An entirely new landscape is emerging with technology options central to the work and possibly your business model: work automation.【G1】________________

The simplest and most mature so far is robotic process automation. It can be used to automate high-volume, low-complexity, and routine tasks. It is particularly effective in automating the so-called “swivel chair” tasks, where data needs to be transferred from one software system to another. These tasks are traditionally done by humans.【G2】________________ Creating a virtual workforce of software robots can help companies streamline operational processes as well as increase the quality and cost-effectiveness of shared services.

【G3】___________________

Developments in machine learning, powered by scalable computing resources in the cloud and heavy in-vestment in exceptional human talent by the large players in the IT industry, are making computers capable of recognizing patterns and understanding meaning in big data in a cunningly human-like way. This “recognition intelligence” is showcased in systems for voice recognition, voice-to-text, natural language understanding, image understanding, and a host of other applications that are increasingly becoming available to consumers and companies.

Cognitive automation can be used to gain new insights into big data. When it comes to transforming a company’s strategy around the future of work, talent analytics combined with machine learning can be a very powerful tool for analysis and prediction.

Another area that is rapidly evolving is social robotics.【G4】________________They can be drones that fly or swim, anthropoid robots that walk, or swarm robots that roll on wheels. They are programmable and can adapt to new tasks. This new generation of social robotics can automate routine as well as non-routine tasks. Freed from the assembly line, the social robots can collaborate with humans in a variety of applications that were unthinkable a few years ago.

A good example is the Kiva robots that Amazon has been using to increase the efficiency of its or-der fulfillment process.【G5】_________________By reengineering the process using robots, Amazon did not replace the hu-man workers but rather made them more productive in a way that allows human to focus on the “high-er value added” activities while robots take on the more routine aspects of the job.

[A] There are currently three technological enablers of work automation: robotic process automation, cognitive automation, and social robotics. Each technology fits a different kind of work and has different implications depending on the work to be done.

[B] Unlike their predecessors, this new generation of robots is not bolted on an assembly line; they are mobile and move around in our everyday world.

[C] Nevertheless, most of the current excitement around work automation stems from systems that can replace humans in non-routine, complex, creative, and often exploratory tasks—in other words, systems that can automate human cognition, or cognitive automation.

[D] Instead of having human agents visit cars to assess the damage, an app used by the car policy owner and powered with image recognition intelligence could process photos of the car damage, assess the degree of the damage, and estimate the size of the claim.

[E] For example, they may involve taking inputs from emails or spreadsheets, processing the information by applying certain rules, and then entering the output into some other business systems, such as an ERP or a CRM.

[F] Instead of walking the aisles to find the right packages, humans now stand on platforms while an army of social robots brings the right package to them at the right time.

[G] Selecting the right technology for automating work tasks and improving performance is therefore critical for business, as is the alignment of the selected technology with a comprehensive strategy for the future of work.

The sharing economy has been widely hailed as a major growth sector, by sources ranging from

Fortune magazine to President Obama.【G1】____________But the sharing economy isn’t really a “sharing” economy at all; it’s an access economy.

Sharing is a form of social exchange that takes place among people known to each other, without any profit. Sharing is an established practice, and dominates particular aspects of our life, such as within the family.【G2】_______________Rather, consumers are paying to access someone else’s goods or services for a particular period of time. It is an economic exchange, and consumers are after utilitarian, rather than social, value.

This insight—that it is an access economy rather than a sharing economy—has important implications for how companies in this space compete.【G3】_____________Companies that understand this will have a competitive advantage. For example, we are currently seeing the rise of Uber in the short-term car-ride market. Uber positions itself squarely around its pricing, reliability, and convenience. This is encapsulated in their tagline, “Better, faster and cheaper than a taxi.” In comparison, Lyft, which offers an almost identical service, positions itself as friendly (“We’re your friend with a car”), and as a community (“Greet your driver with a fistbump”). Lyft has not seen nearly the same amount of growth as Uber, and a contributing reason is because they are putting too much emphasis on consumers’ desire to “share” with each other.

Consumers think about access differently than they think about ownership. And most of our best practices in marketing are built upon an ownership model.【G4】________________However, when consumers are able to access a wide variety of brands at any given moment, like driving a BMW one day and a Toyota Prius the next day, they don’t necessarily feel that one brand is more “them” than another, and they do not connect to the brands in the same closely-binding, identity building fashion. They would rather sample a variety of identities which they can discard when they want. Thus, trying to foster a community of consumers around an access economy brand is rarely successful.

