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Keystone is pleased to announce that two articles by Keystone leaders have been nominated for Concurrences’ 2025 Antitrust Writing Awards. The Awards seek to promote scholarship on the topic of competition and contribute to competition advocacy in the legal and economic fields.The two nominated articles are:Four Ways AI Tools Can Improve Traditional Merger Analyses, authored by Patrick Bajari, Senior Partner & Chief Economist, Gianmarco Calanchi, Senior Principal, and Tega Akati-Udi, Consultant II, was published in Law360 in April 2024. The piece is nominated for the “Best Business Article: Mergers” category. Read the full article here and vote for the Reader’s Choice Award at this link.Lessons for the DMCC: Challenges and Trade-offs Facing Access to Ecosystems in Digital Markets, authored by Nitika Bagaria, Senior Principal, and Arzu Mammadova, Staff Software Engineer, was published in Competition Policy International in June 2024. The piece is nominated for the “Best Business Article: Digital” category. Read the full article here and vote for the Reader’s Choice Award at this link.The Jury’s Choice and Reader’s Choice Award Winners will be announced on Tuesday, April 1 at the 2025 Antitrust Writing Awards Ceremony and Dinner in Washington, D.C.

Demand forecasting is the cornerstone of efficient supply chain management, enabling businesses to optimize inventory, production, and distribution. However, traditional forecasting methods often struggle to keep up with the complexities of today's dynamic markets. Factors like moving holidays, slow-moving SKUs, and the need to incorporate various signals like inventory levels and external demand data create significant forecasting challenges.A new generation of forecasting solutions powered by pre-trained AI models is emerging to tackle these challenges head-on. These models are revolutionizing demand forecasting by:Learning From Across Data Points: Unlike traditional methods that often focus on individual time series, pre-trained AI models can learn from vast datasets encompassing diverse products, regions, and time periods. This cross-learning allows them to identify subtle patterns and relationships that would be missed by conventional approaches. Imagine an AI model that recognizes how a promotion in one region impacts sales of a similar product in another, leading to more accurate and insightful forecasts.Refining Pre-Trained Models on Your Own Datasets: While pre-trained AI models come with a wealth of knowledge, they can be further refined using your own historical data. This fine-tuning process allows the model to adapt to the unique nuances of your business, products, and market, resulting in even greater accuracy and relevance.Here's how these advancements address specific forecasting challenges:Moving Holidays: Traditional methods often struggle to account for the variable timing of holidays like Easter or Chinese New Year. AI models can learn these patterns from global data, ensuring accurate forecasts even with shifting holiday dates.Slow-Moving SKUs: Products with intermittent demand patterns can be difficult to forecast. AI models can identify subtle signals and trends across similar products, improving forecast accuracy for these challenging items.Signal Incorporation: AI models can seamlessly integrate a wide range of signals, going beyond just basic demand data. This includes any time-varying variables such as price fluctuations, promotions, inventory levels, macroeconomic indicators, and market trends to capture a more complete picture of demand drivers.Benefits of Pre-Trained AI ModelsImproved Accuracy: AI models can significantly improve forecast accuracy compared to traditional methods, leading to better inventory management, reduced costs, and increased customer satisfaction.Increased Efficiency: Automated AI-powered solutions can streamline the forecasting process, freeing up valuable time for planners to focus on strategic initiatives.Enhanced Agility: AI models can quickly adapt to changing market conditions, enabling businesses to respond more effectively to disruptions and opportunities.A Call to SkepticsThe potential of pre-trained AI models in demand forecasting is undeniable. However, I understand that you may have questions or concerns. I encourage those who are skeptical to share their thoughts and challenges in the comments below. Let's engage in a constructive discussion about how AI can transform demand forecasting and drive better business outcomes.Start the conversation and learn more about Keystone’s CoreAI Solutions by reaching out to us at info@keystone.ai.

Generating Success with Generative AI: How Businesses Are Leveraging LLMs in Operations As Generative AI (GenAI) moves from theoretical promise to practical deployment, Keystone set out to understand how organizations across various sizes and digital maturity levels are introducing and using GenAI to meet their goals. Based on a comprehensive survey of 238 organizations fielded in April 2024, our team noticed distinct patterns, including: • Stratification in the market and in GenAI strategies based on company size • Digital transformation maturity levels significantly impact how effective companies are at leveraging and measuring value from GenAI tools • Only 10% of organizations experienced issue-free GenAI deployments, highlighting the importance of thoughtful governance • And more DOWNLOAD THE REPORT Inside This Report Get detailed insights and data on: • Implementation patterns across company sizes and maturity levels • Industry-specific adoption trends and use cases • Common challenges and success factors in GenAI deployment • Practical frameworks for assessing and implementing GenAI initiatives DOWNLOAD THE REPORT

New York, NY (October 18, 2024) – Keystone today rolled out a new website and refreshed branding that recognizes AI and machine learning capabilities as the future of business, and doubles down on its founding philosophy of using technology, economics and business strategy to solve the most complex challenges facing modern companies. The new branding reflects the firm’s continued focus on its “Triad of Skills” and its expanded tech-driven service offerings for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and law firms. Keystone’s CoreAI group has become one of two key divisions within the firm, alongside its Global Economic and Technology Advisory (ETA) group. The CoreAI business unit, which develops operational and commercial AI solutions for enterprise clients, has significantly added to its ranks of leading data scientists, software engineers and economists, and has been retained by several blue-chip clients across the manufacturing, retail, healthcare and CPG industries. “New AI models have radically changed industries and the way businesses compete. Whereas organizations were once concerned about cloud computing in the early 2000s, today they are grappling with challenges like causal inference and responsible pricing,” said Marco Iansiti, co-founder and chairman of the Board of Directors at Keystone and the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. “Our firm has been deeply rooted in the tech industry since its founding, having served as a key adviser in many of the landmark antitrust cases of the 21st century. The rebranding of our firm and expansion of AI services is a natural extension of our expertise in business transformation. It also signals the continued focus on our distinct combination of skills – which we’ve long leveraged to support high-stakes litigation – in delivering on the promise of CoreAI,” said Iansiti. According to Gartner, 92% of surveyed technology buyers said they plan to invest in AI tools in 2024. The research firm anticipates AI software spending to grow to $297.9 billion by 2027, up from $124 billion in 2022. While AI spending is currently driven by generative AI products, business leaders’ expectations are shifting toward built-in AI functionality. Keystone anticipates the next phase will be defined by CoreAI, a service that provides pre-trained foundation models, custom-built algorithms, and personalized tools that automate operational decisions and optimize commercial functions. Embracing this vision, Keystone has become one of the leading providers of operational AI services. It has built an impressive team of multidisciplinary experts to help guide and advance its CoreAI science and service offering, including Devesh Mishra, President of CoreAI and former Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Amazon, Patrick Bajari, CoreAI’s Chief Economist and former Chief Economist of Amazon, and Susan Athey, Keystone’s Chief Scientific Advisor and former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. CoreAI has supported pharmaceutical leaders, e-commerce giants, CPG manufacturers and other clients in automating decision-making in supply chain optimization, forecasting, customer attribution and more. The firm’s widely respected ETA division, which has supported the world’s largest technology companies, law firms and government agencies in some of the most consequential legal and regulatory matters since 2003, has also expanded its AI capabilities. ETA uses advanced AI/ML techniques to enable complex econometric analyses used to craft winning legal arguments, conducts algorithmic audits for fairness and bias concerns, analyzes training data for AI/ML models, trains and deploys large language models (LLMs) and more. “Our business has reached a significant milestone and exciting inflection point,” said Greg Richards, CEO and co-founder of Keystone. “This most recent evolution of our business solidifies our position at the forefront of tech-driven services firms, and enables us to continue offering cutting-edge solutions to help our clients compete in the age of AI.” To learn more about Keystone’s new brand and tech offerings across its CoreAI and its ETA divisions, visit www.keystone.ai. ‍###‍‍About KeystoneKeystone Strategy, LLC (“Keystone”) is the leading strategy, economics, and technology consultancy providing AI-driven services to large companies, government agencies, and law firms. Since 2003, it has helped organizations address complex, often unprecedented challenges presented by emerging technologies. The firm builds, operates, and transfers enterprise AI solutions that automate and optimize operational and commercial decision-making. Keystone also supports clients in high-stakes legal cases and regulatory matters by delivering economic analysis and expert witness testimony. Keystone boasts a roster of hundreds of top academic experts in applied economics, data science, AI and the digital and innovation economy, supported by more than 200 professionals. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and London. Learn more about Keystone at www.keystone.ai. ‍Media ContactRob ChedidHead of Marketing and CommunicationsMarketing@keystone.ai

New York, NY (October 15, 2024) – Keystone, the leading strategy, economics and technology consultancy providing AI-driven services to large companies, government agencies and law firms, today announced the appointment of Joshua Gans to its expert network and scientific advisory team. Gans will provide expert testimony and counsel clients on antitrust and competition, intellectual property, and other disputes and regulatory matters. He is the foremost testifying platform economist whose research on digital strategy, antitrust policy and regulatory economics is widely cited.Leveraging his expertise in artificial intelligence, Gans will also advise the firm’s CoreAI division in its development and implementation of operational AI. Gans is a prolific author on technical competition and innovation and has published 15 books, including the critically acclaimed Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence and Power & Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence.He joins Keystone at a pivotal time, following the appointment of Dr. Susan Athey, the distinguished economist and former Chief Economist for the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. “I’m delighted to have the opportunity to work with Joshua again,” said Athey. “I’ve known Joshua since our PhD program days at Stanford, and we have published research together a number of times over the years – he’s an exceptional talent.” Dr. Athey serves as Chief Scientific Advisor to Keystone across the CoreAI and Global Economic and Technology Advisory groups.“Artificial Intelligence and other technologies have completely altered global markets and competition. As the EU and U.S. continue to prioritize antitrust enforcement, business leaders are confronting new legal challenges in the digital economy," said Andrea Coscelli, head of Keystone Europe and co-head of the antitrust and competition practice. “The advisors who are successfully directing organizations through this transformative time are those who have the combined expertise in technology and economics, and Joshua is one of the preeminent leaders. We are delighted to have him join Keystone.”Dr. Gans specializes in competition policy and intellectual property protection. His research spans technical innovation, AI, publishing economics and policy across various industries including energy, telecommunications, financial services, pharmaceuticals and rail transportation. He has been retained by the U.S. Department of Justice, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, where he worked on expert testimony in several abuse of market power cases as well as on issues in telecoms network competition on behalf of enterprises including Xiaomi and AT&T. He holds the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is a professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management – with a cross-appointment in the Department of Economics – at the University of Toronto. He is also the Chief Economist of the University of Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab, a global startup program for seed-stage, science-based companies. In addition, Dr. Gans has been appointed as a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, and received the inaugural young economist award from the Economic Society of Australia.“Joshua’s knowledge and experience will contribute greatly to our collective expertise in digital transformation, platform economics and antitrust and competition litigation,” said Jeff Marowits, President of Client Services at Keystone. “Our firm has long served global clients, including the largest technology companies, helping them navigate complex legal and operational challenges presented by emerging technologies. We welcome Joshua to our growing team of multidisciplinary experts and look forward to working alongside him to advance CoreAI science and effectively guide clients forward.”‍###‍‍About Keystone‍Keystone Strategy, LLC (“Keystone”) is the leading strategy, economics and technology consultancy providing AI-driven services to large companies, government agencies and law firms. Since 2003, it has helped organizations address complex, often unprecedented challenges presented by emerging technologies. The firm builds, operates and transfers enterprise AI solutions that automate and optimize operational and commercial decision-making. Keystone also supports clients in high-stakes legal cases and regulatory matters by delivering economic analysis and expert witness testimony. Keystone boasts a roster of hundreds of top academic experts in applied economics, data science, AI and the digital and innovation economy, supported by more than 200 professionals. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and London. Learn more about Keystone at www.keystone.ai.‍Media Contact Rob Chedid Head of Marketing and Communications Marketing@keystone.ai ‍

Yesterday, a judge ruled that Google must allow competing app stores to be downloaded on Android devices following last year’s unanimous jury verdict in Epic Games’ suit against the platform behemoth. US District Judge James Donato issued an injunction, effective November 1st, barring Google from incentivizing app developers to exclusively use their app store for a period of three years. Google must also permit developers to use competing payment options. The ruling is a significant victory for Epic Games.In a post on X, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney celebrated the decision, saying: “Big news! The Epic Games Store and other app stores are coming to the Google Play Store in 2025 in the USA - without Google's scare screens and Google's 30% app tax - thanks to victory in Epic v Google.” Yesterday’s ruling applies only to the US market. In a follow up post, Sweeney added: “the legal and regulatory battle will continue around the world.”Keystone is proud to have supported Epic Games on the matter, which won “Litigation of the Year – Non-Cartel Prosecution” at the 2024 Global Competition Review (GCR) Awards earlier this year, in jurisdictions worldwide.Keystone’s Competition practice team partnered with law firms Cravath Swaine & Moore, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath, and Wiggin & Dana on the case, helping secure a unanimous jury victory finding Google liable for monopolizing two Android app markets. Professor James Mickens from Harvard University provided expert testimony on the security of the Android platform and proposed less restrictive alternative app review and distribution models alongside Keystone’s Advanced Technology Solutions (K.ATS) team. Keystone economists also consulted on the case alongside teams from Bates White and The Brattle Group in support of Professor B. Douglas Bernheim from Stanford University and Professor Steven Tadelis from UC Berkeley.To learn more about Keystone’s Economic and Technology Advisory services, contact info@keystone.ai.

