For decades, organizations of all sizes and in all industries have struggled at managing projects. Even though employees primarily worked together in physical offices, rare was the project that came in on time and on budget and delivered what stakeholders expected.The M-F/9-5 in-person world of work is gone forever. Depending on the country, more than nine in ten people would rather quit their jobs than return to the office five days per week. Brass tacks: Remote and hybrid workpla...

Buoyed by the success of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, thousands of companies of all sizes are fundamentally rethinking how they do business. They are creating vibrant ecosystems and, in the process, reaping big rewards. In the tradition of The Long Tail, The Age of the Platform demonstrates how the world of business today is vastly different from that of even ten years ago. Today, the most successful companies are operating under an entirely different business model—one predicated ...

Winner: International Book Award, Business: Communications/Public RelationsWinner: Axiom Awards, Business Technology (Silver)Microsoft Teams. Slack. Zoom. Google Workspace.Every day, hundreds of millions of people use these über-popular collaboration tools, but only to limited extents. That is, as replacements to email and Skype. We are merely scratching the surface of what these collaboration hubs can do. Rare is the company that h...

For decades, organizations of all sizes and in all industries have struggled at managing projects. Even though employees primarily worked together in physical offices, rare was the project that came in on time and on budget and delivered what stakeholders expected.The M-F/9-5 in-person world of work is gone forever. Depending on the country, more than nine in ten people would rather quit their jobs than return to the office five days per week. Brass tacks: Remote and hybrid workpla...

A small seafood restaurant attracts new customers with virtually no marketing budget. An iPad case manufacturer generates more than $1M in revenue in four months with only four employees. A voiceover company is able to connect thousands of artists with opportunities, all without expensive hardware and software. A law firm increases access to key information while dramatically reducing technology-related costs and risks. And these four companies are hardly unique. A new breed of small busin...

The era of Big Data as arrived, and most organizations are woefully unprepared. Slowly, many are discovering that stalwarts like Excel spreadsheets, KPIs, standard reports, and even traditional business intelligence tools aren't sufficient. These old standbys can't begin to handle today's increasing streams, volumes, and types of data.Amidst all of the chaos, though, a new type of organization is emerging.In The Visual Organization, award-winning author and technol...

Winner: International Book Award, Business: Communications/Public RelationsMicrosoft Teams. Slack. Zoom. Google Workspace.Every day, hundreds of millions of people use these über-popular collaboration tools, but only in decidedly limited ways: as email and Skype replacements. Because these folks are merely scratching the surface of what these robust collaboration hubs can do, they fail to realize their massive benefits.Blame ignorance, not malice. With rare exceptio...

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets ...

As COVID has receded, companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, and Twitter have severely restricted or even eliminated remote work. Ditto for countless, less iconic firms and small businesses. At a high level, executives and managers at these organizations are trying to turn back the clock to 2019.There's just one problem, though: For a bevy of reasons, they won't succeed.In many ways, the workplace of 2023 already differs from its pre-pandemic counterp...

For decades, our relationship with workplace technology has been, in a word, complicated. The pandemic only made it more so.The stats are astonishing. Two in three employers cannot find qualified candidates to fill their open IT positions. By 2024, the deficit of software developers in the US alone will hit 500,000. Supply and demand for techies are out of whack and, most alarmingly, there's no end in sight.The effects of this labor market imbalance are profound an...

Zoom into the new world of remote collaborationWhile a worldwide pandemic may have started the Zoom revolution, the convenience of remote meetings is here to stay. Zoom For Dummies takes you from creating meetings on the platform to running global webinars. Along the way you'll learn how to expand your remote collaboration options, record meetings for future review, and even make scheduling a meeting through your other apps a one-click process. Take in all...

For years, organizations have struggled to make sense out of their data. IT projects designed to provide employees with dashboards, KPIs, and business-intelligence tools often take a year or more to reach the finish line...if they get there at all.This has always been a problem. Today, though, it's downright unacceptable. The world changes faster than ever. Speed has never been more important. By adhering to antiquated methods, firms lose the ability to see nascent trends—and act u...