The Best of This Week

Introducing the 2020 Culture Champions

MIT SMR recently launched a new edition of the Culture 500, which this year identifies 21 Culture Champions — companies that outperform their industry peers for cultural excellence. While each company’s culture strengths are different, common traits they share include strong financial performance, female leadership, and psychologically safe environments.

Adept Crisis Response Blends Speed and Agility

When companies rely on speed alone, they can operate quickly only in already-established product domains. During a crisis, they must also demonstrate agility, a capability that allows for pivoting to adjacent or entirely new product domains. Integrating both factors simultaneously can help businesses meet demand and capitalize on opportunities in a crisis.
 

Gauging Mental Health Through Social Media

Happiness is hard to measure, but the creators of the hedonometer at the University of Vermont’s Computational Story Lab are part of a growing field of researchers who try to parse the country’s mental health through the prism of our online life. Spoiler alert: Since COVID-19 arrived, the hedonometer’s readings have set multiple records for sadness.

Tech Upgrades Can Also Upgrade Your Business Decisions

Tech upgrades can be revenue generators, not just cost sinks or soon-to-be-legacy burdens. Three strategies can position companies to carry out technology transformations that can create value and enable continuous innovation.

Confronting Social Media Misinformation

In an environment where novel claims travel far and fast, whether or not they’re accurate, the truth is at a serious disadvantage. As tech platforms have shifted from connecting people to people to connecting people to information, society at large has paid a price.

What Else We’re Reading This Week

• When corporations try to address issues of diversity and inclusion, too often the work and responsibility fall on Black employees
• Distance learning has highlighted significant gaps in broadband access in rural U.S. school districts — but this digital divide is too big for schools to bridge
• The latest newsletter from National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, directed to students struggling through distance learning, is a good read for their parents, too

Quote of the Week:

“Navigating the pandemic often feels like running a marathon at sprint speed into the dark, and an agile approach to data and analytics will be the headlamp that companies cannot do without.”

— Lori C. Bieda, chief data and analytics officer, North American Personal and Business Banking at BMO Financial Group, in “How Organizations Can Build Analytics Agility”

The Best of This Week