The access economy is changing the structure of a variety of industries, and a new understanding of the consumer is needed to drive successful business models. A successful business model in the access economy will not be based on community, however, as a sharing orientation does not accurately depict the benefits consumers hope to receive.【G5】________________

[A] By sharing and collectively consuming the household space of the home, family members establish a communal identity. When “sharing” is market-mediated—when a company is an intermediary between consumers who don’t know each other—it is no longer sharing at all.

[B] In the advertising and marketing world, brand community has become a term used to encompass a brand’s customers, fans and advocates. Having a strong and loyal brand community can turn a small brand into a success if it is nurtured and appreciated properly.

[C] It indicates that consumers are more interested in lower costs and convenience than they are in fostering social relationships with the company or other consumers.

[D] Recent research on Zipcar demonstrates this point. When consumers use the world’s leading car sharing service they don’t feel any of the reciprocal obligations that arise when sharing with one an-other.

[E] For example, being a part of a brand community is important to consumers for many products and services that they own, as they represent who they are, and consumers appreciate being able to share identity building practices with like-minded others.

[F] It has disrupted mature industries, such as hotels and automotives, by providing consumers with convenient and cost efficient access to resources without the financial, emotional, or social burdens of ownership.

[G] So it is important to highlight the benefits that access provides in contrast to the disadvantages of ownership and sharing. These benefits consist of convenient and cost-effective access to valued re-sources, flexibility, and freedom from the financial, social, and emotional obligations embedded in ownership and sharing.

For more than a decade, Dell has posted double-digit growth by selling computers directly to customers, most of them corporate clients. But two unfriendly trends have driven Dell to sell its computers at a place where chairman Michael Dell swore he would never be caught dead: a Dell retail store.

【G1】_____________

“We’re seeing more and more of our technology intersecting with home entertainment,” says Ro Parra, a senior vice president of Dell’s home and small-business group. To attract gamesters and movie watchers, Dell has unveiled new models in its multimedia XPS line. The units range from a $3,500 desktop-notebook hybrid with a 20-in. screen and a remote, to a $2,270 gaming desktop with a swanky scarlet-and-gray exterior and high-end specs. Parra says Dell’s stores give consumers a chance to see its multimedia PCs and laptops in a home environment, paired with some of Dell’s other consumer goods like its flat-screen TV sets. The company expects to open more stores in the fall.

The second reason for Dell to go retail is more prosaic. For years, Dell’s direct-shipment model proved especially good for selling to businesses, which generate 80% of its sales.【G2】___________________So everyday shoppers are powering the industry’s growth. The consumer market grew at twice the pace of the enterprise market last year, according to technology-research firm IDC.

Many of the challenges facing Dell seem to spring from the very innovations that made it a power force. By selling direct, Dell keeps a lid on overhead and offers customized computers at competitive prices, with relatively swift delivery. As the price of computing dropped, Dell was consistently able to shed costs and maintain a price advantage over rivals. But this year Dell’s competitors have attacked that price gap.【G3】________________Retailers have also cut prices, even selling at cost and relying on upgrades and services for profits.

One possibility that doesn’t exist is the ability to walk out of the store with a computer. The new stores won’t carry inventory, so consumers will have to wait a few days for delivery.【G4】________________ Even as the company speeds up its retail operation, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins still downplays the significance of the home market, saying “It’s a secondary priority compared to our corporate customers.” And he argues that the move is really an expansion of the small booths that Dell has set up in malls to allow customers to place orders. Says Parra: “We have 160 booths that have been very successful, and all we are doing is expanding on that success.”

【G5】_____________________

Dell is retraining its customer-support staff and offering a new service called Dell Direct, which allows a technician to connect to a customer’s computer to root out problems. That’s partly in response to harsh criticism after the company didn’t initially beef up customer support as business grew, leading to 30-min. waits to talk to a phone representative.

Last year Dell also announced it would hire 1,500 more call-center workers. “What I am most excited about is the investment in customer support,” says Rollins. “It allows consumers who are not on a network directly, to connect with us the same way a big corporate client would.”

[A] HP slashed thousands of jobs and reduced the number of assembly plants, streamlining its supply chain and enabling it to go head to head with Dell on low-end machines.

[B] The stores are part of a bigger program to make the company more user-friendly.

[C] That lowers operating costs, but Vitelli, senior vice president of consumer electronics, says the impatience of the gotta-have-it-now mall shopper is not on Dell’s side: “Are you going to go to the restaurant, look at the menu and say, ’That’s great. Send me the meal in 10 days’?”