On Tuesday, October 2nd, The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced the launch of IATA Connect, a collaboration platform that helps the airline industry share real-time data and insights to improve aviation safety and compliance. The platform allows its community members to share safety documentation including audit reports, standards, airline profiles, industry alerts, and more. Keystone is proud to have supported IATA’s digital transformation and the development of this important initiative.‍Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General, said “IATA Connect will provide aviation safety and compliance professionals in government and the industry with a means to make flying even safer by facilitating real time collaboration.” A multidisciplinary team of Keystone consultants, economists, and technologists helped define the platform’s business case, platform strategy, use cases, and implementation roadmap for rollout and longer-term growth.Keystone’s expertise in multi-sided platform-based business models was used to define the overall platform strategy and identify key factors for success. This included how to ensure the platform would achieve a critical mass of engaged users to unlock network effects to sustain the platform, by identifying relevant and high-value use cases for platform users, researching stakeholders’ pain points to be addressed, and determining features that foster and encourage use. The platform’s ability to bring together multiple entities and fragmented systems allows community members to both produce value for and derive value from IATA Connect. Stakeholders include airlines, auditors, regulators, ground service providers, and other industry-related personnel.The engagement was led by Keystone’s Ross Sullivan, Senior Partner, and Gautam Basak, Partner. Keystone affiliate expert Geoff Parker, professor of engineering at Dartmouth College, provided invaluable expertise in designing and scaling platforms.Learn more about the platform in IATA’s press release.To learn more about Keystone’s platform strategy and development services, contact info@keystone.ai.‍

‍New York, NY (September 18, 2024) – Keystone, the leading strategy, economics and technology consultancy providing AI-driven services to large companies, government agencies and law firms, today announced the appointment of Dr. Susan Athey as Chief Scientific Advisor. Drawing from an illustrious and ​​multidimensional career in academia, Big Tech and government, Athey will contribute economic and econometric counsel to the firm’s CoreAI division, which offers operational and commercial AI services, algorithms and systems to large enterprises, and advise its Global Economic and Technology Advisory (ETA) group, which provides economic analysis and expert testimony in legal disputes and regulatory matters. Her appointment marks the fourth senior executive hire to the CoreAI team in the past 12 months and underscores the firm’s continued expansion of its team of world-class data scientists, economists and engineers.“Dr. Athey is one of the most widely respected economists in the United States, and her skills and leadership are unique in that they have always been multidisciplinary. For over 20 years, she’s been the leading voice on the value of combining technical expertise with rigorous economic analysis and business insight – a philosophy we share, as our firm was designed around these practices from the start,” said Jeff Marowits, President of Client Services at Keystone. “We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Athey back to the firm in this new role and look forward to continuing our work together to solve the most complex operational and regulatory AI challenges facing organizations today.”As Chief Scientific Advisor, Dr. Athey will provide strategic guidance on CoreAI’s solutions. She joins a distinguished team that includes Patrick Bajari, CoreAI’s Chief Economist and former Chief Economist of Amazon, and Devesh Mishra, President of CoreAI and former Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Amazon. CoreAI offers a powerful combination of pre-trained foundation models, customized algorithms and personalized services.“CoreAI works with clients to build, operate and transfer customized AI/ML solutions solving specific operational challenges and automating deep decision-making for functions including supply chain optimization, forecasting, attribution and more,” said Mishra. “Susan’s expertise in AI/ML, economics and business will be invaluable in delivering transformative solutions to our clients.”Reflecting on her decision to rejoin the firm, Dr. Athey said, “Keystone is the only consultancy with the distinct combination of expertise in economics, technology and strategy that mirrors my own training and work. I’ve been a longtime admirer of the firm Marco Iansiti and Greg Richards founded and am pleased to return as an advisor to help companies navigate this next wave of machine learning and show academics that they can play an important role in solving these new causal problems we’re facing.”Dr. Athey has had a stellar academic career over the last three decades. She is currently the Economics of Technology Professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where she was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and currently serves as the founding faculty director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB. She previously served on the faculty of the economics departments at Harvard, MIT and Stanford. Dr. Athey is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and is the recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to the economist under 40 who has made the greatest contributions to economic thought and knowledge. She was also the 2023 President of the American Economic Association.Outside of her academic career, Dr. Athey is celebrated as one of the first “tech economists.” She served as the Chief Economist of Microsoft for six years, where she worked on operation and strategy for the Bing search engine as well as the strategy that took the company into cloud computing with the launch of its Azure platform. She also helped create and grow a team of researchers working at the intersection of social science and machine learning. Subsequently, she served on the boards of directors of multiple technology firms, including Expedia, Lending Club, Rover, Turo and Ripple.Most recently, she served as Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division at the Department of Justice, completing her two-year term as of June 30, 2024. Dr. Athey played a leading role in drafting the 2023 Merger Guidelines which addressed new topics such as platform competition, and led the DOJ to build a new internal team of data scientists and technologists.“Dr. Athey is the premier thought leader in AI- and ML-enabled econometric modeling, and few, if any, other experts have the unique combination of government and business experience she has,” said Jennifer Redmond, Keystone Partner and co-head of the firm’s Antitrust & Competition practice. “The emergence of ChatGPT has unleashed a series of regulatory questions and concerns from both regulators and business leaders amid increasing competition enforcement. Dr. Athey will be an important thought partner on critical regulatory and legal matters for our clients and will strengthen our capacity to deliver unrivaled econometric techniques to improve businesses’ operating models.”‍###‍About Keystone StrategyKeystone Strategy, LLC (“Keystone”) is a leading innovative strategy, economic, and technology consulting firm dedicated to delivering transformative ideas and cutting-edge solutions to Fortune Global 500 companies, top law firms, and government agencies. Keystone combines experience in digital transformation, data platform design, analytics, AI and information risk to deliver bold strategies with far-reaching implications for business, consumers, and public policy. It also possesses unique expertise in litigation, M&A, and regulatory policy in matters involving competition, consumer protection, IP, tax and transfer pricing, securities and finance, data privacy, and healthcare. Keystone boasts a roster of hundreds of top academic experts in the digital economy and innovation sectors, supported by more than 175 professionals. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and London. Learn more about Keystone at www.keystone.ai. Media ContactRob ChedidHead of Marketing and Communicationsrchedid@keystone.ai‍

LONDON – Keystone Strategy, a consultancy to top technology companies, government agencies and global law firms, today announced that in early September Gabriele Corbetta will join the firm's European operations in the London office, led by Andrea Coscelli. Corbetta joins more than 25 other client-facing professionals in Keystone's London office.Corbetta joins from Compass Lexecon where he rose through the ranks from Analyst in 2017 to Senior Economist in 2023. He will serve as an Engagement Manager at Keystone, bringing experience across mergers, litigation, abuse of dominance matters, market studies, and state aid policy work. His experience spans industries including financial markets, media, telecommunications, healthcare, and energy.Keystone's London practice was established in the summer of 2022 to create a new combined economic, technology, and strategy approach to antitrust matters in Europe, as competition agencies worldwide balance business assessments with more sophisticated tech-enabled approaches to quantitative analyses. The office is led by Dr. Andrea Coscelli, former CEO of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), and now includes more than 25 client-facing professionals including senior economists, consultants, data scientists, and software engineers.

Since 1995, the Center for Women & Enterprise (CWE) has helped women business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs launch and grow their businesses by providing education, training, technical assistance, and certification support. One of CWE's services is providing Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) certifications for women-owned businesses and entrepreneurs (WBEs), matching qualified WBEs with supplier opportunities, and partnering with corporations on their supplier diversity efforts. Leadership at CWE partnered with Keystone Strategy to understand how CWE could grow its WBENC offering, fueling CWE's mission by empowering women entrepreneurs while providing recurring income to CWE to support scalability. The project consisted of 3 phases: a current state analysis, an opportunity analysis, and an opportunity prioritization phase to examine CWE's WBENC program and identify opportunities to provide more value. 3-Phased Approach (1) In the current state analysis phase, Keystone developed an understanding of CWE's existing WBENC certification process and the value it provides to WBEs and corporate partners. Keystone interviewed teams across CWE's main functional areas to better understand the WBENC program, roles of distinct teams at CWE, and resource allocation to facilitate the certification process. Keystone also interviewed leaders at various Women Business Centers throughout New England, local partners to CWE that also provide support to women entrepreneurs, to understand opportunities for collaboration and integrated processes. (2) In the opportunity analysis phase, Keystone examined both WBE and corporate needs via interviews with CWE's key clients, as well as best practices from peer WBENC certifying organizations throughout the U.S. Following these interviews, Keystone synthesized client needs and categorized the key value drivers for CWE's clients into three categories: business opportunities, shared learnings, and training offerings. CWE's ability to facilitate network interactions between WBEs and corporate partners, for example, enhanced “shared learning opportunities” and thereby added value to clients. (3) In the final opportunity prioritization phase, Keystone examined CWE's capacity and prioritized high value-add opportunities accordingly. The team prioritized opportunities by evaluating them along four criteria: feasibility, value add for ecosystem participants, potential for revenue generation, and long-term strategic fit, developed through conversations with CWE and its key stakeholders. Final recommendations Through this engagement, Keystone identified and prioritized opportunities which would incentivize CWE's key clients to engage in the CWE ecosystem. Based on the three-phased process described above, one of Keystone's key recommendations for CWE was to own its role as a facilitator of network interactions between WBEs, corporate partners, and other ecosystem players. To implement this recommendation, CWE could leverage technology solutions to create a virtual messaging platform for its clients and serve as a matchmaking tool to facilitate contract fulfillment, relationship building, and other meaningful actions. By providing more high value opportunities to its clients without significant incremental costs, CWE will continue to uplift and serve communities in New England by supporting women owned businesses and entrepreneurs. Contributors from the Keystone consulting team include Isra Hussain, Nimo Suleyman, Grace Cho, Nethra Venkatesh, Alexandria Sheng, Amanda Pratt, Jeff Marowits, and KeystoneNext members Alex Rodosky, Megan Wilkins, and Jonah Epstein

Keystone Strategy, an innovative consulting firm known for advising corporations, governments, and global law firms on the most critical strategy, technology, platform competition, and economics issues, today announced it has joined forces with RLH Equity Partners.“We are extremely pleased to have the support of RLH Equity Partners as we continue our work in meeting the urgent demands from companies looking to transform traditional products and services into data-driven platforms,” noted Greg Richards, CEO of Keystone Strategy.Keystone Strategy utilizes an interdisciplinary approach by applying a triad of business strategy, economics, and technology skills to advise clients in their most critical strategic and regulatory challenges. The firm combines its capabilities with those of field experts, including industry executives and top university professors.“We have been incredibly impressed by the entire team at Keystone Strategy,” Chris Lewis, RLH Equity Partners Co-Founder and Managing Director, added. “Our orientation is to invest in the people of high-end, knowledge-driven companies, and Keystone represents an extraordinary opportunity to support a talent-driven organization that aligns with our core investment thesis and values. We are excited about the partnership and look forward to supporting Keystone as it continues to find solutions for companies' most challenging business problems.”About Keystone Strategy Keystone Strategy is a leading innovative strategy and economics consulting firm dedicated to delivering transformative ideas and cutting-edge solutions to Fortune Global 500 companies, top law firms, and government agencies. Our unique expertise in technology-led strategy, AI-driven digital transformation, product development, healthcare, finance, antitrust, and litigation enables us to create bold strategies that have far-reaching implications on business, consumers, and public policy. We leverage a unique combination of strategic insights from the world's leading industry and academic experts with the practical expertise of our accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact for our clients. Learn more about Keystone Strategy at: http://www.keystonestrategy.com.About RLH Equity Partners RLH Equity Partners invests behind driven entrepreneurs and leadership teams of uniquely positioned high growth knowledge-based enterprises with up to $200 million of annual revenue. Focused on companies in the business services, healthcare, and government services sectors, RLH carries a 39-year track record of success in partnering with passionate entrepreneurs to build companies of significance. RLH typically invests via a recapitalization transaction that provides partial liquidity for the entrepreneur, and then supports the leadership team in navigating the opportunities and challenges of scale and rapid growth. Learn more about RLH Equity Partners at: https://www.rlhequity.com/.Media Contact Emily Leinbach Director of Marketing marketing@keystonestrategy.com ‪(857) 293-0670

