What should businesses be doing during the coronavirus pandemic? That’s a tough question, and few of us imagined the challenges we face while being isolated from friends, family, and colleagues. Any crisis will serve up some market opportunities to help consumers adjust, and business leaders should seize them. While doing this, it is important to note that the role of corporations was already under pressure to change prior to the pandemic. Ensuring .....more

The age of disruption has pushed activism inside the boardroom, where the role of directors is no longer easily defined because changing times require changes in leadership. So, what does an activist director look like? This was the topic of a recent address to The Empire Club of Canada by Rahul Bhardwaj, president and CEO of the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), included in this article. The Edelman Trust Barometer—which recently polled 34,000 .....more

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders across all sectors worldwide face enormous challenges. How they behave and the decisions they make will separate the bad from the great. In 2010, the Ivey Business School established the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership with a mandate to focus on leader character. Its research resulted in a framework consisting of 11 dimensions of character and supporting behaviours that were identified .....more

In January 2020, a U.S. hunter-killer drone killed Iran’s second most powerful person, without congressional approval. During the fog of Iran’s response, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot out of the sky over Tehran by jittery Iranian military defense personnel. Michael McCain, CEO of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Foods, blamed Trump for the accident, which claimed the lives of 176 people, including the wife and 11-year-old son of a Maple .....more

People can no longer always trust their eyes or ears thanks to generative adversarial networks (GANs), a special subset of artificial intelligence technology. This technology makes it relatively easy to create deepfakes—convincing clips of people doing or saying things that they never did or said. Deepfakes present a serious threat to Western civilization because they create an opportunity for bad actors to supercharge disinformation. National security .....more

People with higher rates of reported mental illness are entering the workforce and discovering that it has less accommodation for mental health issues than their high school or college did. As a result, a complex issue has become even more difficult because many people struggling with mental illness believe they have to hide it from their employer. Consider some findings from a recent Accenture study of almost 4,000 workers in Britain. Nearly half .....more

This article examines the current state of legal AI, highlighting current applications and future potential along with common concerns. While the authors expect to see boundless applications of AI to the practice of law in the long term, current applications generally aim to facilitate contract review, legal research, and the prediction of legal outcomes. Ultimately, AI systems are likely to reduce costs, produce consistent and accurate results, and .....more

One still hears mainly about the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), but in fact, AI is currently being applied to practical effect across a range of industries. Further, the pipeline of initiatives already in motion suggests that the use of AI is advancing faster than many think. These were some of the key insights gained from a comprehensive scan of how more than 90 leading companies in 15 different industries use AI. The study, completed .....more

Alastair Bathgate is on a mission as CEO of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) firm Blue Prism—but it’s about liberating human workers, not terminating jobs.

The resignation of The Honourable Jane Philpott is literally a case study on what it takes to be an authentic leader in politics and business.