Big data’s potential just keeps growing. Taking full advantage means companies must incorporate analytics into their strategic vision and use it to make better, faster decisions.

As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly great role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, unsurprisingly, become a major focus of research and public concern. The discussion tends toward a Manichean guessing game: which jobs will or won’t be replaced by machines?

Over the past several years , many companies have avidly pursued the promised benefits of big data and advanced analytics. In a recent McKinsey survey of executives in this field, nearly all of them said that their organizations had made significant investments, from data warehouses to analytics programs.

Platform-based talent markets help put the emphasis in human-capital management back where it belongs—on humans. The best way to organize corporations—it’s a perennial debate. But the discussion is becoming more urgent as digital technology begins to penetrate the labor force. Although consumers have largely gone digital, the digitization of jobs, and of the tasks and...

The potential of artificial intelligence and advanced robotics to perform tasks once reserved for humans is no longer reserved for spectacular demonstrations by the likes of IBM’s Watson, Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, DeepMind, or Google’s driverless car. Just head to an airport: automated check-in kiosks now dominate many airlines’ ticketing areas. Pilots actively steer aircraft for...