Originally published on July 23, 2021 in Thematiks by Carlos Alvarenga, an author, researcher, and founder of Thematiks, which showcases important academic research to global business leaders. Below is an excerpt from the article: A mantra of management over the past few years has been that companies need to gather and profit from the data they collect about their customers and products. An endless stream of articles and “white papers” from consultants and tech companies present the benefits of data and analytics investments. Two common threads to many of these works are (a) the sense that one should gather as much data as possible and (b) that having the most information about customers and markets creates a competitive advantage. These beliefs have resonated so strongly that regulators (and some scholars) in the U.S. and Europe have begun to worry that excessive concentrations of information in specific markets are hindering competition and should be addressed through regulatory action. While the idea of collecting as much data as possible sounds appealing, recent research suggests that many factors affect the value of data collected by companies. A recent working paper by Marco Iansiti (Harvard) summarizes those trends and—more importantly— presents a new framework for understanding the sources and dynamics of value creation through information. Supported by several case studies, his model is a welcome and nuanced perspective on how data do, and do not, create value for organizations. Read the entire article here.

Q: Tell us about your new role at the NPS—what are your overarching responsibilities and objectives and what are you currently working on? I am a management analyst with the Business Management Group. We report to the deputy director of management and administration and are essentially internal consultants for the National Park Service, working on projects that affect the strategic direction of the overall NPS. As a management analyst, I have a few overarching responsibilities. These include: providing management consulting services to parks, regions and headquarters; improving the availability and practical application of data; building capacity and training across the organization; recruiting and placing highly skilled individuals at all levels of the NPS; and serving as trusted partners for leaders at all levels of the organization. I'm currently working on several different projects. I am working to revamp the NPS scorecard, which provides consolidated data about park operations to help decision-makers see potential strengths and weaknesses and make management decisions. I am also working on a project to re-think marina operations at Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which is facing rapidly declining water levels due to the drought in the West. And I am also managing two projects through our Business Plan Internship, a summer program in which we place graduate students at parks across the country for 11 weeks to work on strategic projects. The summer consultants for those projects are creating a commercial services strategy for Indiana Dunes National Park and a wilderness camping permitting plan for Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Q: To what extent does your new role focus on sustainability and environmentalism? When did you become interested in sustainability and environmentalism? The mission of the National Park Service is to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. We are in the forever business - our mandate is to preserve and protect natural and cultural resources for all time. To that end, a key part of any decision making process is to make sure that we have fully considered the environmental impact of any alternatives we choose to pursue. I became seriously interested in sustainability just before applying to business school. I had been working on a project at my old firm to calculate the economic impacts of illegal logging, and took at trip to Shenandoah National Park to clear my mind. I was inspired by the conversations I had with park staff and with the beauty of the natural scenery in the park. It was then that I applied to business school and decided that I wanted my career to have more of a focus on sustainability. Q: What do you see as NPS's biggest objectives and opportunities in the next few years? The NPS has always struggled from a lack of funding, which has led to billions of dollars of deferred maintenance and deteriorating infrastructure across parks. One huge opportunity is the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), which was signed into law last year. GAOA will provide up to $9.5 billion over the next five years to improve some of that infrastructure. A big question for the NPS is how that money will be allocated and how it will think about project creation and prioritization. Another big objective is how we think about managing visitor use at our national parks. Many parks have seen dramatic increases in visitation, but without corresponding increases in budget, personnel or facilities spending. Plans need to be put into place so that we can continue to offer unparalleled visitor experiences while ensuring that our parks are not overwhelmed. Another big objective is streamlining some of our systems to enable more data-driven decision making. In the past, different regions would have latitude to acquire and work with different IT, or HR, or financial systems. There is an opportunity now to centralize some of that decision making, so that data can flow more freely and we can get a fuller picture of what is happening across the entire service. Q: How did your time and experience at Keystone help prepare you for your new role? My experience at Keystone has prepared me well for my role with the NPS. I took away transferrable skills in presentation and communication. There is such a wide variety of stakeholders who are interested in the work that we do as the National Park Service, and presenting to lawyers, experts, corporate strategy offices, marketing offices, etc. at Keystone was great practice in being able to communicate complex topics to a wide variety of audiences at the NPS. My time at Keystone also helped me develop problem framing skills. Creating ghost decks, laying out structures for analyses, brainstorming ideas - all these skills are directly applicable to the management consulting work I do now at the NPS. Q: What is your favorite memory from working at Keystone? I don't have one single favorite memory, but I do have a theme - I really appreciated that Keystone encouraged folks to have 1:1s, and to do so fairly consistently. I got to know some of my co-workers pretty well during our 1:1 discussions, and they were always something that I looked forward to, especially in the middle of the pandemic. Q: How many national parks have you been to and which is your favorite and why? Which one that you haven't visited is at the top of your bucket list? Little known fact: there are actually 423 national parks managed by the National Park Service. Most people focus on the big national parks, but the NPS also manages historical sites, seashores, lakeshores, battlefields and recreation areas, just to name a few of the different designations that these parks have. All of them are important to the history of this country and all of them have their own stories, so I would recommend not just focusing on the traditional national parks, but exploring all the different national park sites that the NPS is responsible for managing. I've been to too many national park sites to count, but that said, my favorite national park at the moment is probably Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore, in Michigan. It's a little bit off the beaten path, but it offers sweeping views of Lake Michigan and many giant dunes to hike and explore. The park I want to visit most right now is Lake Mead National Recreation Area - Lake Mead was formed when the Hoover Dam was completed, and it is the first national recreation area in the United States. I've been working closely with park staff there and have gotten descriptions, looked at maps and seen plenty of photos of the lake, but there's nothing quite like getting your feet on the ground to really understand how a park works. For more information about our KeystoneNext programming, contact us: KeystoneNext@keystonestrategy.com.

July 2021 — Keystone Strategy welcomes Jill Furzer as one of our newest team members. Furzer joins us as an Economist from the University of Toronto's Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health where she earned her Ph.D. On July 12th, 2021, Furzer accepted the 2020 award for best student paper in health economics entitled "ADHD Misidentification in school: Causes and mitigators." The iHEA Student Prize recognizes excellence by students in the field of health economics. It was first awarded in 1999 and biennially thereafter to coincide with the iHEA congress. As from 2017, there will be a standing Student Paper Prize committee to award this prize annually to the Masters or Doctoral student paper judged as best in the award year. Each year the Committee will consider a short list of submitted papers evaluated by all of the committee members using similar criteria to that of the long established Arrow Award. Download your copy of "ADHD Misidentification in school: Causes and mitigators," co-authored by Jill Furzer, Ph.D., at your convenience: About KeystoneKeystone Strategy is an innovative strategy, technology, and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas and novel solutions to global brands and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, consumer goods, and science. The firm's expertise in strategy, economics, data analysis, product development, intellectual property, and antitrust is ideally suited to develop bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading academic experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton, and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished network of professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. We work with an array of Fortune 50 technology companies as well as global consumer brands, including Amazon, Facebook, GE, Intel, Roche, Microsoft, Oracle, Yeti, and others. Keystone applies the most advanced strategy, analytical and business management services while also using our entrepreneurial skills to drive innovation, business growth, and digital transformation. Please reach out to us if you have any questions: marketing@keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published in July 2021 as part of Harvard Business School's Working Paper Series. Below is the abstract of the paper: Common regulatory perspective on the relationship between data, value, and competition in online platforms has increasingly centered on the volume of data accumulated by incumbent firms. This view posits the existence of “data network effects”, where more data leads to product improvements, which in turn leads to additional users and more data. In particular, this has raised concerns around incumbent data advantage creating an insurmountable barrier to entry and leading to winner-take-all outcomes in online platforms. However, this perspective generally does not reflect the value of data in practical settings. More recent work across economics, management science, and engineering shows that there are a variety of factors that impact the value of data and that implications for competition are much more complex and subtle. The framework in this paper presents four key factors – data quality, scale and scope of data, and data uniqueness – that can influence the value that firms can derive from data. Applying the framework to Netflix, Waymo, and the online advertising industry provides compelling evidence that incumbent data advantage, while generating value for innovation and for the consumer experience, does not necessarily lock out competitors and is not determinative of success. These examples illustrate that data can often serve as a catalyst for innovation that benefits both consumers and the broader ecosystem. The extent to which data accumulation can provide actual incremental value, and whether this is a cause for concern in enabling healthy competition, requires a case-by-case evaluation using the framework, as these factors depend significantly on the domain and context.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2021. Below is an excerpt from the article: Keystone, an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm, is revolutionizing the standard fare firm alumni program, imbuing it with the transformative ideas and uncommon service approach it implements in its consulting work for the world's leading technology firms. Keystone Next utilizes the best practices of successful technology platforms and ecosystems to nurture Keystone's community of current and former team members and foster the firm's culture of learning and transformative ideas. “Even when my colleagues move on from the firm, they remain an active part of the Keystone community,” says Senior Associate Sydney House, who runs the firm's alumni initiative, Keystone Next, with Keystone's President Jeff Marowits. The mission of Keystone Next is to foster an array of compelling and mutually beneficial conversations and build knowledge and insights from exceptional peers. “Keystone Next members are eager to share and our current team members are eager to learn insights and perspectives that alums continue to develop post-Keystone,” explains Marowits. “At the same time, alumni continue to value the special learning that Keystone's innovative work and its network of experts continuously develop.” Keystone Next was started in Spring 2019 by then Keystone Associate Yiwei Zhao (now a Keystone Next member and Senior Product Operations Manager at Cruise) and Marowits. “After I joined Keystone, I quickly observed that Keystone has an amazing network. I was inspired by their journeys and the experiences they shared, which sparked the idea for Keystone Next — a Keystone alumni network that helps us stay connected with one another in various ways for life.” Read the entire article here.

We are living in extraordinary times. Even before the pandemic, the global economy was undergoing dramatic change. The deployment of digital networks, data platforms, and artificial intelligence has caused significant disruption and a growing divide between companies that have embraced digital transformation and those that have not. To understand how to enable technology to drive maximum business impact, we need to think about the firm in a new way. Our research shows that the core of the new, “AI-First” enterprise is a different operating architecture – one centered on integrated data assets and designed to easily deploy AI and Data Analytics at scale, across any function or department, rapidly and efficiently. This new architecture enables organizations to address a vast set of quickly changing business needs, spurring innovation well beyond IT and R&D and driving the agility necessary to not only survive but prosper in these challenging times. The AI-First organization is purpose-built to maximize the impact of technology, data, and artificial intelligence, and it is prepared to manage not only its opportunities, but also its challenges and risks. Our research shows that being AI-First is not the prerogative of “digital native” companies. Even among traditional enterprises, many companies have invested in the kinds of organizational, architectural, and procedural transformation necessary for digital technology to flourish. At the same time, digital native companies have much to learn, change, and improve. Becoming an “AI-First” organization is an ongoing journey. This paper introduces the vision, trajectory, and assessment tools to guide organizations as they seek to make progress on this path. Read the full paper here.

