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Most recent C-suite surveying suggests current applications of generative AI, although hyped, are fragmented and unlikely to yield major financial returns anticipated. Instead, business leaders expect major value from generative AI will be achieved through application of generative AI to innovation: operational innovation, product and service innovation, and most elusive of all, business model innovation.

Findings and analysis presented draws on data from several surveys of C-level executives conducted by IBM Institute for Business Value in collaboration with Oxford Economics during 2023. Each survey focused on the potential of generative AI in a particular business area. The n-count of each survey ranged from 100-3000.

1. Business leaders expect generative AI to build on returns achieved from investments in traditional AI, with 10 percent RoI expected on generative AI investments by 2025. 2. Executives anticipate that generative AI will have most impact when implemented to expand innovation. 3. Specific examples provided for operational innovation, product innovation, and business model innovation

We are still very early in the generative AI development cycle. We have made best efforts to project, but only time will tell for sure.

Business application of generative AI are extremely fragmented. Despite the desire to throw investments at the wall to see what sticks, it is important that leaders take a structured approach to generative AI, focusing on RoI from innovation investments.

To alleviate negative impacts of generative AI, focusing on innovation potential and value maximization is crucial.

This research is based on completely new surveying and data. This papers adds to the sum total of new knowledge in the generative AI domain.

This conversation presents reflections on heatwaves, vulnerability and adaptation in South Asia.

This is based on the Nordic Asia Podcast on Temperatures on the Rise: Adapting to Heat Extremes in South Asia.

Main themes discussed in this conversation include vulnerability and adaptation, livelihoods and cascading disasters.

This conversations adds value to the ongoing discussions on climate justice, loss and damage.

Currently, consumers of financial products and services have become more vulnerable to predatory financial institutions, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, financial consumers like the persons with disabilities (PWDs) should be equipped with knowledge and skills to help them to evaluate complex financial products on offer in financial markets, especially in developing countries to avoid being victims of fraudulent lending. The purpose of this study is to establish whether customized financial literacy mediates the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

SmartPLS 4.0 was used to construct the measurement and structural equation models to test whether customized financial literacy significantly mediates the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

The results revealed a partial mediating effect of customized financial literacy in the relationship between financial consumer protection and financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic. Conducting customized financial literacy increases financial consumer protection by 12 percentage points to promote financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs in rural Uganda post Covid-19 pandemic.

This study focused only on customized financial literacy and financial consumer protection to promote universal financial inclusion of PWDs’ owned MSMEs post Covid-19 pandemic. Future studies may use data collected from other vulnerable groups amongst the unbanked population in developing countries, Uganda inclusive. In addition, this study also collected only quantitative data from the selected population. Further studies can be conducted using key informant interviews and focused group discussion to get the perceptions of the PWDs on being protected from exploitation by unscrupulous financial institutions.

The findings from this study can help policymakers in developing countries like Uganda to revise the existing consumer protection law to include strong clauses on protection of people with special needs like the PWDs. The law must ensure that they are not exploited by financial institutions because of their conditions. The law ought to make sure that the PWDs are educated about their rights in the financial market place and all information on financial products offered by financial institutions should be simplified and interpreted to them before they make consumption decisions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is amongst the first few studies to provide a meticulous and unique discourse on the ever increasing role of financial literacy combined with consumer protection to reduce consumption risks within the financial markets, especially in developing countries in the aftermath of global pandemic shocks. This study uses the social learning theory, theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour to elucidate how customized financial literacy can enhance consumer protection to increase financial inclusion of groups with special needs like the PWDs who have become more susceptible to exploitation by unscrupulous financial institutions in under-developed financial markets, especially in post Covid-19 pandemic.

Designing and developing responsible business practices can create various tensions for service organizations. The purpose of this research is to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between customer engagement (CE) and responsible business practices (e.g. environmental, social and/or governance [ESG], corporate social responsibility [CSR] and diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI]) and explore customer engagement tensions that service organizations may face.

This research develops a list of CE-related responsible business practice tensions and empirically explores their relevance through in-depth interviews with nine ESG professionals.

This paper makes three important contributions. First, we find support for nine distinct but related tensions with implications for CE that organizations must navigate when pursuing responsible business practices. Second, interview participants provide some suggestions for tackling these tensions, which we support with relevant theories. Finally, we develop a conceptual framework that may stimulate future service research and inform the implementation of ESG strategies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to conceptualize and empirically explore the tensions that emerge between responsible business practices and CE. The authors develop a novel analysis of the CE-related tensions that emerge when pursuing an ESG strategy.

The findings are based on a small sample of ESG professionals. Future research may take a quantitative approach to further evaluate the role that these tensions play in engaging customers.

This research provides a conceptual framework that may guide ESG professionals in understanding, framing and navigating CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

A social benefit may be found when service organizations are better able to successfully navigate CE-related tensions when pursuing responsible business practices.

Shortly before the Second World War, a woman who had never accepted her orphan status, Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, nicknamed ‘Little Coco’ by her father and known as ‘Coco’ to her relatives, became the first women in history to build a world-class industrial empire. By 1935, Coco, a fashion designer and industry captain, was employing more than 4,000 workers and had sold more than 28,000 dresses, tailored jackets and women's suits. Born into a poor family and raised in an orphanage, she enjoyed an intense social life in Paris in the 1920s, rubbing shoulders with artists, creators and the rising stars of her time.

Thanks to her entrepreneurial skills, she was able to innovate in her methods and in her trendsetting approach to fashion design and promotion. Coco Chanel was committed and creative, had the soul of an entrepreneur and went on to become a world leader in a brand new sector combining fashion, accessories and perfumes that she would help shape. By the end of her life, she had redefined French elegance and revolutionized the way people dressed.