[D] But the business market is becoming more commoditized, and prices are in a free fall. On the other hand, the sale to individual customers has grown rapidly.

[E] Dell CEO Kevin Rollins considers the home market as its second priority because it generates less profit.

[F] The first trend is the ever popular commingling of computing and entertainment in your living room. Yet Dell lives at the office.

[G] The company is very confident that its retail stores will expand rapidly in the next few years.

[A] Gender differentiator

[B] Mark of Personality

[C] Adoption of foreign drinks

[D] Statement of affiliation

[E] Situation definer

[F] Classification of drinking pattern

[G] Status indicator

It is clear that in all cultures where more than one type of alcoholic beverage is available, drinks are classified in terms of their social meaning, and the classification of drinks is used to define the social world. Few, if any, alcoholic beverages are “socially neutral”: every drink is loaded with symbolic meaning, every drink conveys a message. Alcohol is a symbolic vehicle for identifying, describing, constructing and manipulating cultural systems, values, interpersonal relationships, behavioral norms and expectations. Choice of beverage is rarely a matter of personal taste.

【G1】______________________________________________

At the simplest level, drinks are used to define the nature of the occasion. The type of drink served defines both the nature of the event and the social relationship between the drinkers. The choice of drink also dictates behavior. In many Western cultures, champagne is synonymous with celebration, such that if champagne is ordered or served at an otherwise “ordinary” occasion, someone will invariably ask “What are we celebrating?”

【G2】______________________________________________

Choice of beverage is also a significant indicator of social status. In Poland, for example, wine is regarded as a high-status, middle-class drink, while native beers and vodkas are “ordinary*’ or working-class.

【G3】______________________________________________

Choice of beverage may also be a statement of affiliation, a declaration of membership in a particular group, generation, class, “tribe”, sub-culture or nation and its associated values, attitudes and beliefs. Certain drinks, for example, have become symbols of national identity: Guinness for the Irish, tequila for Mexicans, whisky for Scots, ouzo for Greeks etc. One’s national beverage can be a powerful expression of one’s loyalties and cultural identity.

【G4】______________________________________________

While differences in age, class, status, aspirations and affiliations are frequently expressed through beverage choice, the most consistent and widespread use of alcohol as a social “differentiator” is in the gender-based classification of drinks. Almost all societies make some distinction between “masculine” and “feminine” beverages: even where no other differentiation is found, this primary division is likely to be evident, and, often, to be rigidly observed. Even in societies where only one alcoholic beverage is available, such as palm wine among the Lele of Zaire, a weaker, sweeter version, Mana ma piya. is considered suitable for women, while Mana ma kobo, described as “strong” and “fierce”, is a man’s drink.

【G5】______________________________________________

It appears that the adoption of foreign drinks also involves the adoption of the drinking patterns, attitudes and behavior associated with the alien culture, while other societies absorb foreign drinks without “taking in” any of the associated cultural approaches. When the British go to France, they exhibit a tendency to drink wine in beer quantities and display all of the behavioral excesses associated with their native drinking patterns, with the result that young British tourists “are now renowned in France and elsewhere in Europe for their drinking and drunkenness”. In Spain, by contrast, the young males appear more sensitive to alien cultural influences.

In spite of many areas covered, information on the symbolic meanings of different types of alcoholic drink is still incomplete. Therefore, further and more precise research on the symbolic functions of alcoholic beverages is needed.

[A] We call this unique approach adopted by unicorns lightning innovation—and large companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco should be able to benefit greatly from applying it. After all, lightning innovation delivers fairly immediate returns, does not entail high levels of technical risks, is targeted at very clear and large markets, does not fall outside their current businesses or areas of strategic action, and typically outperforms existing products or services.

[B] At one level, the answer is quite obvious: Unicorns get big fast. As a result, they enjoy the very steep growth rates of the businesses they’re in. Think about Uber, created in 2009, which is now available in over 400 cities worldwide, fulfills over one million rides on a daily basis, has about 9 million users, and receives more than $1 billion in payments per year. Snapchat, an idea conceived in 2011, is now valued around $16 billion, with more than 100 million active users who send an average of over 400 million snaps per day.

[C] The term “unicorns,” coined by Aileen Lee, founder of Cowboy Ventures, is commonly used to identify venture-backed private companies valued at $1 billion or more. As of February this year, the top 10 unicorns for market capitalization are: Uber, Xiaomi, Airbnb, Palantir, Meituan-Dianping, Snapchat, Didi Kuaidi, Flipkart, and SpaceX. A complete list of unicorns is published by The Wall Street Journal; it includes a total of 146 companies.

