Management Thinking

As the editor of Technology Quarterly it’s my job to keep up with promising new technologies, and to help me do that I maintain a list of emerging technologies that are worth watching. Items are added to the list if I think they are worth keeping an eye on, and removed if they either become widely accepted, or fail to deliver on their promise. Enterprise social networking was on my list for some time, for example, but I removed it last year...

Indra Krishnamurthy Nooyi's job is never done. Chairwoman and CEO at PepsiCo, one of the giants in the food and beverages industry, she's also director at the Consumer Goods Forum, a global industry network and board member at the World Economic Forum, an international organisation. During her career, Ms Nooyi has held a range of posts from corporate strategy to serving as Chief Financial Officer. She's also sat in many a boardroom, including...

The European Union is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80-95% below 1990 levels by 2050, in the context of necessary reductions by developed countries as a group. At the end of 2011, the European Commission published the Energy Roadmap 2050, which explores the challenges posed by delivering the EU's decarbonisation objective while at the same time ensuring security of energy supply and competitiveness.

There is strong agreement that diversity and inclusion (D&I) is good for business: CEB research finds that in a diverse workforce where the perspectives of diverse and non-diverse employees are valued, employee performance improves by 12 percent and intent to stay by 20 percent. In fact, focusing on diversity alone is insufficient, as it only generates about a 6.5 percent bump in these workforce outcomes.  


It is easy to be distracted by negative news headlines about solar energy these days: solar companies going bankrupt, photovoltaic (PV) supply much higher than demand and solar panels causing a new trade war. Still, much of the news agenda misses the wider point:  the vast potential of solar power is already changing the energy outlook of many countries around the world and promises to be the global energy success story of the next decade. ...

A quick scan of Birgitta Kantola's career says enough about the breadth of non-executive opportunities for finance business leaders. Having served as the CFO of the International Finance Corp., the private arm of the World Bank Group, Ms Kantola's non-executive portfolio currently ranges from chairwoman of the finance and audit committee at Stora Enso, a Finnish forestry and paper firm, to member of the audit and compliance committee at SEB,...