat. Those who'll succeed in this distraction-filled world as managers and innovators must combine two seemingly opposing traits: They must to be able to absorb information from many sources and to focus intensely. Together, these apparently contradictory qualities comprise the skill set for managing your most valuable personal resource -- your attention -- in a hyper-connected age.

It used to be an article of faith that technology-intensive product manufacturers, automakers, or white goods makers could capitalize on their long-standing engineering and design leadership to cement their position worldwide. But that's no longer the case. Today, young upstarts in many product segments, especially from China, can develop world-class design and production capabilities in short periods of time. "In some cases, they are closing gaps with long-established incumbents and becoming market leaders within a decade,"writes Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih. Three main factors drive this: (1) blatant copying of intellectual property, (2) governments pressuring companies to share technology in exchange for rights to do business, and (3) normal knowledge spillover as workers move from multinationals to local companies. But other forces, the author argues, are accelerating commoditization and making product differentiation increasingly difficult to sustain.Knowledge, particularly the tacit know-how that takes years to develop, now flows through pathways that we take for granted. It is embedded in the tools used to design and manufacture products, or it is incor-porated into the building blocks that are used to build more-complex systems. Young competitors, armed with this knowledge, can now skip years of practice and become competitive threats almost instantly.The amount of commoditization pressure a company faces, the author writes, depends on the number of complementary assets it needs to operate successfully and how difficult they are to replicate. Such assets could be other tools or specific operating capabilities. If a producer needs to use a tool in conjunction with other tools or recipes, it's easier to protect the product space. However, if the tool is the keystone and complementary assets are easy to acquire, commoditization is the likely outcome.

The debate about how many and what kinds of jobs smart machines will leave for humans to do misses a salient point, argues author Thomas W. Malone. Just as the automation of human work allowed people and machines to do many things that couldn't be done before, groups of people and computers working together will be able to do many things that neither can do alone now.To think about how this will happen, Malone says, it helps to recognize that virtually all human achievements -"from developing written language to making a turkey sandwich"-require the work of groups of people, not just individuals working on their own. As Malone explains it, "superminds"-groups of individuals acting together in ways that seem intelli-gent -take many forms, including the hierarchies in most organizations; the markets that help create and exchange many kinds of goods and services; the communities that use norms and reputations to guide behavior in many professional, social, and geographical groups; and the democracies that are com-mon in governments and some other organizations. Increasingly, machines can take part in the activities of these groups. "That means we will be able to combine people and machines to create superminds that are smarter than any groups or individuals our planet has ever known,"Malone says. Malone describes a future where humans and computers play different roles, with computers begin-ning as tools, then moving progressively into becoming assistants, peers, and then managers. Before we have general AI, he writes, "we can create more and more collectively intelligent systems by building societies of mind that include both humans and machines, each doing part of the overall task."

When pundits talk about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on the labor market, the outlook is usually bleak, with the loss of many jobs to machines as the dominant theme. But that's just part of the story -a probable outcome for companies that use AI only to increase efficiency. As it turns out, companies using AI to also drive innovation are more likely to increase headcount than reduce it.

While the threat of national champions is nothing new, their essential character has substantially changed, and the competitive advantage of national champions in the global marketplace has become more pronounced. Today's national champions are much more sophisticated, competing in more industries, and harder to spot than ever before. As a result, Western companies need a new strategic guide for competing against them.

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.

Unethical behavior and misconduct has been a persistent problem in the business world. A company's ethical norms are a cumulative outcome of how daily ethical dilemmas are addressed in the workplace. Over time, these micro-level issues can evolve into a corporate ethics scandal -unless organizations work to help employees make ethical choices day to day.

A relatively small number of purchase and return metrics can accurately predict customer profitability -and the likelihood of policy abuse. By using analytics to identify the few customers who cost the company the most money by abusing return policies before they make their next purchase, companies can prevent abusive returns, avoid PR disasters, and boost their profitability.

Platform businesses, like Airbnb or Lyft, often talk about themselves as if they're merely matchmakers. That's a smart pitch -when a company is negotiating with investors. But any platform that wants to succeed will have to learn something Airbnb did: Success also depends on identifying and mitigating risks for your buyers and sellers, and it will be proportional to the amount of risk mitigated.