NEW YORK, March 16, 2021 – Keystone Strategy proudly announces the firm has been named to Forbes magazine's list of America's Best Management Consulting Firms and recognized in nine sectors. “We are very excited to be recognized by Forbes on their list of America's Best Management Consulting Firms,” comments Jeff Marowits, President, Client Services at Keystone. “We take pride in delivering transformative ideas to our clients and it is very rewarding to be acknowledged for our exceptional work.” Keystone Strategy was recognized by Forbes in the following nine sectors: Chemicals Innovation, Growth Internet, Media & Entertainment IT, Technology Marketing, Brand & Pricing Operations Organization Other Industrial Goods Strategy In order to establish this year's list, Forbes worked with an analytics company, Statista, to survey more than 7,500 partners and executives of management consultancies and over 1,000 senior executives who had worked with the consultancies over the last four years. Respondents were asked to recommend firms based on performance across predetermined sectors and functional areas. About Keystone Strategy Keystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology, and business. Keystone regularly combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Learn more about Keystone Strategy at: http://www.keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published on March 21, 2021 in Harvard Business School's "Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders." Below is the overview from this paper: Network effects have risen to the forefront of platform competition discussions (e.g. the House Judiciary investigation of competition in digital markets, claiming that Facebook, for example, is entrenched due to strong network effects and high switching costs). While newer literature has developed much more sophistication in characterizing network effects, common regulatory perspective often assumes more simplistic views. Older literature tend to simplify the issue of network effects and focus on size as a primary determinant of their strength and impact on competition. The historical characterization of network effects as constituting “winner-take-all” systems is inaccurate. More recent work shows more nuance and considers factors such as network structure and ease of multi-homing which may significantly reduce the strength of network effects. Ultimately, network effects do not necessarily increase in line with network size. For example, network structural traits may weaken overall network effects depending on the degree of clustering on the network. This leaves highly clustered platforms particularly susceptible to competition. Such traits may be specific to a given industry, platform, or even platform feature. The Facebook network, for example, like many other social networks is characterized by a large number of relatively small and largely separate local clusters. This indicates that network effects may be weaker for Facebook than the sheer size of their user-base may imply. The more tightly clustered a network is, and the more segregated these clusters are, the easier it is for competitors to enter the market with focused solutions. This significantly reduces the likelihood of an individual social network gaining dominant share and adds pressure on incumbents to innovate and compete to retain users. Moreover, competition in social media is evidenced by the prevalence of multi-homing amongst social network users, the frequency of entry and success of competitors, and the necessity for innovation by incumbents. Multi-homing reduces user reliance on any platform, exposes users to competitors, and suggests broadly that other competitive options exist. Such multi-homing forces constant innovation by incumbents, despite the inevitable costs of such innovation. Ultimately, the entry and success of new competitors such as TikTok and Snapchat serves as compelling evidence of significant competition. Access the working paper here.

Digital transformation has taken the spotlight in recent years, and this focus has come into sharper relief as organizations transition to virtual models. Companies are eager to adopt the latest technologies, apply advanced analytics, and leverage data to enhance performance and drive business success. While the technological elements necessary for successful digital transformation have been explored deeply, less attention has been paid to the cultural changes required to drive this evolution. In practice, many organizations find that the cultural elements of digital transformation are the most difficult to introduce and enforce.Our research has shown a powerful correlation between a company's technological maturity or tech intensity and its business performance. Our work surveyed over ~130 firms across major verticals, including manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, retail, and software. We categorized these firms on a spectrum ranging from digital “leaders” to “laggards” by evaluating them on 100+ characteristics characterizing their technology adoption (e.g., data platform architecture) and capabilities (e.g., support of citizen developers). We found that tech intensity impacts both 3-year revenue CAGR and 3-year total enterprise value CAGR, with digital leaders outperforming digital laggards on these measures and others.As might be expected, many leading firms are digital natives who started from a clean technology slate. We found, however, that leaders were also often large traditional enterprises who had successfully digitally transformed. Laggard firms, in contrast, are characterized by legacy infrastructure and practices and face a variety of challenges as they adapt to compete.This paper aims to understand the cultural elements of these organizations. We present insights based on conversations with a subset of digital leaders and laggards, exploring the relationship between these firms' data cultures and their technological maturity. Our research finds that certain behaviors, values, and beliefs play a significant role in determining where a business is today on the digital transformation spectrum.Download the full paper here.

December 2020 -- Keystone Strategy made its debut in the last edition of GCR100's Economics 21. The practice specialises in antitrust matters in technology markets, taking on a large caseload as competition enforcers around the world home in on the conduct of digital platforms. Keystone consults on more than just economics, offering a broad array of advisory work to high-tech firms and their critics. In the past year, the team has added former Google employee Ryan Drake-Lee and Jennifer Graves, who previously worked at Starbucks and Bain & Company. Keystone counts major digital platforms such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft as clients, but it has also advised Oracle, News Corp, AT&T, Expedia and Turo. In recent years, the consultancy has done work evaluating antitrust theories of harm related to privacy, algorithmic markets and whether enforcers should use metrics that extend beyond that of consumer welfare. Most of the team's merger work remains confidential, although principal Jennifer Redmond prepared materials for the US Department of Justice's antitrust division for its February 2020 public workshop on venture capital and antitrust. Previously disclosable U.S. work includes Susan Athey testifying about potential merger efficiencies in the AT&T/Time Warner deal on behalf of the DOJ. Athey also worked on the team that advised the Federal Trade Commission in its successful administrative proceedings against 1-800 Contacts, alleging that the retailer illegally siphoned off competition for search advertisements by claiming trademark violations. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard oral arguments in that appeal in March 2020. View the full ranking here.

Originally published in Wired.com on December 9, 2020. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Marco Iansiti, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, collaborate in this article featured in Wired. Below is an excerpt from the article: As the world anticipates a new US Congress and a new administration, we need a strategy to reimagine and rebuild communities, industries, companies, and nations. As we battle cascading disruptions from a global pandemic, economic strain, climate-related crises, and unrest over racial injustice, technology should be part of a solution—but technology alone is not enough. To more evenly spread economic opportunity and resilience, we must democratize “tech intensity,” a combination of tech and people skills—including among citizen developers. This so-called intensity is made up of three dimensions: the adoption of technology, the capability of individuals to use it, and their trust in the organizations deploying it. Tools from cloud computing to AI should be in the hands of every knowledge worker, first-line worker, organization, and public-sector agency around the world. Read the entire article on Wired.com here.

As part of KeystoneNext Speaker Series, Kelley A. Wittbold, MD joined us in May 2020 to share her experience working in Digital Health and Care Delivery Innovation Platforms at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham & Women's Hospital and her time at Keystone.Dr. Wittbold is an attending physician in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and is a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School where she has developed a niche in digital health and operations management. She bridges her academic endeavors in Digital Health and the development novel care delivery platforms across both major Partners' Healthcare (now Mass General Brigham (MGB)) institutions, using data to drive value-based healthcare initiatives at MGH & BWH in an increasingly complex and costly healthcare environment. She intermittently serves as a network consultant for certain healthcare-related cases at Keystone.During her discussion, Dr. Wittbold described the complex challenges in patient flow in the Emergency Department as it relates to limited hospital capacity, even in one of Boston's largest hospitals with 1000 beds—and how this impacts the ability to provide safe, high quality care. She illustrated how the capacity and operations challenges across the MGB enterprise became even more pressing during the pandemic surge in Boston in April, a time during which MGH transformed nearly half of its in-patient bed capacity to ICU-level of care to accommodate critically ill patients suffering from COVID-19.Dr. Wittbold has worked closely with the MGH Medical Analytics team to analyze the flow of patient arrival, departure, and bed request times, and how using virtual care delivery platforms such as telemedicine can improve this supply and demand mismatch. She explained how digital health and telemedicine has improved pre-hospital triage capabilities during throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurse-staffed phone hotlines were augmented by automated branching logic algorithms using an interactive robotic process automation (RPA) chat-bot to facilitate population-level triage based on patients' risk factors for severe disease, symptoms, exposure, and testing availability.Dr. Wittbold also discussed other recent digital health initiatives she has engaged in, including the deployment of iPads for virtual examinations in the Emergency Department to reduce PPE usage and exposure risk for both patients and providers, the CovidPass app to screen hospital workers for COVID-19 symptoms, and telemedicine consults between patient-and-provider as well as provider-to-provider, enabling greater access, quality, and convenience of care. Dr. Wittbold has written about AI usage in hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic along with fellow Brigham doctors and Keystone in a recent Harvard Business Review article. Dr. Wittbold also recently served as a panelist for the National Symposium on Virtual Care education and competency focusing on the education and training of the next generation of physicians to ensure high quality and safe care using novel care delivery tools and models as we embrace a new era of digital care delivery.

Our academic experts continue to be at the forefront of contributors shaping some of the country's most important public policy discussions. Recently, Rena Conti, associate research director of the Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy at Boston University, and Luba Greenwood, lecturer in Engineering Sciences at Harvard University, spoke on a webinar co-hosted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) on the role of intellectual property (IP) in promoting innovation and pro-competitive collaboration in the life sciences sector. Featuring over 40 experts from both industry and academia across the healthcare, regulatory and pricing spaces, the webinar, Promoting Innovation in the Life Sciences Sector and Supporting Pro-Competitive Collaborations: The Role of Intellectual Property, covered the rapidly evolving collaborations between biotech and pharmaceutical companies, and how they may be vulnerable to anti-competitive effects and antitrust risks in the U.S. Speaking on two separate panels, both Keystone experts highlighted the rapid changes within the life sciences sector in the U.S. Both also offered prompt and necessary suggestions for changes in governance to advance competition and promote innovation across the healthcare industry. You can download the full article here.

Rena Conti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Markets, Public Policy and Law at Boston University Questrom School of Business and associate research director of biopharma and public policy for the Boston University Institute for Health System Innovation and Policy, in Massachusetts. She also partners with Keystone as one of our Experts. Below is an excerpt from her latest opinion piece for Bloomberg Opinion, titled "Putting Together a Search Party for Better Covid-19 Treatments": Most of the public discussion about regaining our health and our wealth in the Covid-19 era is centered on the need for a vaccine. But vaccine development is expensive and highly uncertain. While we wait, people are dying and costs are piling up. More attention must be given to developing drugs to treat those who become ill.Analysis I have done with colleagues Susan Athey (economics of technology professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business), Richard Frank (professor of health economics, Harvard Medical School) and Jonathan Gruber (Ford professor of economics, MIT) suggests the repurposing of generic drugs that have already been proved safe and effective in treating other diseases is an important part of the solution, and there is an urgent need for government support. More than 100 generic drug candidates have been identified as having promise to treat the symptoms of Covid-19. Some are already being tested for their effectiveness. A focus on repurposing generic drugs would give researchers more shots on goal in the game of drug discovery, improving the odds that a winning treatment will emerge.You can find the entire article in Bloomberg Opinion here.

In this HBR Technology webinar, Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani, Professors at Harvard Business School, discuss why and how to reinvent the firm in the age of AI, and how the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically accelerated this digital transformation. These co-authors present a framework for rethinking business operating models, cover a new type of operating architecture for AI-centric firms, and share research and real-world case studies from such companies as Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb. In this webinar, Iansiti and Lakhani: Describe what it means to compete in the age of AI Examine the role of AI-centric organizations in responding to COVID-19, transforming health care, and working to develop a vaccine Present a framework for rethinking business and operating models Suggest a new type of operating architecture for AI-centric firms Share research and real-world case studies from companies such as Amazon, Netflix, and Airbnb To watch the webinar in its entirety, click here. To learn more about their #1 Management Science book, "Competing in the Age of AI," click here.

Keystone's COVID-19 NPI dataset, launched in April 2020, continues to be leveraged across a spectrum of scientists, public policy experts, data scientists, and researchers world-wide. In this recent Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Research paper (No. 20-06), learn how the authors' work estimates direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. Abstract. We estimate direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the U.S. county level using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. We find that spillover effects range between a third and a half of the direct effect depending on the particular outcome or policy considered. Our results suggest that decentralized NPI decisions, which does not internalize externalities generated on surrounding locations, could result in lower NPI implementation and weaker reduction in mobility, and hence more personal contacts and interactions in leisure and work activities, which are the main driver of the COVID-19 transmission. Authors include: Vadim Elenev (Johns Hopkins Carey Business School), Luis Quintero (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School), Alessandro Rebucci (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)), and Emilia Simeonova (Johns Hopkins University - Carey Business School).Read the entire research paper here.

