In 1988, during what has been called “the mother of all election debates,” former Canadian prime minister John Turner warned former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney about the dangers associated with forging closer economic ties to the United States. Following the original Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States in 1989, Canadian industry and companies – and their boards of directors – have become integrated with the United .....more

Across industries, organizations are at an inflection point. For more than a century, they have been built on two primary assets: labor and capital. Now, a third has emerged—data intelligence. Real-time data flows, AI agents and the embedded knowledge they generate are rapidly becoming the foundations of autonomous activities that create value. This new asset class is forcing leaders to rethink not just how their companies operate, but how they are .....more

An Accenture analysis of the top 300 global manufacturers by revenue across three industries—aerospace and defense, industrial equipment, and automotive and mobility—indicates the traditional view of productivity as relentless efficiency is crumbling. According to this research, the most resilient companies are no longer the ones that treat productivity as a cost-cutting exercise. They are the ones that see it as a value-creation strategy that spans .....more

Samuel Patterson Smyth Pollock was born on December 15, 1925. He served in the Montreal Canadiens’ front office for 17 years (from 1947 to 1964) before taking on the role of general manager (GM) from 1964 to 1978. During his 14-season tenure as the Canadiens’ GM, he led them to nine Stanley Cup wins. He is the only GM to have overseen teams that won the Stanley Cup in more than 50 per cent of seasons served as GM (64.3 per cent). The next closest .....more

Conventional agency theory?perceives executive power as inherently problematic. In contract, this article presents the managerial rent model—a framework positing that power becomes problematic solely when exercised without commensurate ability. By analyzing divergent situations, the author demonstrates how comparable degrees of executive autonomy yield markedly different outcomes, contingent upon leaders’ competencies and governance frameworks. This .....more

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on artificial intelligence, Katie Britt, a U.S. Senator from Alabama, and Jacob Helberg, an adviser to Palantir Technologies, implied we all could soon be rubbing shoulders with R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars. While big, exaggerated statements about AI are great for drawing eyeballs, the hype they generate has real consequences. It distracts business and political leaders from more pressing issues, and it leads .....more

With generative AI transforming the foundations of knowledge work, leaders must engage directly with its disruptive effects rather than delegating responsibility to IT or experimental teams. At Accenture, consultants in the Talent & Organization practice launched an initiative where 40 consultants used ChatGPT Enterprise and Microsoft Copilot to integrate AI into daily work. Their aim was to explore how AI could remove repetitive tasks, improve .....more

Tariff wars are reverberating across sectors, disrupting supply chains, inflating input costs, and triggering volatility in customer demand. Many organizations, particularly those dependent on international sourcing, are now caught between rising costs and eroding margins. Absorbing costs hurts profit margins, while passing them on risks increasing brand switch and churn rates. This is just one illustration of how fragile and interdependent the global .....more

In this article, the Dean of Western University’s Ivey Business School offers reflections on what business leaders should do as AI embeds itself in our day-to-day working lives. This article offers timeless advice because it is about how businesses should adapt in the face of technological change. Externally, leaders have a strategic imperative to create and maintain a distinctive value proposition in the face of strong AI-enabled forces for convergence. .....more

In today’s fast-changing world, traditional ways of making strategic decisions aren’t effectively meeting demands. This article introduces a more flexible approach: Emergent decision-making. This approach is built around six practical leadership stances that are all anchored by a clear, grounded mindset. When leaders and their teams learn to shift between these stances, they build the “response-ability” needed to navigate real-time challenges.