Economy, Strategy & Finance Data Reactions

Despite not understanding how Silicon Valley works, hundreds of corporations have started Silicon Valley innovation labs because they know that digitization is rapidly changing everything, and their corporate cultures are too siloed, insular, slow to accept, slow to use, and slow to commercialize the innovation they desperately need to survive.

The unemployment rate may be overestimating current labor market tightness. An exercise on monthly employment changes shows that 63 percent of all newly employed people aged 25 to 54 in October 2018 were not actively looking for a job in the previous month. If employers are looking for slack in the labor market, they should find better ways to source and recruit the people who are not looking for work and allegedly not willing to work.

How do you make life insurance fun and engaging for consumers? Brooks Tingle, President and CEO of John Hancock Insurance, spoke at the recent Customer Experience Conference on how John Hancock uses technology and consumer insights to enhance and innovate the customer experience in life insurance.

An organization’s culture of innovation can be a robust predictor of financial performance, which highlights the importance to companies of measuring intangible assets. With intangible assets growing exponentially as a component of enterprise value, it is unproductive to allow them to go unmanaged.

Inflationary pressures will rise in the coming year even though we project the US economy to slow down in 2019. Rumors that the Philips Curve (low unemployment rate = faster inflation) is dead have been greatly exaggerated. A continuing tightening of the labor market and further demographic slowdown will result in higher producer prices and wages. The likelihood for above two percent inflation rate is higher in 2019 than at any other time in the past 25 years.

For most businesses in China, including foreign firms, directly addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is unchartered territory. Many companies are still in the early stages of their sustainability journey in China, and existing programs often lack strategic intent or deep commitment. We see a tremendous opportunity for foreign firms to exploit areas of Chinese policy and SDG alignment to raise the impact and relevance of their sustainability programs in China.

Alex Goryachev, Cisco System’s Director, Innovation Strategy and Programs, shares the most common mistakes he has seen at companies working to build a culture of innovation. The key concept tying together Goryachev’s observations: the need to focus on the people innovating, not the “innovations” themselves. Goryachev will be speaking at The Conference Board Innovation Master Class this December in Palo Alto.

The perception about the growth of the nontraditional workforce is out of line with hard data. While the number of independent contractors earning income through online labor market platforms has been growing, except for the transportation sector, these platforms represent a tiny share of income and total hours worked in the US economy, and are highly concentrated in certain specific occupations.

Technology is forcing corporate executives to work harder than ever, so it’s important to understand that sometimes work commitments need to take a back seat. There’s a strong chance that colleagues (or you) are facing a personal crisis and it can be hard to know what to do to support them. Being there to support them in whatever way they need it is a good start.