Originally published in the MIT Sloan Management Review in July 2020. Below is an excerpt from the article: Airbnb is colliding with traditional hotel companies like Marriott International and Hilton. In just over a decade, the online lodging marketplace has assembled an inventory of more than 7 million rooms — six times as much lodging capacity as Marriott managed to accumulate over 60-plus years. In terms of U.S. consumer spending, Airbnb overtook Hilton in 2018 and is on track to move ahead of Marriott. Although Airbnb serves similar consumer needs, it is a completely different kind of company. Marriott and Hilton own and manage properties, with tens of thousands of employees in separate organizations devoted to enabling and delivering customer experiences. And whereas the two traditional lodging companies are made up of clusters of different groups and brands, with siloed business units and functions equipped with their own information technology, data, and organizational structures, Airbnb takes a radically different approach: Its core function is to match users to hosts who have unique homes or rooms to rent on a daily basis, via its platform. In the process, Airbnb accumulates customer data, mining it for insights and to produce predictive models to inform key decisions. It is often able to give its customers a superior experience, with far fewer employees, than its hotel-industry competitors. Read the entire article here.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2020. Below is an excerpt from the article: There is an increasing awareness in business culture that diversity & inclusion should never simply be a tagline or set of checkboxes, they need to be integral parts of the very fiber of a company's existence. When diverse individuals, perspectives, and experiences are represented and nurtured in a company, teams and employees are more empowered for success and a company is more likely to thrive. To go beyond the slogans, we spoke to 4 companies who have a demonstrated commitment to diversity & inclusion as a matter of strategy but also as a core component of the firm's identity. These firms have shared their approaches with us and will offer valuable insights to consultants seeking a supportive and dynamic workplace for their next challenge. At Keystone Strategy, the mission is Transformative Ideas but the core of culture is the recognition that these ideas are more prevalent and possible when leveraging diverse teams. Over the last five years, Keystone has set out to build diverse teams at every level of the firm through recruiting, internal mentorship programs, and development plans. The impact on the business has been outsized and today Keystone stands ahead of its competitors in terms of innovation and creativity. As a result, they have grown at a rapid pace and are currently recruiting for Associates, Technology Associates, Consultants and Economists. Read the entire article here.

Our own Gautam Basak and Sean Durkin penned an op-ed on why now is the time to focus on cybersecurity: You're working from home. So are they. Cybercriminals, state actors, and others have already begun capitalizing on COVID-19. As other sources of revenue are reduced due to social distancing, criminal organizations are US-CERT reports a large spike in attacks against “newly—and often rapidly—deployed remote access and teleworking infrastructure.” As short term shelter-in-place gradually shifts to longer-term social distancing, more employees will remain working from home. A larger number of remote workers means greater exposure of information and a higher impact of breaches. Assets on a home network are fundamentally less secure and require more proactive services to prevent cybersecurity risk. Many cybersecurity systems and procedures assume a firmly-controlled network boundary that will encompass most users, which is no longer an assumption that holds true. Systems once considered optional are now business-critical: video conferencing, endpoint security, VPNs are now systems that must remain operational to avoid halting firm productivity. Vulnerabilities in critical communication and collaboration tools can be exploited by bad actors. Pandemic preparations often did not include cybersecurity. Many firms quickly added hardware to their network, rushing to fill IT asset gaps through rapid procurement. Assets were signed out without proper documentation. Non-traditional configurations were used to enable work from home. Unpatched unmanaged personal devices are being widely utilized. Many companies are accelerating digital transformation initiatives to turn COVID-19 into a strategic opportunity and are implementing new business and data driven operating models. While these drive rapid value creation and impact, they also introduce newer threats as cyber criminals and bad actors look to exploit vulnerabilities introduced by digital operating models. In the new normal, cybersecurity cannot be taken lightly and should be a key element of your strategic response. Reach out to Gautam Basak and Sean Durkin to learn how Keystone is helping companies increase technology and cybersecurity resilience.

Originally published on May 4, 2020 in the New York Times here. Below is an excerpt from the article: The Covid-19 virus has killed over 200,000 people, overwhelmed health systems and confined billions of people in their homes. Large sections of the world economy have been locked down.We are desperate for a vaccine, and research is underway around the world toward that goal. However, the challenge facing us has been underestimated. Vaccines often take 10 years to bring to market. We want a new vaccine as fast as possible, where each month matters.The fact is that starting from the early stages of development, most vaccines fail. We cannot afford to fail, so we need to plan for success. To do that, we must think and invest as ambitiously as we can — and that means in a Covid vaccine advance market commitment.The A.M.C. model was proposed in the early 2000s. And in 2007, the pneumococcus advance market commitment guaranteed vaccine manufacturers sales at a fixed price in return for an effective vaccine. It led to the successful development and distribution of hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine and saved an estimated 700,000 lives. Today, the U.S. government could go big and create a Covid-19 vaccine A.M.C., guaranteeing to spend about $70 billion on new vaccines — enough to make direct investments to support capacity installation or to repurpose capacity and to pay, say, $100 per person for the first 300 million people vaccinated. You can find the entire article here.

A note from Marco Iansiti, co-founder and chairman at Keystone Strategy: This February, Karim Lakhani and I traveled all over Europe to talk about our latest book. It was an amazing trip, as we engaged in great discussions and made all kinds of new connections. Now, looking back on the book launch, it seems like it took place many years ago.Back in the “old” days, AI was a cool topic, a way to drive business innovation and operational transformation. In just a few weeks, digital transformation has become existential to firms and to workers, the difference between staying open or not, between staying at home safe or not. This new digital divide is creating new pressures and strains on our economy and society, putting the subject at the top of leadership agendas around the world. At the start of 2020, Keystone Strategy kicked off an exciting new year with the launch of ‘Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World.' The latest book from Keystone chairman Marco Iansiti and his Harvard Business School colleague Karim R. Lakhani debuted on January 7, 2020, with critical praise from publications like Forbes, The New York Times, and Inc. Competing in the Age of AI was listed as the #1 New Book Release in Strategy & Competition on Amazon. If you are not yet familiar, Competing in the Age of AI provides a clear framework for businesses in transforming their operating model and business strategy. Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show how reinventing the firm around data, analytics, and AI removes traditional constraints on scale, scope, and learning that have restricted business growth for hundreds of years. From Airbnb to Ant Financial, Microsoft to Amazon, research shows how AI-driven processes are vastly more scalable than traditional processes, allow massive scope increase, enabling companies to straddle industry boundaries, and create powerful opportunities for learning–to drive ever more accurate, complex, and sophisticated predictions. At the same time, AI-driven companies also define a new range of challenges, from privacy to cybersecurity, and from algorithmic transparency to bias. “Iansiti and Lakhani have written an important book that explains what's required to rethink the firm and become an AI-first company,” said Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella. “Anyone interested in the impact of AI should read this book.” On March 11, Marco Iansiti hosted an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, where he answered the community's #AgeofAI questions. Read the whole thread here. Marco and Karim have since taken their online hit around the world, with book tour stops across North America and Europe pre-coronavirus quarantine but also now virtual. Our in-person highlights include Marco's talk with Pinterest COO Francoise Brougher at the social media platform's San Francisco headquarters, a presentation at the Adidas Station F accelerator in Paris, and a warm welcome from Harvard Business Review UK at the book's European launch in London. Today, the authors have taken their Age of AI talk virtual. You can preview the book with Marco and Karim's takes on the following topics: Building the “AI Factory” and scaling at any size (Harvard Business Review) AI ethics and the new face of corporate social responsibility (LinkedIn Weekend Essay Series) Opportunities for entrepreneurs in leadership (Enterprisers Project) Keystone's experts continue to lead global discussions on the future state of business, healthcare and public policy and the implications of AI implementation, a conversation that continues to grow more complicated and important as more companies adopt emerging technologies.

Originally published on April 5, 2020 on Medium.com. by Henrike Steimer, a PhD Economist and former Postdoc at Stanford GSB, LMU Munich. Below is an excerpt from the paper: With more detailed data on the varying introduction of policies across US counties and over time as well as the resulting spread of the disease we could provide evidence on which measures we should keep and which measures we should lift in order to reactivate the economy (see e.g. this post by Tomas Pueyo on “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance” and the need to quantify the contributions of different measures to this trade-off). There are great projects gathering necessary data and contributions are very welcome: collaborative collection of data on the interventions by Keystone Strategy partnered with Susan Athey, Stanford Professor of Economics, and Marco Iansiti, Director of Harvard Business School's Digital Initiative; follow this link to contribute data on cases and deaths by The New York Times based on reports from state and local health agencies that the NYTimes use for their U.S. tracking pag Which NPIs did US counties implement and when? As shown in the figure above, there has been a major wave of implementation of NPIs between March 9 and March 21 in many US counties. One of the “early” NPIs was social distancing for vulnerable groups from early March on. Most counties adopted more restrictive NPIs like gathering size limitations and the closure of public venues, schools and universities as well as non-essential services within a very short time period of just a few days mid-March. By late March, social distancing for all has become common in most counties. Read the entire article here.

