SPOTLIGHT
A Manager’s Guide to Augmented Reality
Augmented reality technologies promise totransform how we learn, make decisions, and interact with the physical world.In this package we explain what AR is, how its applications are evolving, andwhy it’s so important.
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While the physical world isthree-dimensional, most data is trapped on two-dimensional pages and screens.This gulf between the real and digital worlds prevents us from fully exploitingthe volumes of information now available to us. Augmented reality, a set oftechnologies that superimposes digital data and images on physical objects andenvironments, is closing this gap. By putting information directly into thecontext in which we’ll apply it, AR increases our ability to absorb and act onit.
AR will become the new interface betweenhumans and machines, say Michael E. Porter of Harvard and James E. Heppelmann,the CEO of the industrial software maker PTC. Many people are familiar with ARentertainment applications, such as Snapchat filters, but AR is being appliedin far more consequential ways in business. Pioneering organizations arealready implementing it in product development, manufacturing, logistics,marketing, service, and training—and are seeing major gains in quality andproductivity.
AR improves how users visualizeinformation, receive and follow instructions, and interact with products.AccuVein, for instance, uses AR technology that converts the heat signature ofa patient’s veins into an image superimposed on the skin, making them mucheasier to locate. Boeing uses AR to show trainees how to assemble an aircraftwing—and has cut the time it takes them to do that task by 35%. At GE, factoryworkers have achieved a similar gain in efficiency by using voice commands inAR experiences to perform complex wiring.
AR will have a wide impact on how companiescompete. This article walks readers through the questions firms need to askwhen integrating it into their strategies and operations. The article alsoincludes HBR’s first embedded AR experiences, which readers can launch bydownloading a new HBR app on their mobile devices and then pointing them attargeted images in the magazine’s pages.
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Entrepreneurship
When Founders Go Too Far
Steve Blank | page 074
Silicon Valley venture capitalists used toroutinely oust start-up founders—who were viewed as green and unskilled—as partof the process leading to an IPO. The author, an adjunct professor at Stanfordand a well-known entrepreneurship thinker, describes how VCs gradually came tosee founders not as a problem that needed to be solved but as a valuable assetthat needed to be retained. In July 2009, when Mark Andreessen cofounded the VCfirm Andreessen Horowitz with Ben Horowitz, it was with a key philosophicaldifference from rival firms: a “founder friendly” focus. Blank argues that thistrend has gone too far, and the situation at Uber is just the most obviousexample of that. He offers prescriptions for how to begin correcting this powerimbalance.
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Health Care
The IT Transformation Health Care Needs
Nikhil R. Sahni, Robert S. Huckman, AnuraagChigurupati, and David M. Cutler page 102
In recent years, health care organizationshave made sizable investments in information technology. They’ve used their ITsystems to replace paper records with electronic ones and to improve billingprocesses, thereby boosting revenue. But so far, IT has been of little value inmaking medical care delivery more effective or less expensive.
How can health care organizations changethis? One key is to prioritize quality improvement over cost cutting. Byharnessing IT to help design better clinical practices, it’s possible toachieve better patient outcomes and better financial performance. It is alsovital to gather good information—by using simpler, more-organic collectionmethods—and to make it actionable by applying analytics. Finally, manyorganizations will need to forge new business and operating models, expandingtheir IT staffs, revamping how their clinical staffs work, and creating newpayment structures.
The authors provide numerous examples ofhealth care organizations that are taking these steps—and seeing impressiveresults.
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Diversity
“numbers take us only so far”
Maxine Williams | page 114
Though executives tend to think—and want tobelieve—they’re hiring and promoting fairly, bias still creeps into theirdecisions. They often use ambiguous criteria to filter out people who aren’tlike them or deem people from minority groups to be “not the right culturalfit,” leaving those employees with the uneasy feeling that their identity mightbe the real issue.
Companies need to acknowledge that it’sfair for employees from underrepresented groups to be suspicious about bias,says Williams, Facebook’s global director of diversity. They also must findways to give those workers more support. To that end, many organizations areturning to people analytics, which aspires to replace gut decisions withdata-driven ones. Unfortunately, firms often say that they don’t have enoughpeople from marginalized groups in their data sets to produce reliableinsights.
But there are things employers can do tosupplement small n’s: draw on industry or sector data; learn from what’shappening in other companies; and deeply examine the experiences of individualswho work for them, talking with them to gather critical qualitativeinformation. If firms are systematic and comprehensive in these efforts,they’ll have a better chance of improving diversity and inclusion.
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