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The traditional model of leadership, where a single individual is expected to provide all the answers, is becoming obsolete. In a world of accelerating complexity, hyper-specialization, and rapid change, no leader can single-handedly navigate the full spectrum of challenges facing modern organizations. The future of leadership is about curating the best insights, talent, and ideas, not dictating the direction. The best leaders will be those who act as architects of collaboration, assembling diverse perspectives and fostering an environment where expansive thinking thrives. This shift in leadership isnt just about delegationits about creating conditions for continuous learning, adaptability, and innovation. Leaders who embrace a curation mindset are best equipped to drive organizations forward in an unpredictable world. Why Curation is the New Leadership Superpower In a world overflowing with expertise, no single leader can master every domain. The leaders who thrive are those who: Curate Talent. They dont just hire smart people; they intentionally build diverse teams with complementary skills and perspectives. Studies show that diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones by 39% in problem-solving efficiency. Curate Ideas. They create spaces where unconventional thinking is not only encouraged but strategically leveraged. Googles 20% time policy, which allows employees to spend part of their workweek exploring passion projects, has led to breakthroughs like Gmail and Google Maps. Curate Innovation. They design environments where experimentation, iteration, and cross-disciplinary collaboration drive meaningful breakthroughs. IDEO, a global design consultancy, uses cross-industry ideation sessions to unlock unexpected solutions, from healthcare innovation to urban design. Rather than positioning themselves as the ultimate expert, these leaders act as orchestrators, ensuring that the right voices are heard at the right moments. How Leaders Can Adopt a Curation Mindset The shift from traditional leadership to curation requires intentional practices. Heres how leaders can start: Seek Out Outliers.Conventional wisdom often leads to conventional results. The best leaders actively engage with voices outside their immediate circlescontrarians, industry outsiders, and emerging thinkers who challenge the status quo. For instance, Netflixs early decision to pivot from DVD rentals to streaming came from its leaderships ability to absorb trends from tech, media, and consumer behavior research. Design for Collaboration, Not Just Efficiency.Many organizations optimize for productivity at the cost of creative collision. Leaders must create structured serendipity, allowing ideas from different disciplines to intersect in unexpected ways. Pixars open office architecture, where animators, writers, and tech teams share communal spaces, has fostered storytelling innovation. Facilitate, Dont Dictate.Instead of being the sole decision-maker, adopt a facilitators mindsetguiding discussions, posing better questions, and allowing collective intelligence to emerge. Jeff Bezoss Disagree and Commit principle at Amazon encourages debate, ensuring that the team moves forward with informed risk-taking even if consensus isn’t reached. Champion Psychological Safety.The best ideas often come from environments where individuals feel safe to challenge, experiment, and even fail. Research from Googles Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the top predictor of high-performing teams. Unlocking Cross-Disciplinary Breakthroughs Historys most significant breakthroughs didnt come from isolated silos but from cross-disciplinary collisionswhere physics met art, where biology informed engineering, and where technology reshaped storytelling. Here are a few inspiring examples: NASA & The Sports Industry: NASAs space suit advancements have directly influenced sportswear technology, improving gear used by Olympians. Bioengineering & Architecture: The Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe was designed using biomimicry principles based on termite mounds, leading to a 90% reduction in cooling costs compared to conventional buildings. AI & Music Composition: IBMs Watson has been used to compose symphonies, merging artificial intelligence with classical music expertise to create never-before-heard compositions. Organizations that embrace curation-minded leadership will be better equipped to solve complex, multidimensional challenges. The organizations that thrive in the future will not be those with leaders who know the mostit will be those led by individuals who know how to bring the right minds together to figure things out. The ability to curate talent, ideas, and innovation will define the next generation of transformational leadership. So, as you reflect on your own leadership approach, ask yourself: Are you accumulating knowledge, or are you assembling the right people and perspectives to unlock something greater? The future belongs to curators. Are you ready to lead like one?