On Monday March 9, in an effort to address soaring patient demand in Boston, Partners HealthCare went live with a hotline for patients, clinicians, and anyone else with questions and concerns about Covid-19. The goals are to identify and reassure the people who do not need additional care (the vast majority of callers), to direct people with less serious symptoms to relevant information and virtual care options, and to direct the smaller number of high-risk and higher-acuity patients to the most appropriate resources, including testing sites, newly created respiratory illness clinics, or in certain cases, emergency departments. As the hotline became overwhelmed, the average wait time peaked at 30 minutes. Many callers gave up before they could speak with the expert team of nurses staffing the hotline. We were missing opportunities to facilitate pre-hospital triage to get the patient to the right care setting at the right time. The Partners team, led by Lee Schwamm, Haipeng (Mark) Zhang, and Adam Landman, began considering technology options to address the growing need for patient self-triage, including interactive voice response systems and chatbots. We connected with Providence St. Joseph Health system in Seattle, which served some of the country's first Covid-19 patients in early March. In collaboration with Microsoft, Providence built an online screening and triage tool that could rapidly differentiate between those who might really be sick with Covid-19 and those who appear to be suffering from less threatening ailments. In its first week, Providence's tool served more than 40,000 patients, delivering care at an unprecedented scale. Keystone Strategy's Colleen Carroll and Marco Iansiti outline why our national health system cannot keep up with this kind of explosive demand of the coronavirus without the rapid and large-scale adoption of digital operating models. Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review on April 3, 2020.Summary. The spread of Covid-19 is stretching operational systems in health care and beyond. The reason is both simple: Our economy and health care systems are geared to handle linear, incremental demand, while the virus grows at an exponential rate. Our national health system cannot keep up with this kind of explosive demand without the rapid and large-scale adoption of digital operating models.While we race to dampen the virus's spread, we can optimize our response mechanisms, digitizing as many steps as possible. Here's how some hospitals are employing artificial intelligence to handle the surge of patients.Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Now more than ever, stakeholders across our global ecosystem understand the significant value of prediction and scalability that digital platforms and AI/ML bring. The first in a two-part series on digital health, read insights from Keystone's digital healthcare practice and one of our experts Luba Greenwood. At this time in our history, understanding and leveraging digital health tools is imperative. Be it to identify new diseases, adapting wearables to monitor a patient's health, devices to streamline physician workflows, or data mining tools to make R&D more effective, digital platforms are disrupting the healthcare industry. Stakeholders across our global ecosystem understand the significant value of prediction and scalability that digital platforms and AI/ML bring. The first in a two-part series on digital health, this article features insights from Keystone's digital healthcare practice and one of our experts Luba Greenwood. Our practice leaders, Seyla Azoz (SA) and Colleen Carroll (CC), sat down with expert Luba (LG) – a healthcare and tech investor, ex-Google and Pharma exec, and now a Professor at Harvard – to hear her insights and perspectives. SA: Given your experience at both Roche and Google, how do you think tech companies are approaching healthcare differently than more traditional healthcare companies? How is that manifesting in the products and services they offer? Especially as it relates to AI/ML and data. LG: With Roche's acquisition of Flatiron, it became evident for pharma players that utilizing data for discovery and clinical trials was key. Tech companies, however, saw the emergence of this trend years earlier, and as experts in data, they had anticipated the main hurdles pharma would face, namely the ability to gain access to and combine, store, cleanse, annotate and properly analyze structured and unstructured data. Pharma companies first rushed to Tech companies in the hopes of combining AI “magic” with R&D, only to discover that the “magic” was not in AI but in the data itself. They were not only sitting on a gold mine of data but also had access to additional data such as patient and genomic data through many of the partnerships they had already built with leading academic institutions and other partners. The challenge for pharma companies remains in the ability to apply deep learning algorithms and other methods to their data sets correctly. Seeing an opportunity to play a bigger role, tech companies have stepped up AI/ML-driven offerings to pharma in two primary areas: Research: Pharma companies have been hiring computational biologists, gathering, and analyzing genomic and other data for years. As tools for mining that data have been lacking, tech companies began providing these capabilities to pharma, in a form of services offered. In the last two years, we have seen a proliferation of tech-enabled discovery companies that offer products that help pharma companies understand the biology of diseases, mapping out entire biological systems and discovering new targets. Development (clinical trials): Pharma companies have been conducting clinical trials in an antiquated way for years, from trial design and cohort selection to data collection. Tech companies big and small have entirely transformed the way clinical trials are conducted. Products that tech companies have introduced include sensors to collect real world data and accelerate trials. Tech companies quickly understood that virtualizing clinical trials would enable much faster enrollment of patients, better adherence, and faster tracking. For example, Apple enrolled hundreds of thousands of patients in its Heart Study in less than a year, a previously unheard of number for a trial in that time frame. Tech companies have since introduced a number of tools and services in the space, including those to enable faster enrollment and better trial matching. In both of these categories, many pharma companies have become savvy and recognize the importance of these tools, but they struggle with whether or not to build out those capabilities internally, partner with other big tech companies, or partner or buy smaller life science, tech-enabled companies. Although tech companies can provide these AI/ML tools and analytics expertise, the wrinkle is that providers (i.e. large academic hospitals) are truly the experts when it comes to properly annotating data and understanding how to match the right problem to the right deep learning model. As such, we now see tech companies partnering with providers directly to offer them ways to capitalize on their data and clinical expertise. CC: Who brings the biggest value in deals between pharma/biotech or providers and tech, and has this affected how deals are structured? LG: There are two key components of every deal between pharma/biotech and any tech players: (1) data use, ownership, and sharing, and (2) business model. While the main assets of life science collaboration agreements had been patents, in deals with tech, they are now data and background IP. Partners often struggle with properly outlining data access and background IP terms and more importantly with agreeing on the use of insights gained from that data. Another challenge is the proper structuring of such agreements. While life sciences players are used to co-development, collaboration, and licensing agreements in deals where they are collaborating with a partner to discover a new therapy or build a new tool, tech players are used to Master Services and similar agreements where they get wide access to data and gain exclusive IP rights to newly formed products and services. When it comes to using patient data to build out different products, the privacy, safety, and IP concerns vary depending on what product you are collaborating and the ultimate business model. The business model in pharma collaborations used to be straightforward: you knew who provided what value because it was indicated in the license, you had a work plan, a joint committee with expertise in drug development, and once the drug or device was approved, you split up the royalties. However, in tech collaborations, partners often miscalculate the value that each side is providing. Moreover, the product or service resulting from the agreement follows different reimbursement and payment models, where often the value add that tech provides is minimally compensated. From what I have seen, this is a challenge many haven't yet figured out and are doing incorrectly, in many cases paying out milestones that were incorrectly set given the overall value of the deal. CC: What are the common pitfalls you are seeing with this challenge of valuing the offerings between healthcare providers and big tech? LG: Life science companies and providers often overestimate the value of analytic tools, such as AI and deep learning, which are now becoming a commodity. This is where providers, payers, and pharma companies could capture more value given expertise they provide. Ability to access, cleanse, store, and aggregate data, as well as to apply deep learning analysis to that data, all services tech provides, is valuable but the higher value comes from the ability to match a problem to the right kind of deep learning model, train the model, and label the data, all expertise that healthcare players provide. Moreover, clinical, medical workflow, uptake, scale, install base, and market expertise and knowledge, among many other factors, are highly valued and often proprietary information provided by the healthcare player and often more valuable than the analytic value provided by the tech company. On the compliance side, negotiations between providers, tech and pharma had historically limited involvement of HIPAA experts and underestimated what could and could not be shared under HIPAA. SA: What are some other areas in the intersection between tech and pharma that are seeing challenges? LG: Another area that is emerging is mining data to inform discovery. There are a number of small tech startups that are trying to mine any data, including through analysis of thousands of cells and tissue images. By applying AI to that data, they hope to inform better discovery or determine why a particular discovery has failed. Many of these companies are partnering with biotech and pharma companies to assess trials that have failed using the power of the data or help with patient recruitment. Pharma and biotech companies are becoming increasingly bombarded by these solutions, often distracting them from their internal and external R&D projects. Pharma and biotech companies often lack internal resources to pick out start-ups with the most promising approaches. More often than not, these start-ups lack resources and ability to collect the right type and amount of data to properly train their AI/ML models. Many often lack the right analytics to enable proper generation of insights and predictions that would be useful for drug discovery and development. SA: The digital healthcare field is flooded with so many digital solutions right now. Should pharma build out tools internally or partner? LG: Almost every pharma, device, and diagnostics company has a digital group. However, not all are successful. In my analysis of the most successful and effective groups, the key factors have been: 1. Focus – prioritization of projects and keen understanding of which functions to build out internally and which to partner-up externally and how. 2. Alignment – full alignment with R&D, BD, Marketing and Commercialization functions. 3. Talent – Formation of vision and culture that is separate from the rest of the organization. This approach has resulted in a better ability to attract and retain talent with expertise in data, analytics, and market access. Success in innovation doesn't come from adding a new tool to your tool box, but rather from the focused application of technology to your business, and the agility to adapt your business to a new business model.

Keystone Strategy is proud to now be ranked #34 overall in the Vault 2021 North American "Consulting 50" Rankings, Vault and Keystone jointly announced. The 2021 Vault Consulting rankings, made public this month, are based on responses from more than 17,000 consulting firm employees surveyed earlier in 2020. This is Keystone's fifth consecutive year on this list. In addition, Vault ranked Keystone in the top 25 firms in multiple categories, including: Innovation: #4 Exit Opportunities: #12 Overall Business Outlook: #15 Benefits: #16 Diversity: #18 Internal Mobility: #21 Satisfaction: #21 Health & Wellness: #21 Work/Life Balance: #23 "We recognize the quality and expertise of our peers in the annual Vault Consulting 50 rankings and are thrilled to have moved up to 35th place overall," Marowits added. Keystone was ranked overall #40 in 2020, #43 in 2019, and #45 in 2018. Vault's rankings are based on exclusive insider information from verified employees in the consulting industry. Each year, Vault surveys thousands of consulting professionals. From these results, Vault ranks the top consulting firms in prestige, quality of life, and overall best to work for. View Keystone's Vault profile here. About Keystone Strategy Keystone is a leading innovative strategy and economics consulting firm dedicated to delivering transformative ideas and cutting-edge solutions to Fortune Global 500 companies, top law firms, and government agencies. Our unique expertise in technology-led strategy, AI-driven digital transformation, product development, healthcare, finance, antitrust, and litigation enables us to create bold strategies that have far-reaching implications on business, consumers, and public policy. We leverage a unique combination of strategic insights from the world's leading industry and academic experts with the practical expertise of our accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact for our clients. Learn more about Keystone Strategy at: http://www.keystonestrategy.com.About VaultVault is the most comprehensive resource for employers, universities, and internship program rankings, ratings, and insight. Vault's influential rankings and reviews are sourced from directed surveys of professionals and students, and evaluate companies, schools, and internships in terms of prestige, the best place to work, diversity, quality of life, compensation and other categories. Vault provides users with in-depth information on employers, industries, interviews, and available jobs and internships. In addition, Vault partners with employers to help build their brands and assist with recruiting efforts, and with universities to help their students with employment placement and career selection.

Insufficient data has complicated the rollout of Coronavirus (COVID-19) “Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions” (NPIs) such as the closing of schools. Keystone has partnered with Susan Athey, Stanford Professor of Economics, and Marco Iansiti, Director of Harvard Business School's Digital Initiative, to estimate the effectiveness of NPIs as a guide to policymakers, and to aid firms in developing strategic responses, respectively. We are building a comprehensive, highly localized and freely available data set of city, county and state rollout dates for NPIs. For more information or data access, contact us. NPIs INCLUDE: SDO - Social Distancing of vulnerable persons; SD - Social Distancing of the general population; GS_XX - Gathering Size limitations; CPV - Closure of Public Venues; PC - Closure of schools and universities; NESC - Non-Essential Services Closure; LD - Lock Down (pending); 650 US Counties Covered as of 6/18/2020 (additions in progress). A sample of counties below (additions in progress). To see the full list click here. A sample of counties below: Alameda County, CA Bergen County, NJ Bexar County, TX Contra Costa County, CA Cook County, IL Dallas County, TX Denver County, CO Dupage County, IL Fulton County, GA Hudson County, NJ Johnson County, KS King County, WA Lake County, IL Las Vegas County, NV Los Angeles County, CA Miami Dade County, FL Middlesex County, Ma Nassau County, NY New York City, NY Norfolk County, MA Rockland County, NY San Diego County, CA San Francisco County, CA San Mateo County, CA Santa Clara County, CA Snohomish County, WA Suffolk County, MA Washington, DC Wayne, County, MI Westchester County, NY Please see link to this Shared Google Doc for more information. If you or any of your colleagues would like to expand our dataset to include other countries and/or U.S. cities and counties not yet included, please point them to our links below. With your help sharing these links on social media and via your own networks, we can improve the data set and broaden our initial scope. Request Data: [hubspotform portal_id="6724850" form_id="3655434e-36ed-4659-b7bc-5d7060dfea46" css=""] PUBLISHED PAPERS USING THE KEYSTONE DATASETS FOR NPIs As of November 2, 2021, there have been 19 academic articles published leveraging this dataset. You can find the entire list on Google Scholar here with select articles highlighted below. Scenario analysis of non-pharmaceutical interventions on global COVID-19 transmissions Arvix This paper introduces a dynamic panel SIR (DP-SIR) model to investigate the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on the COVID-19 transmission dynamics with panel data from 9 countries across the globe. What works against the spread of COVID-19? Medium With more detailed data on the varying introduction of policies across US counties and over time as well as the resulting spread of the disease we could provide evidence on which measures we should keep and which measures we should lift in order to reactivate the economy. Income Effect and the Private Contribution of Public Goods:Household Mobility and the Economic Impact Payment during the COVID-19 Pandemic Binghamton University This paper studies the public good nature of COVID-19 mitigation effort, and illustrates the relationship between income level and the voluntary contribution to the COVID-19 mitigation effort. Weather, Social Distancing, and the Spread of COVID-19 MedRxiv Using high-frequency panel data for U.S. counties, this paper examines the full dynamic response of COVID-19 cases and deaths to exogenous movements in mobility and weather. Policy Implications of Models of the Spread of Coronavirus: Perspectives and Opportunities for Economists CESifo Working Papers A critical review of models of the spread of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that have been influential in recent policy discussions. It notes potentially important features of the real- world environment that standard models do not incorporate. The COVID-19 Shock and Consumer Credit: Evidence from Credit Card Data US Federal Reserve Using monthly credit card data from the Federal Reserve's Y-14M reports to study the early impact of the COVID-19 shock on the use and availability of consumer credit. Staggered Adoption of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions to Contain COVID-19 Across U.S. Counties: Direct and Spillover Effects Johns Hopkins Carey Business School We estimate direct and spillover effects of social distancing measures intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 at the U.S. county level using mobility indicators based on cellphone data. We find that spillover effects range between a third and a half of the direct effect depending on the particular outcome or policy considered. Our results suggest that decentralized NPI decisions, which does not internalize externalities generated on surrounding locations, could result in lower NPI implementation and weaker reduction in mobility, and hence more personal contacts and interactions in leisure and work activities, which are the main driver of the COVID-19 transmission. Tracking the Economic Impact of COVID-19 and Mitigation Policies in Europe and the United States International Monetary Fund Here is a framework to use high-frequency indicators, such as electricity usage, for policymakers to assess the economic impact of COVID-19 in close to real time. We also examine the link between economic activity and mitigation efforts to help policymakers better understand the possible path of economic activity as lockdown measures are relaxed.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in March 26, 2020.Summary. The dramatic speed of the operating-model transformation prompted by the coronavirus is raising truly existential challenges for traditional firms, and for the many employees that depend on them for income. That's because an existing digital transformation effort that's creating competitive advantages for select companies has been thrust into the realm of the workplace itself. Firms that are already far along this transformation will transition smoothly as in-person work is less necessary or even preferable, while many others will struggle. This is creating a new digital divide that will deepen fractures in our society. Can business and government save us from that future? Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Originally published in The Washington Post on March 16, 2020. Below is an excerpt from the article:Our economy runs on mutual interdependence. As we spend time in self-isolation, let's think about all the people who depend on us to make a living: the Lyft driver, the dry cleaner, the child-care provider, the barista at the coffee shop. As everything from sports games to evenings out with friends gets canceled because of covid-19, economic activity is grinding to a halt. People are starting to practice not only social distancing but also economic distancing, which leaves a lot of people — especially the most economically vulnerable — in the lurch. It's easy to feel powerless watching the human toll mount. What can we do to make a difference when we're stuck at home, disconnected both socially and economically? Susan Athey is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a board member of Innovations for Poverty Action. Dean Karlan is a professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and founder of Innovations for Poverty Action. Read the entire article here.

