Business, Management, Marketing, Money, Tax, Law, People

Brian Kenny: It's hard to find a better example of an inventive genius than Thomas Alva Edison, creator of the light bulb, the phonograph, alkaline batteries, x-rays, and over a thousand other devices that changed the world. And he was equally prolific in business, launching over 100 companies to promote his inventions. But there was just one thing, Edison was a terrible manager. He took enormous risks to grow his…

Some of Apple’s most loyal customers think nothing of upgrading to the latest iPhone every time one comes out. But what about consumers who can’t splurge on a $1,000 iPhone 15 Pro? And what about the electronic waste that would accrue if people threw away functional phones?Long before there were titanium phones with bionic chips, Marcelo Claure, then head of the telecom firm Brightstar, saw an opportunity. A few years…

Managers almost universally say they want to see passion in their employees. Yet sometimes, they can’t spot it when it’s right in front of them.Extroverted employees are more likely to be considered passionate compared to more introverted colleagues—even if it’s not true—according to recent Harvard Business School research. That’s because they tend to demonstrate their feelings more, using cues like animated facial expressions, while introverts come off as more aloof…

Artificial intelligence is changing the nature of work on a scale some predict will be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution. It’s also exposing the yawning gaps in a fractured US employment system that many companies and workers find difficult to navigate.The situation demands a dramatic overhaul of how policymakers, educators, and employers devise, construct, and manage career pathways, which are the routes aspiring workers take as they graduate from…

There’s a virtual elephant in AI’s room: It’s nearly impossible to make the technology forget.And there are an increasing number of scenarios where consumers and programmers may not only want to remove data from a machine learning model—they may be required to do so by law. For instance, since Europe’s tougher data privacy regulations went into effect in 2018, they have created complications for companies worldwide. Questions around data privacy…

Brian Kenny: One sage piece of advice I heard long ago, is to worry only about what I can control, which works great until you're responsible for an outcome that involves others over whom you have no control. Such as the conundrum of firms everywhere, including 96 percent of the Global 250 who have committed to reducing their carbon footprint. There are things you can control in your physical plant,…