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E-Commerce
Behind the remains of a town scorched by fire, the foothills are lush with new green and filled with birdsong.Wildlife is returning to the Eaton Fire burn area and scientists are closely tracking it four months after the Los Angeles area wildfires tore through the Angeles National Forest and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in Altadena.Trail cameras installed by a group of volunteers documented the first mountain lion back in the area March 26. It was seen again as recently as two nights ago.“My first inclination was to share that to people who have lost so much during this fire and our community in Altadena, because it’s a sign of hope that nature’s returning, that nature’s resilient,” said Kristen Ochoa, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, medical school leading the effort.Ochoa, a long-time resident of Southern California, first began documenting the plants and animals that live in the area known as the Chaney Trail Corridor in July 2024. She founded the Chaney Trail Corridor Project and began uploading observations on iNaturalist, a volunteer-driven network of naturalists and citizen scientists that maps and shares documentation of biodiversity across the globe.Located right behind Altadena, with a trailhead only a mile (1.6 kilometers) up the road from neighborhoods that were decimated during the fires, the privately owned area adjacent to Angeles National Forest land was slated for sale and development into a sports complex. Ochoa and other volunteers set up a network of trail cameras to showcase the biodiversity of the area and take “inventory of everything that was valuable.”Much of the land was charred and barren after the fires, and the group also lost all of its cameras, watching as photos of the flames were transmitted before they went dark. But less than two months after the start of the fires, Ochoa was able to go back out and install new ones to start documenting the landscape’s recovery.“The thing I really remember is coming here right after the firethere was so much birdsong,” Ochoa said.Many volunteers with the group are local residents who lost their homes and have told Ochoa that witnessing nature’s recovery in the area has brought hope to them as well.While the fires burned aggressively, they also burned unevenly, leaving patches of trees and a small oasis of greenery surrounding a stream untouched. Animals were able to seek refuge there while the rest of their home burned.They have not come across any deceased animals, she said, but there were reports of an injured bear and deer.The heavy rain that came in the weeks after the fires have helped with a quick recovery.On a recent Wednesday morning, Ochoa pointed out several charred San Gabriel oak treesonly found in Southern Californiathat had rampant green growth around their base.The “crown sprouting” comes from having deep and developed root systems that have helped the trees survive for hundreds of years, Ochoa said.An aggressive bloom of yellow mustard flowers, an invasive species, have also taken root on the hillsides, potentially crowding out native plants like the California sage brush and wild cucumbera source of food for ground squirrels.The group is partnering with local scientists at UCLA to do research on how bats and birds have fared after the fires as well.As she installed a newly donated trail camera, she pointed out bobcat scat and fresh deer tracks on a ridge that had burned just months before.Two red-tailed hawks circled each other in a mating ritual high above in the sky, a sign of spring. Jaimie Ding, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Google’s profits soared 50% in this year’s opening quarter, overcoming the competitive and legal threats that its internet empire is facing amid an economy roiled by a global trade war.The numbers released Thursday by Google parent Alphabet Inc. indicated the company is rising to the challenge so far, but investors are likely to remain concerned about the turbulent times ahead.The Mountain View, California, company earned $34.5 billion, or $2.81 per share, during the January-March period, up from $23.7 billion, or $1.89 per share, at the same time last year. Revenue rose 12% from last year to $90.2 billion. The results easily exceeded analysts’ projections, according to FactSet Research.“We continued to see healthy growth and momentum across the business,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told analysts Thursday during a conference call. Alphabet’s stock gained more than 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out. The shares had fallen by 16% since the end of last year.Google’s first-quarter performance illustrated the continuing power of its long-dominant search engine in a sea of uncertainty. While grappling with competitive threats emerging as artificial intelligence reshapes technology, Google is also battling court decisions condemning its search engine and digital ad network as illegal monopolies.The AI-driven upheaval has opened new opportunities for people to find helpful advice, insights and information through more conversational search options from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.Google’s long-dominant search engine is countering the new competition with a feature called AI Overviews that appear above web links in its results. It is also testing a conversational tool called AI Mode that would usher in an even more radical change to its business model.“The company delivered a sound response to those questioning the solidity of the search business amid ever-increasing AI demand,” Investing.com analyst Thomas Monteiro said.But Google is trying to keep its business intact as by the U.S. Justice Department attempts to break up the company and impose other restraints after a federal judge last year branded its search engine an illegal monopoly. To make matters worse, its digital ad network also was found to be illegally abusing its power earlier this month in another case brought by the Justice Department.President Donald Trump’s trade war has injected more uncertainty into the mix by rattling the financial markets amid fears the tariffs will reignite inflation while dragging the economy into a recession. Although Google’s digital services aren’t directly impacted by the tariffs, a recession would likely curtail the spending on ads that generate most of Alphabet’s revenue.But there were few signs of a slowdown in the past quarter. Google’s ad revenue during the period totaled $66.9 billion, an 8% increase from the same time a year ago.Although Google’s executives are mostly upbeat during Thursday’s call, they also acknowledged conditions should the trade war trigger a recession.“We are obviously not immune to the macro environment,” said Philipp Schindler, Alphabet’s chief business officer.The past quarter’s steady growth emboldened Alphabet to stand firm on plans to invest $75 billion on AI and other technologies this year while also pursuing approval of a $32 billion deal to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz.This story has been corrected to reflect Alphabet’s first-quarter profit increased 50% from the same time last year, or $2.81 per share, and that its revenue for the January-March period totaled $90.2 billion. The story also has been corrected to reflect Google’s ad revenue for the first quarter totaled $66.9 billion, an 8% increase from a year ago. An earlier version reported the incorrect dollar amounts and percentage change. Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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