Facing sizable skills gaps in their current and future workforces, companies have stopped waiting for the traditional education system to supply the workers they need. Amazon, AT&T, and others have stepped in with their own solutions to fill those gaps. These companies may be shaping the future of not only their own workforces, but of yours as well.

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.

Recruiting women directors can create positive feedback loops that pave the way for future diversity, and strengthen a board’s role in supporting long-term innovation and creativity.

This week’s must-reads for managers: Slack is making us miserable, why underdog expectations predict high performance, the future of automated vehicles, and a CEO letter confronts climate change.

A digital twin is a virtual replica of an object, being, or system continuously updated with data from its physical counterpart. Supported by billions of connected global sensors, digital twins will soon exist for millions of things. Jet engines, a heart, even a city can have digital twins that mirror physical and biological properties. Real-time assessments and diagnostics will be more precise; repairs will be executed in the moment; and innovation will be faster, cheaper, and more radical.

The future of mobility with automated vehicles isn’t autos versus tech, but autos plus tech: collaborations that weave together products, services, and business models to meet the needs of individual users across wide-ranging use cases.

Focusing on getting the creative process just right can hamper your team’s innovation. Instead, understand your motivation, encourage creative tension, and welcome unexpected contributions to help you foster a creative culture, navigate uncertainty, and embrace the curious and the unknown.

Social listening — analyzing what consumers say on social media — can serve as the map for a treasure hunt, allowing companies to tap into rich consumer insights in real time. Social listening is transforming how consumer product companies develop, market, and package their products to gain a competitive advantage — and we’re only just beginning to grasp the possibilities that machine learning advances will catalyze.

WeWork’s free fall has fed a spirited discussion over how we define the business of technology; Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has changed capitalism — and possibly democracy; the sharing economy expands.

In studying agile approaches at more than 50 companies, the authors found that the organizations that achieve the most success with digital projects use processes that allow for continuous learning and that support critical business goals. With everyone following the same processes, companies do better at juggling multiple projects and reaping the benefits of scale. One of the companies studied, Johnson & Johnson, shares its approach.

Large corporations have found that applying the principles of lean is more complicated than expected. Large organizations aren’t just bigger versions of startups. To make innovation integral to the organization, there has to be a vision of where new ideas will be incubated and how they will be delivered.

This week’s must-reads for managing in the digital age: how vigilant companies stay ahead, Disney launches into the streaming wars, how businesses can engage on LGBTQ issues, and mindful meditation.

In fast-changing business environments, companies need to stay vigilant and watch for threats from both internal and external sources. The most vigilant companies use systematic approaches to determine where to look for — and how to explore — potential disruptions.

What makes a company an innovation leader? To a great extent, it’s a matter of mindset. Executives whose technology-led transformation projects aren’t delivering the expected value must make strategic shifts in terms of their companies’ technology adoption, technology penetration, and organizational change.

About a quarter of high-tech companies are run by CEOs who double as inventors. Through patenting and publishing activity, such leaders contribute their own expertise to their companies’ innovation and production efforts, even as they steer their respective ships. This hands-on approach may sound like a distraction from strategic thinking, but it’s the future for top leaders across many sectors, not just tech — and it is already upon us.

Companies seeking to drive innovation in the face of constant disruption benefit from adopting a strategy that supports both internal entrepreneurs and external partnerships rather than taking an either/or approach. The benefits: reduced development costs, faster time to market, and a collaborative, engaged workforce.

AI promises rewards but also comes with risks ― namely, that competitors figure out how to successfully use it before you do. This year’s 2019 MIT SMR-BCG Artificial Intelligence Global Executive Study and Research Report shows early AI winners are focused on organization-wide alignment, investment, and integration.

Technology adoption based on the technology alone is bound to miss the mark. Fintech will not disrupt the financial industry overnight, but when it does, it will reflect a larger and more complex social debate than its inherent technological or economic merits. Managers need to get involved in this debate now, so they can navigate the uncertainty, and decide to adopt it — or not.

With so many digital tools in the workplace, collaboration has gone omnichannel. Given how hyperconnected people are, the authors set out to explore the implications for organizations and teams. In their research, they discovered that always-on connectivity was good for fact finding and information sharing but not for problem-solving, as we tend to assume. For tasks that require imagination, it’s better to alternate between connectivity and quiet focus. Leaders must help establish a good rhythm.

The must-reads MIT SMR editors are reading this week, including: the future of self-driving enterprises, the intersection of what new technologies can provide and what customers want, and how you can be a better leader by not giving advice.