The APQC Blog
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Productivity Reimagined for the 21st Century
It’s going to take more than traditional productivity for organizations to thrive in the post-Covid 21st century. Customers, employees, investors, and our communities are now more than ever asking us to consider other “big picture” societal and environmental outcomes we produce. APQC has always…
3 Ways Process Improvement Gets Sabotaged
We all had to pivot and improvise this past year. But now what? As the world tries to find a new normal, this is a unique window of opportunity to re-create how we work. I am not just talking about work from home—virtually every important process could be a target. The timing couldn’t be better.…
KM Fills a Gap in AI Projects
I, along with my colleague Lauren Trees, recently interviewed 21 organizations applying artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) internally and found that the organizations that had made the most progress, had the most experimentation, and were having the most successful AI…
Future Proofing Your KM Program
There is an AI/automation arms race underway between the big players—IBM, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook – and knowledge management is the beneficiary. Turns out, KM tasks such as content management, tagging, search, and expertise location are good targets for AI and might really…
Why Process Professionals Need to Know About Analytics and Machine Learning
If you are into process improvement, now is the time to jump onto your organization’s analytics and digital transformation efforts. A recent APQC study found 53 percent of organizations plan on investing in advanced analytics and automation over the next 12 months. For the remaining 47 percent, it…
A Multi-Generational Model for Collaboration
The main reason I go to the Aspen Ideas Festival is for the new ideas, models, and people. I never would have met Henry Elkus elsewhere. Henry is a twenty-something entrepreneur who envisioned a global network in his Yale dorm room. His “big thinker” network, now called Helena,…
The Future Is Here, Are You Ready?
Digital transformation is on the strategic agenda for many organizations. However, there is confusion about how to differentiate true digital transformation from discrete digital projects shrouded in hyperbole. Process automation is nothing new. However the sheer scale of processes that can be…
How Do Productive People Do It?
Why are some people more productive than others? To find out, I asked two stellar and productive past Big Thinkers to “Describe the circumstances under which you are most productive.” Charles Duhigg is a husband, father of two young children, Pulitzer prize winning NY Times reporter…
How Airbnb Uses Analytics to Build Trust
Trust is the currency of today’s digital marketplace whether you are exchanging lodging or knowledge. Imagine this: You are traveling to a foreign country for vacation and you are renting a home sight unseen from a person you have never met. Or (stranger danger alert!) you are letting a stranger…
Amazon Prime’s Random Approach To Productivity
Amazon. The Behemoth of Booksellers. The Disruptor of Retail. The Patron Saint of the US Postal Service (their Prime saved USPS’s bacon). Amazon. The Paragon of Predictive Analytics. The Role Model of Recommendation Systems. Given Amazon’s obsession with data and…