NEW YORK, March 17, 2020 – Keystone Strategy today announced the firm has been named to Forbes magazine's list of America's Best Management Consulting Firms for the first time in its history, recognized in nine sectors and functional areas. The firm was among over 220 firms across the U.S. that received this recognition. “This achievement is very exciting for Keystone Strategy,” comments Jeff Marowits, President, Client Services at Keystone. “We take pride in solving complex problems and delivering transformative ideas to our clients. This acknowledgement by Forbes reaffirms the work we do here everyday.” Keystone Strategy was recognized by Forbes in the following nine sectors: Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Consumer Goods & Retail Innovation, Growth Internet, Media & Entertainment IT, Technology & Telecommunications Marketing, Brand & Pricing Operations Organization Strategy To establish the list, Forbes worked with an analytics company, Statista, to survey more than 7,500 partners and executives of management consultancies and over 1,000 senior executives who had worked with the consultancies over the last four years. The list was comprised of 16 total sectors, spanning from aerospace and defense to financial institutions, as well as 16 functional areas, including strategy and digital transformation. Respondents were asked to recommend firms based on performance across predetermined sectors and functional areas. About Keystone Strategy Keystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology, and business. Keystone regularly combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Learn more about Keystone Strategy at: http://www.keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published in Bloomberg. Below is an excerpt from the article: Considering the challenges presented by 2020, many of the books business leaders recommend this year aren't technically business books at all—or from this year, for that matter: John Barry's 2004 history of an earlier pandemic, The Great Influenza, was cited by both Axel Hefer, managing director of Trivago, and David Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, who called it “important to try and help put the pandemic into context.” Even among books published in the last 12 months, an attempt to find historical analogies to present-day issues runs through the selections. Erik Larson's epic retelling of Winston Churchill's handling of the 1940 Blitz, The Splendid and the Vile, was a popular choice. “The book speaks to fearless leadership in the darkest hour,” says Jonathan Gray, president and chief operating officer of Blackstone Group. “A powerful lesson for the challenges of 2020.” Not all the selection are as serious. Larry Gagosian, the blue-chip art gallerist, used Sam Wasson's history of the movie Chinatown to find new meaning in producer Robert Evans's famous quote that the path to success was to “bet on talent.” And Mary Mack, CEO of consumer and small business banking at Wells Fargo, described Glennon Doyle's memoir Untamed as “an authentic and empowering kick in the tail.” Here are the year's 52 best books. Read the entire list here.

Originally published on February 25, 2020 in Forbes by Sophia Matveeva a Former Forbes Contributor and startup founder in retail tech. Artificial Intelligence is the new fashionable trend in business. While many large corporates create skunkworks for experimental technologies or acquire startups, few incumbent businesses have allowed AI processes to change the core of the organization. This could be because executives in traditional businesses have little understanding of how these technologies work and are unwilling to take the risk of investing in something they do not understand. A recent book by two Harvard Business School professors attempts to deal with this issue. Competing in the Age of AI: strategy and leadership when algorithms and networks run the world presents a compelling case for putting AI at the center of the business. Any business. Authors Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani show the example of Ant Financial, which serves more than 10 times as many customers as the largest U.S. banks with less than one tenth the number of employees. That extraordinary combination of wide reach and low cost is possible because Ant Financial uses data and artificial intelligence from its core mobile payments platform, Alipay. Read the entire article here.

Originally published as a featured LinkedIn Weekend Essay in February 2020. “As I have discussed with you in other contexts, and as you have acknowledged, the algorithms which power [your] services are not designed to distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information, and the consequences of that are particularly troubling for public health issues...”— Excerpts of letters from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, to Sundar Pichai of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook in February 2019. Jeff Bezos of Amazon received a similar letter from Schiff. What prompted Rep. Adam Schiff to send these letters was the spread of anti-vaccination propaganda on Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Schiff's concern is not an idle one: by April 2019 the incidence of measles in the United States was at its second highest since the disease was thought to be eliminated in 2000. The information targeting the communities of users connected to these platforms was putting them in harm's way. Although it's generally accepted that business leaders should always take into account the organization's responsibilities to its customers, employees, shareholders, partners, and to the communities in which it operates, the potential for digitally enabled businesses to harm these stakeholders, has been greatly increased. The potential damage is amplified by the enormous reach and personalization possible with digital networks, which raises issues that test the limits of traditional ethical frameworks and guidelines. I wrote about these kinds of challenges before, in "The Keystone Advantage," which was published almost twenty years ago. Drawing from both biology and economics, I proposed an idea called a keystone strategy, which basically provided an incentive for aligning the health of the networks connected to the firm with the firm itself. Ultimately, if a firm competes in a network economy, it will draw its strength from the networks that surround it. If the networks work well, this will reflect positively on the firm, but if they are harmed, so will the firm that occupies the network hubs. In "Competing in the Age of AI," Karim Lakhani and I argue that the Keystone idea now applies even more broadly than it did back in 2003. Organizations as diverse as Tencent and Target, Facebook and Equifax, Baidu and Google can only sustain performance if the many customers and communities they depend on are healthy, strong and trust the platform they depend on for news, information, credit and many other things. If these communities are harmed, the firm itself will fail, as its participants abandon the platform, competitors attack the now defenseless organization, partners escape the damage, and as government institutions swoop in to further limit the firm's behavior. On the other hand, if they take the Keystone idea seriously, they will invest in understanding, measuring, tracking, and improving the health and trust of the communities they depend on, and react to counter any threats. These challenges are now even more important than before. As businesses are increasingly powered by data and AI, they can scale to previously unheard of impact, which has not only increased business opportunities, but also multiplied ethical challenges. If Facebook did not have the capacity to serve two billion users, Adam Schiff would not be as concerned. In new and old firms alike, leaders should be aware of how their newly deployed digital capabilities can be used and misused, even in ways they never intended. Digital Amplification Specifically, Rep. Schiff's letters take aim at the algorithms that are used to optimize views, purchases, ad clicks, and personal engagement. Even a simple learning algorithm that is rewarded based on clicks and money earned can quickly become dangerous by serving content that reinforces bias and other kinds of flawed thinking, and it can efficiently find users likely to be influenced by content and reinforce mistaken views. The vast scale, scope, and learning potential of these digital operating models implies that harmful messages can be tailored and targeted to, literally, hundreds of millions of people. The grassroots anti-vaccination movement relies on the efforts of a community of individuals who believe that certain kinds of inoculations cause severe illness. The movement dates back as far as the eighteenth century, but its impact has been vastly amplified in recent years by social networks, video streaming sites, and ad-targeting technology. A 2017 study of 2.6 million Facebook users over seven and a half years found that consumption of anti-vaccine content was boosted by echo chamber effects: users looked only at posts that affirmed their beliefs, ignored dissenting information, and joined groups reinforcing their biases. The scale of the impact is striking. In Texas alone, at least 57,000 schoolchildren were exempted from vaccination for nonmedical reasons in 2018, a twentyfold increase since 2003. Health officials in Europe and the United States blame the “anti-vax” movement for outbreaks of dangerous diseases like measles and pertussis over the past ten years. The anti-vax movement is by no means isolated. The same methods and mechanisms that have made it potent are being used to systematically create echo chambers of all sorts—especially political, social, and religious. In some ways, these echo chambers are similar to those that have long characterized cable TV and radio. But traditional media does not easily reach the same kind of scale as digital networks. And, unlike social networks, traditional media does not allow a message to be tuned and personalized in real time - the algorithm serving a Google search result or a Facebook social ad can automatically personalize the information seen by a user to maximize her engagement – that is where the AI comes in. And additionally, traditional media does not enable the kind of active user engagement that promotes sharing of content at zero marginal cost to like-minded individuals. Digital scale, scope, and learning can amplify the impact of any bias, even without systemic intent to do harm or sway views. Our colleagues Mike Luca, Ben Edelman, and Dan Svirsky were among the first scholars to find examples of this: their work on Airbnb shows that people with names that sound distinctively African American were 16 percent less likely than those with European-sounding names to be accepted as guests by Airbnb hosts. Subsequent research by other scholars has found that Airbnb hosts similarly discriminate against people with Islamic-sounding names, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ community. The same sort of bias afflicts financial services. Even micro-lending platforms like Kiva, which are explicitly designed to provide financial opportunity to disadvantaged communities, have been found to exacerbate bias. There was no organized effort to promote discrimination on Airbnb or Kiva. The digital systems simply amplified the impact of the implicit, or subconscious, bias of homeowners and even progressive lenders. Even if the percentage of individuals who are truly bad actors is small or non-existent, the amplification potential of digital operating models means that many people may be adversely impacted. The intensifying of human bias, discord, and misinformation is not, unfortunately, the only new ethical challenge. Our considerations need to be extended by examining the intrinsic bias embedded in digital algorithms. New Responsibilities The leaders of modern firms cannot afford to ignore this new generation of ethical challenges. A variety of practical, implementable technical and business solutions is needed. Clearly, we are not alone in thinking this way. Google and Microsoft are investing heavily in research on algorithmic bias, and Facebook is devoting massive resources to tackling the problems of fake news and harmful posts. And even the leadership of traditional organizations like Equifax and the Democratic National Committee—having been stung by hackers—is investing in remedies. Navigating the ethics of digital scale, scope, and learning has become a universal management imperative. The greatest responsibility lies in the organizations that wield the most power and occupy the central network positions in our economy and society. The Keystone idea comes from an analogy with biological ecosystems. Like the modern economy, biological ecosystems are highly connected networks, which collectively depend on the behavior of their most critical agents. In an ecosystem, so-called keystone species are especially critical to the sustainability of the whole. From providing nesting areas to channeling rainwater, these species perform especially critical functions, maintaining ecosystem health through specific, evolved behaviors that have effects much beyond their own species to impact the entire ecosystem. Removing keystone species will critically harm the sustainability of the whole. In a similar fashion, companies like Facebook and Equifax effectively regulate the health of their business networks and user communities. Their activities propagate to all network nodes or members, whether they post video content, apply for loans, sell advertisements, or share messages. As these central firms occupy richly connected network positions and provide the foundation for network-wide value creation, they have become essential to the economy and social system. In each case, they provide services and technologies on which many of us depend. Their removal or even their problems can lead to potentially catastrophic events. But as leaders in many firms already understand, the role of a network hub comes with responsibilities. This is where the keystone concept becomes really critical. A keystone strategy aligns the objectives of a hub firm with those of its networks. By improving the health of its network (or business ecosystem), a keystone strategy also benefits the long-term performance of the firm. The central feature of this strategy is its focus on aligning internal and external needs to shape and sustain the health of the networks a firm depends on. When Google invests in technologies that remove bias from its algorithms, it's deploying a keystone strategy. When Facebook removes harmful videos from its networks, it's doing the same thing. The point here is that sustaining a business network is not only an ethical responsibility but also the only way to preserve a networked business for the long term. The keystone concept is related to the idea of information fiduciary proposed recently by Jack Balkin and Jonathan Zittrain: In the law, a fiduciary is a person or business with an obligation to act in a trustworthy manner in the interest of another. For example, financial managers and planners are entrusted to handle their clients' money. Doctors, lawyers, and accountants are examples of information fiduciaries—that is, a person or business that deals not in money, but in information. Doctors and lawyers are obligated to keep our secrets and they cannot use the information they collect about us against our interests. Controlling hubs in important economic networks, firms like Google and Facebook acquire extensive consumer information. As information fiduciaries, they have important responsibilities not to harm the communities they collect information from. We have already seen how digital networks and AI are prompting the development of new operating capabilities, strategic principles, and ethical dilemmas. But beyond these immediate changes, we must also think through the broader long-term patterns and gather the wisdom required to deal with our newfound challenges. Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani are the authors of Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World, from which this article is adapted.

