This week’s must-reads for managers: why more employees would trust a robot over their manager; which U.S. city is a tech powerhouse with diverse talent; and how to make digital transformation succeed.

In a city that’s experienced tough economic times, entrepreneurism is blooming. But in resource-constrained environments like Detroit, individuals approach entrepreneurship in different ways than they do in affluent regions such as Silicon Valley. The accessibility and use of material resources within the entrepreneurial ecosystem shapes the experiences of its members in unique ways.

A large-scale study in Europe of funding decisions finds that VCs evaluate male and female entrepreneurs by different standards. Savvy entrepreneurs can anticipate potentially biased responses to their pitches and plan accordingly. Certain tactics keep audiences engaged and confident of the idea’s potential, positioning the petitioner to succeed.

This week’s must-reads for managing in the digital age: Figuring out how to make AI work for you; the obstacles facing women early in their careers; the pitfalls of a transparent world; how CIOs evolve into technology strategists.

This week’s must-reads for managing in a digital age: The right way to regulate big tech, how 5G will change the nature of work, and a new podcast for busy leaders.

Biases related to gender and other demographic factors creep into decisions about which projects to fund with venture capital. Data-driven approaches can help tease out those biases and limit their impact. Algorithmic methods identify potential instances of discrimination and increase transparency, making it easier to find and fix problems. Aversion to algorithms can be tempered by letting decision makers retain some subjective control over the data-driven process.

While the corporate world has made progress in advancing women’s careers in leadership roles, there is a long way to go to achieve workplace gender equality. By supporting women’s career development and advancing them into managerial positions, a company’s customers, teams, and bottom line will benefit.

The hidden obstacle to women who want to found B2B startups is often rooted in the way they are mentored and advised in the business world. Where men are more often coached in strategy and business tactics, women are more likely to be taught how to avoid internal politics and “fit in” culturally. This difference in mentoring leaves women at a disadvantage with respect to entrepreneurship.

The starting point for managing age diversity is to develop a basic understanding of cross-age differences in working style. The authors found that management style varied more with age than with any other characteristic in their survey. Younger managers prefer narrower approaches to management, while older ones tend to work through others and focus on the big picture. Being attuned to style differences can make it easier for individuals to navigate their working relationships effectively.

To make gender equality a reality, organizations need to shift their thinking about what it means to them — that is, to make it part of their company’s values and a permanent driver of culture rather than a mere priority that might change in time. Lessons can be learned from the energy sector, which saw a cultural shift take place around another crucial workplace issue: safety.

When it comes to salary transparency, one widely held belief is that women have a harder time collecting salary information than men. While some research suggests this may be true in some cases, collective research has not tackled a fundamental question: Are female employees truly less informed about salaries, or is this just a stereotype?

When it comes to the complex hiring processes of corporate America, women often face not only glass ceilings but “glass walls.” Recent MIT Sloan Management Review articles provide insights and research into some of today’s leading issues for women in the workforce and steps managers can take to lead change.

At the 2019 gathering of the World Economic Forum, much of the conversation was about the need for re-skilling and inclusive education, and the ongoing gender gap in the world of technology. Lynda Gratton, a professor of management practice at London Business School, attended the Davos conference as a steward of the World Economic Forum Council on Work, Education and Gender, and shares her insights from the meeting.

Organizational change is difficult. Some 70% of change efforts fail, and awareness hasn’t improved the odds of success. But there are exceptional companies, making strides with everything from digital transformation to employee engagement to diversity and inclusion. And they have one thing in common: They are customer-obsessed. When customers are truly at the center of your business, change proceeds from one organizing principle: What’s best for them?

As AI develops better decision-making skills, leaders may feel threatened and push back, resisting the imperative to leave their biggest and most critical decisions to mechanical minds. And that might be a mistake, says psychologist Daniel Kahneman, given AI’s potential to reduce the bias in human thought processes.

What if, instead of perpetuating harmful biases, AI helped us overcome them? What if our systems were taught to ignore data about race, gender, sexual orientation, and other characteristics that aren’t relevant to the decisions at hand? They can do all that — with guidance from the human experts who create, train, and refine them.

Scholars have argued for years that high levels of diversification harm company performance and value creation. But multi-business companies can do quite well. Those that thrive tend to do three things: They limit the number of business models in their portfolio and support them with a cohesive operating model. They tailor the corporate parenting strategy to the needs of individual business units. And they allocate resources according to the role played by each business unit.

The popular perception of Twitter as a social media “echo chamber,” where people only receive and retweet opinions that match their own, does not reflect the data about users’ actual engagement. The average Twitter user propagates more mainstream content and follows a diverse group of users — and this has implications for social media marketing.

The process of recruiting members to a board is often mistaken for the actual onboarding. Much is at stake in terms of legal and fiduciary responsibilities, but relatively little attention is paid to creating the conditions within the board to extract the distinctive knowledge of its new members. Three strategies can help boards do a better job leveraging the unique expertise of each board member.

By featuring Colin Kaepernick in its latest “Just Do It” campaign, Nike has made a deliberate decision to increase the appeal of its brand among younger, liberal, and ethnically diverse consumers while risking not only a portion of its existing customer base, but also its overall reputation.