[D] But to realize this potential, established companies will need to fundamentally revisit their business models and cultures. Some of the big players do seem to recognize this—it may be one of Google’s motivations for creating its Alphabet structure, splitting itself into smaller and more agile units. In a digital world, learning to fail fast is the key to getting big fast, and we can expect the big, structured companies of today to take a leaf from Google’s book and start to turn themselves into portfolios of unicorns.

[E] Unicorns have become widely studied and very popular in business press. In particular, much has been written around the key questions of whether their worth is anywhere near their valuations and why they are reluctant to go public. However, by simply celebrating the success stories of unicorns or quibbling with their valuation numbers, we risk ignoring the important question: How did they get to be so valuable?

[F] But is there something about these specific companies that others can learn? To answer that deeper question, we carried out a systematic analysis of the 146 unicorns identified by The Wall Street Journal. Thanks to this analysis, we identified features that are common to pretty much all the unicorns, which we believe helps explain why they have been so successful.

[G] These features can be summarized as follows: They have a sharply focused and experienced leader-ship; their business model is built around a single digital platform or software that is very quick and cheap to develop and leverage; they do not need to invest in building a big workforce and lots of assets; they are backed by financiers motivated for a quick sale; and they are willing to kill or pump in more money on short notice. Culture, incentives, and needs are all geared toward speed; what unicorns really embody are businesses optimized to bring specific digital innovations to markets really, really fast. To be sure, there are also plenty of failures. But the hyper-fast cycle times of the digital world mean that these entrepreneurs and the VCs backing them get to fail faster than they did before, which helps them reach the promised land more quickly.

【G1】→E→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→A→【G5】

[A] Excess supply has forced the prices of solar panels down by more than 40% this year. In Asia factories that recently cropped up are running at 40% of capacity, with a huge shakeout expected. But Japanese makers are protected because they can manufacture cells less expensively than European firms and have better technology than Chinese ones. They are also sheltered in their home market, where customers prefer domestic products.

[B] Factories have mushroomed all over the world in recent years, on the assumption that subsidies and loans for solar power would continue to grow, along with the world economy. Chinese manufacturers’ share grew sixfold in the past four years, capturing more than one-third of the global market. This prompted fears that Japan’s strength in solar would go the way of computer chips and television screens, in which Japanese firms have lost their dominance over rivals from elsewhere in Asia.

[C] Additionally, Japanese companies are following some American and European rivals into electricity generation. Sharp, for example, is negotiating a deal with Enel, Italy’s biggest power company, under which it will build solar panels for use in Enel’s solar-power plants. Enel will help to finance the panel factory and Sharp will take a stake in the plants. In March Mitsubishi, a large trading company, acquired 34% of Amper Central Solar, a power plant in Portugal.

[D] To avoid this fate, Japanese firms have concentrated on improving their technology and adjusting their business models. They have the most sophisticated kit, respected brands and healthy balance sheets. All this should spare them the worst amid the present solar oversupply. The entire industry’s sales are expected to be below 7,000 megawatts this year. That is roughly half of its capacity. The economic crisis has led to the cancellation of many big projects, and subsidies for solar power in Germany and Spain are being reduced.

[E] Many Japanese solar firms are in fact expanding. The country’s four biggest power companies are investing billions of dollars to double their production, at least, over the next three years. They expect an increase in demand owing to growing subsidies for renewable energy in America and Japan. The Japanese government reintroduced generous handouts for solar power this year. These had stopped three years ago, when it had seemed that the market could support itself. Between April and June domestic sales increased by 80% in volume, while sales elsewhere slumped.

[F] Until five years ago Japan made around half of the world’s solar cells, thanks to its thirst for native energy and its expertise in the related fields of computer chips and flat screens for televisions. Sharp, which alone has made a quarter of all the solar cells ever produced, dominated the industry. But as solar technology matured and demand grew, new companies emerged, notably in China, eroding Japanese firms’ share of the market to around 20%. Sharp slipped to fourth place among manufacturers in the previous year.

[G] At the Motosumiyoshi commuter-train station in Kawasaki, a suburb of Tokyo, sleek solar panels serve as an awning over the platform. On a recent sunny day, they were producing 33 kilowatts of electricity, equivalent to the consumption of 40 homes. The system supplies 15% of the energy used by the station, and avoids many tons of greenhouse-gas emissions annually. As long as the state’s demand of clean and native energy exists, solar power’s future is bright in the land of the rising sun.

F→【G1】→【G2】→【G3】→【G4】→【G5】→G