This study aims to investigate and propose guidelines to enhance the accessibility of virtual reality (VR) interfaces for all users within professional learning environments. Motivated by a lack of comprehensive accessibility guidelines for VR learning, the study delves into a case study of Edstutia’s VR campus.

This case study examines the intersection of VR platform development and learning experience design through the lens of accessibility in human-computer interaction. It elaborates on how user experience feedback from differently-abled learners who were unable to fully participate in the VR experience due to disability shaped the 2.0 version development of a VR platform.

The outcomes of this case study are (1) a description of an inclusive and empathetic design application to increase multi-learner VR platform accessibility, (2) a sample actionable path from a design/development perspective in ensuring the accessibility design of a VR learning platform, and recommendations to facilitate the design process.

This case is a foundation for further research on improving accessibility in VR. In future work on VR campuses, we recommend scholars undertake research with an inclusive approach that actively involves users with different abilities in shaping guidelines, particularly on how individuals with different abilities should be approached for their input during the design and development process in a sensitive manner.

The authors summarize the steps taken to enhance the accessible interplay between the end users and the interface of VR technology in the emergence of VR accessibility standards. Central to this case’s exploration is the integration of accessibility as a pivotal element into an academic VR campus, i.e. multilearner education platform.

Increasing access to VR has strong social implications in a world where 17% of people report a disability.

This case contributes to the limited research available on increasing access to VR on campuses.

At the virus' US epicenter, New York City, teachers experienced the impact of the pandemic firsthand in real time. Consistent with intensification (Apple, 1986), as school struggles to adapt to a rapidly changing social and educational landscape, socioemotional stressors and occupational responsibilities increase. Through the metaphoric (Craig, 2018) image of a candle, and using the tools of narrative inquiry (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990) – broadening, burrowing, storying, and restorying – we surface four teachers' lived experiences in a year filled with incredible grief and loss, socio-political-cultural trauma, racial strife, and personal-professional challenges to show their resolve and resiliency to persevere through and beyond burning out.

Our understanding of the strategies that lead to the success of start-ups when they scale-up is limited when it occurs at the regional periphery. The main purpose of this study is to explore the specific strategies that start-ups employ to scale-up, specifically in contexts with high resource constraints at the regional periphery.

Analyzing the data from personal in-depth interviews with engineering and science start-up founders in peripheral regions of upstate New York USA bordering the Canadian Ontario, we explored a combination of internal and external strategies that start-ups employed to scale-up.

The study found that start-ups prioritize building internal scaling capacity in their human capital, organizational structure, scalable business model, finance and business ownership. To foster the scaling process further, start-ups develop new effective external strategies that target the business environment.

Policymakers and regional governments can use our research to develop more effective industrial policies for supporting start-ups’ growth and subsiding strategic industry clusters for rebooting new competition policy, which is a current debate in many industrialized economies including the US. This targeted regional industrial policy is specially needed when scaling-up at the regional periphery.

Our study is specially need it when scaling-up at the regional periphery and with limited resources.

This study enriches our understanding of the growth of start-ups and small ventures by providing context-based insights into how firms build the capacity to scale-up in highly challenging and uncertain business environments in a peripheral bordering region between the USA and Canada. It also offers useful managerial and policy implications.

This study aims to investigate whether consumers and small businesses can transition from disposable to reusable coffee cups, using a community social marketing intervention, led by a Social Purpose Organisation.

An emergent case study approach using multiple sources of data developed an in-depth, multifaceted, real-world context evaluation of the intervention. The methodology draws on citizen science “messy” data collection involving multiple, fragmented sources.

Moving from single-use cups to reusables requires collective commitment by retailers, consumers and policymakers, despite the many incentives and penalties applied to incentivise behaviour change. Difficult post-COVID economics, austerity and infrastructure gaps are undermining both reusable acceptance and interim solutions to our dependence upon disposables.

Although the non-traditional methodology rendered gaps and omissions in the data, the citizen science was democratising and inclusive for the community.

Our practical contribution evaluates a whole community intervention setting to encourage reusable cups, integrating multiple stakeholders, in a non-controllable, non-experimental environment in contrast to previous research. This paper demonstrates how small community grants can foster impactful collaborative partnerships between an SPO and researchers, facilitate knowledge-exchange beyond the initial remit and provide a catalyst for possible future impact and outcomes.

To assess the impact at both the outcome and the process level of the intervention, we use Pawson and Tilley’s realist evaluation theory – the Context Mechanism Outcome framework. The methodological contribution demonstrates the process of citizen science “messy” data collection, likely to feature more frequently in future social science research addressing climate change and sustainability challenges.

Though scholarship has documented Black opera leaders' contributions to the art form in the United States (André, 2018; Caplan, 2017; Cuyler, 2021; Southern, 1997; Turner, 2015), they have received scant attention in rubrics that theorize a definition of Black opera (André, 2018; Cheatham, 1997; Schmidt & Schroeder, 1999). However, as their recent advocacy for racial justice (Cuyler, 2022) through their Letter to the Opera Field in 2020 revealed (Cuyler, 2023), Black opera leaders play a powerful and unique role in shaping audiences' appreciation, engagement with, and understanding of Black opera (André, 2018; Cuyler, 2023; Floyd & Cuyler, 2023). In addition to their positionality as observers of and participants in opera companies' decision-making processes, their advocacy for racial justice can compel an opera company to program Black opera, or not (Cuyler, 2021, 2022, 2023). Therefore, in this chapter, I explore the research question, what is the role of Black opera leaders in Black opera? Lastly, I propose a theory of the dynamic process that includes artistic programming and casting, hiring, community engagement, and audience development which enables the development of an audience for Black opera when Black opera leaders view their leadership of these areas of work through the lens of racial justice.