THE LAST WORD
T
Competing in the Age of AI:
Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and
Networks Run the World
Marco Iansiti and Karim R Lakhani, Harvard
Business Review Press
T
he business-changing effects
of artificial intelligence (AI) may
be familiar to us but, according
to this new book from two Harvard
professors, we’d better hold on to our
hats: we ain’t seen nothing yet. Based
on the authors’ extensive research
and drawing on (a sometimes
bewildering array of) case studies,
the book argues that AI is becoming
the “new operational foundation of
business”, displacing human activity,
but also transforming the very nature
of how companies operate — and the
wider economy and society too.
According to the authors, reinventing
organisations around data, analytics
and AI removes traditional barriers to
scale and breaks down vertical
hierarchies and specialisation,
changing the basis on which firms
compete and create value, trends we
ignore at our peril. It’s an ambitious
argument, not always delivered
convincingly, with the conflict
between the dominance of the tech
giants vs the entrepreneurial
opportunities afforded by new tech
never entirely reconciled. However,
the book’s sheer scale and breadth
make one thing abundantly clear:
there’s no longer any real divide
between the analogue and the digital
when it comes to business.
Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders:
The Pioneering Adventures of the First Women
Professionals
Jane Robinson, Doubleday
H
ard on the heels of the
legislation that gave the first UK
women the vote in 1918 came
another, much less-well-known Act
that, for the first time, removed the
legal barriers to women building
professional careers. Following The
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of
1919, women, many of whom had
campaigned for many years, could
at last join men in professions such
as law, medicine, engineering,
academia and the church. The reality,
of course, was not quite that simple.
Opening up the professions rarely
meant that women were welcomed
or accommodated; the lack of
women’s toilet facilities was just one,
oft-used, excuse for not employing
them. To be a professional female
pioneer required vision, sacrifice and
extraordinary perseverance in the
light of explicit discrimination,
power ful vested interests and
e nt re n c h e d m a l e - d o m i n a te d
cultures. Marking the centenary of
the Act, this is an important and
enter taining book , telling the
extraordinary stories of unsung
heroines and their achievements. It’s
a timely reminder of how they paved
the way for other women and that we
still have a way to go when it comes
to full gender equality at work.
February – May 2020 // 101