Founded in 2002, Keystone Strategy debuts in the GCR 100 this year as its focus–competition in the technology sector – has become a preoccupation of enforcers around the world. Somewhat unusually for this survey, Keystone is not a pure economics consultancy. It offers an array of expertise to both tech companies and their competition critics. Today, it counts four of the largest such companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – as important clients. It also continues to advise antitrust enforcers from its offices in the US, UK, France, Italy, Brussels, Germany and Australia, though most of this work remains confidential for now. Who's Who Legal: Competition nominee Susan Athey is a highly influential platform and data economist, while fellow nominee Ernst Berndt specializes in innovation economics. In the past year, the team has added Ara Stepanyan from the International Monetary Fund, and Assaf Zimring from Cornerstone. Athey testified about merger efficiencies on behalf of the DOJ in the agency's challenge to the AT&T/Time Warner merger, analyzing the companies' plans to create an online advertising platform using first-party data from its subscribers. She and fellow Keystone expert Robin Lee both spoke at one of the US Federal Trade Commission's hearings on competition and consumer protection in the 21st century. Athey, assisted by Marowits and others, again testified for the government as the FTC successfully sued 1-800 Contacts for preventing rival contact lens sellers from buying search advertisements where the search terms included the company's trademarks. Keystone is also providing analysis of the anticompetitive effects of this restraint in the follow-on litigation, and in similar private lawsuits against hotel chains that allegedly had similar agreements not to compete in search ads. Marco Iansiti is providing expertise for a confidential third party in the European Commission's Android and AdSense cases against Google. In another private litigation, Athey and Marc Rysman worked on behalf of CollegeNet's claim that Common Application abused its dominance in the college application market by requiring exclusivity arrangements that excluded competition for high-quality application systems. Keystone analysed market definition, innovation and competition impacts; the case settled in February 2019, with Common Application agreeing to change certain practices. View the full ranking here.

NEW YORK (PRWEB) JANUARY 27, 2020 -- Tech-industry veteran Gabrielle “Gaby” Toledano has been named Chief Operating Officer at Keystone Strategy, the company announced today. Highlighting Keystone's ongoing expansion, Toledano was named Keystone's first female COO. Prior to joining Keystone, the national strategic and economics consulting firm, she was on the executive team as the Chief People Officer (CPO) at Tesla.“Gaby is a proven talent and a critical addition to our growing team,” said Greg Richards, Keystone Chief Executive Officer. “Our firm has seen unprecedented growth over the last several years as we partner with some of the most important and dynamic technology firms. Her long-standing record in this arena will ensure we are positioned to meet our client's needs.”Toledano also was the Executive Vice President and Chief Talent Officer for more than 10 years at Electronic Arts. Earlier, she served as Chief Human Resources Officer for Siebel Systems. Previous to that role, Gaby served in Human Resources leadership positions at Microsoft and Oracle. Most recently she was an Executive in Residence and Operating Partner across all aspects of Talent for Comcast Ventures and its portfolio companies."I am incredibly excited to join Keystone Strategy. It's a unique opportunity to work with the firm's cadre of high performing and talented individuals -- people who work as a team serving a fast expanding group of both partners and clients,” said Toledano.Toledano, who is bilingual, received her undergraduate and advanced degrees from Stanford University, followed by a Rotary Scholarship post in Santiago, Chile. Her portfolio has included a wide range of assignments, including international work, most notably in Latin America. Toledano sits on the Board of Directors of Glu Mobile, Namely, and Visier.“The growth of Keystone in recent years has been outsized, and the expectation is that the growth will continue, as Keystone brings innovative solutions and strategies to clients,” she said. “The chance to help lead the internal team across all functions at Keystone is a terrific opportunity."About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas and novel solutions to global enterprises and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, and science. The firm's expertise in strategy, economics, product development, digital transformation and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. Learn more about Keystone at http://www.keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published in the New York Times by Jonathan A. Knee. Below is an excerpt from the article: The potential of “big data” and “artificial intelligence” to revolutionize business is routinely hailed by everyone from entrepreneurs to executives at established public companies. Many of these claims have elicited increasing skepticism from the public.A provocative new book by two Harvard Business School professors, however, argues that the transformational effect of “the Age of A.I.,” if anything, has been underappreciated. In “Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World,” Marco Iansiti and Karim R. Lakhani suggest that the current era has been far more revolutionary than the Industrial Revolution. The benefits that arose from mass production and specialization during that earlier period were constrained by two key factors, they argue. Read the entire book review here.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in January 2020.Summary. Today markets are being reshaped by a new kind of firm—one in which artificial intelligence runs the show. This cohort includes giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba, and growing businesses such as Wayfair and Ocado. Every time we use their services, the same thing happens: Rather than relying on processes run by employees, the value we get is delivered by algorithms. Software is at the core of the enterprise, and humans are moved off to the side. This model frees firms from traditional operating constraints and enables them to compete in unprecedented ways. AI-driven processes can be scaled up very rapidly, allow for greater scope because they can be connected to many kinds of businesses, and offer very powerful opportunities for learning and improvement. And while the value of scale eventually begins to level off in traditional models, in AI-based ones, it never stops climbing. All of that allows AI-driven firms to quickly overtake traditional ones. As AI models blur the lines between industries, strategies are relying less on specialized expertise and differentiation based on cost, quality, and branding, and more on business network position, unique data, and the deployment of sophisticated analytics. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

At small, boutique consulting firms, there's a sense of trust and self-determination that's impossible for employees to find in other fields—or even at larger agencies. Panelists from consulting firms including Keystone Strategy explain what makes a boutique firm a unique place to work. Leaders from each organization will discuss a range of topics, including career progression, industry specialization, and developing a competitive edge in today's market. What Do You Stand to Gain by Attending? Consultants design the organization and management policies that attract and retain talent for companies across every sector. As such, it makes sense that consulting firms also know better than any other employer how to prioritize their in-house teams. Based on thousands of employee reviews, these three agencies are some of the highest-rated companies to work for—and they're also recognized for performing groundbreaking, high-caliber work. This webinar will provide key insights for job seekers, working consultants, and professionals pursuing a foothold in the industry. Leaders from each firm will deliver a 10-minute presentation, followed by questions from the audience and a panel discussion. Is a Boutique Firm the Key to Advancing Your Consulting Career? from Ivy Exec on Vimeo.

NEW YORK – Keystone Experts and Computer and Information Science professors Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth appeared on C-SPAN to discuss their recent book, The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of Socially Aware Algorithm Design. In recent years, challenges regarding machine learning and artificial intelligence have gained more recognition. In their book, Kearns and Roth make the case for developing socially aware algorithm design methods to help solve these problems for our digital future. Watch their appearance on C-SPAN alongside Jeff Marowits, President of Keystone Strategy, here.

Originally published on December 6, 2019 in the Puget Sound Business Journal here. It's time to go back to school. Long-term success now requires it. Rapid technology advances, complex global networks and far-reaching ethical implications of our behaviors require a mindset of continuous technical and business education, evolving leadership skills (particularly in the areas of diversity and inclusion) and a deepening connection with our innate wisdom. To stay ahead of new technology, harness changing business dynamics and design innovative offerings, we must be life-long learners. Even if you are not personally coding, building hardware or deploying machine learning or artificial intelligence, you must understand their technical foundations to compete in a world increasingly driven by algorithms and data-driven insights. It goes beyond technology — organizational operating models also must evolve, presenting fascinating leadership and management challenges. There are countless resources available for learning in these domains, including self-paced online coding courses, executive education at leading business schools (including online), innovation-centric blogs, meetups and industry groups and books for every level of technical sophistication. Carve out time for continuing education as a priority and watch your approach to innovation shift. Extensive research continues to show us that diverse teams improve the bottom line. The Wall Street Journal, in its first ranking of corporate sectors and S&P 500 companies based on diversity and inclusion, found that “diverse and inclusive cultures are providing companies with a competitive edge over their peers.” Whether you are a teammate or a leader, consciously and proactively getting the best out of your diverse teams is crucial for competitive advantage. It also makes for a richer and more rewarding work environment. But this doesn't necessarily come naturally. Humans have subconscious mental machinery designed to make judgments and engage in tribal behavior — but by learning about our innate tendencies, we can make better choices. At the same time, historical cultural and organizational systems must be re-evaluated and changed at a fundamental level. Invest in learning the science of these behaviors. Recognize them in yourself and in others. Learn about unconscious bias. Then invest in structural changes at your organization. In our highest-performing flow-state moments, we are acting from a place beyond thought, from a deeper capacity. We forget time, get out of our own way and execute at our highest potential with limitless creativity. But we live in a world that often tells us otherwise, admonishing us to work harder and longer hours, disparaging intuition or distracting us with endless competition for our limited attention. Devoting time to mindfulness and realizing a connection with a deeper wisdom unlocks creativity, connects us to our fellow human beings and helps us navigate our changing world with joy and equanimity. In the course of your day, whether it's meditating, talking with an executive coach dedicated to your growth and realization, spending time in nature or simply creating a few moments of quiet, take time to find connection to something deeper, something that is shared and common with everyone you come into contact with. Your personal continuous learning is one of the most important things in which to invest your time, energy and mindset. As side perks, consider the benefits of the improved engagement, creativity and enthusiasm you will bring to your workplace every day.

Originally published on December 6, 2019 in the Puget Sound Business Journal here. There are few aspects of the daily effort to produce products and services that are more frustrating than finding one is the victim of theft—seeing one's efforts duplicated by illicit means. But now, as a result of ongoing research in the science of artificial intelligence as it is applied to the law, there are new and impressively effective advances in the efforts to prove intellectual theft. Applying cutting edge digital research to existing technology is resulting in bold new legal methodologies. When seeking legal redress for a trademark infringement claim, for example, plaintiffs first must demonstrate that the original product or mark has characteristics that show it is unique. Will a competitor's “version” be easily confused with the original? The old methodology of proving these conditions by use of expert testimony and surveys of potential customers now is being replaced by machine learning techniques, which provide a much greater ability to evaluate the distinctiveness of a mark or trade dress, and document the likelihood of confusion with another. These questions can be answered faster, with less cost, and best of all, with documentable results that rely on scientific data, not human opinions. This approach presents an important way of evaluating and quantifying the legal issues present when determining the association between the plaintiff's product and the version produced by the defendant in trade dress, trademark, and copyright lawsuits. The analyses created by this technology provide additional, scientific, supporting data in these cases. In fact, several of the leading experts in this area are eagerly embracing the use of machine learning technology as support for their testimony. Similar to the use of DNA evidence that revolutionized criminal trials roughly beginning in the late 1980s, the results provided by techniques like this will push courts to consider the admissibility of such approaches. This is, as of yet, an untested area, but could significantly lower legal costs. The goal was to achieve a result that would not only meet, or preferably exceed, as yet undefined legal evidentiary criteria with statistical significance, but also withstand spirited cross examination. On a technical level, the program is a convolutionalneural-network based binary classifier which is taught to differentiate between products of the target company and similar, but non-infringing, third-party products. Based on the characteristics of the data sets, various data augmentation strategies are used, and some information (such as colors or logos) can be stripped out if the algorithm should not rely on those to make its determination. In test cases, the algorithm performs well at distinguishing between the target product and non-infringing products. However, when asked to classify images of the infringing product, the accuracy drops significantly. This drop indicates that the algorithm struggles to distinguish these potentially infringing products from authentic ones, and can be used as a proxy to estimate the “likelihood of confusion.” In addition, this approach provides new avenues for data mining that are impractical with manual methods, such as pre-emptively analyzing large image sets to identify potentially infringing products. Besides protecting businesses from competitors that are attempting to unfairly infringe on their research and development, this approach also can be used prior to a new product launch to ensure that it does not infringe on brands developed by competing firms that already are on the market. Other uses include research applications that can analyze trends and the diffusion of significant designs through specific markets over time. Use of these advanced techniques can be precedent setting and ultimately, as this technology reduces the need for lengthy testimony from competing experts, could significantly lower the legal costs of intellectual property litigation, in particular. As well, it could help juries more quickly understand what otherwise can be complex and contradictory testimony. Clearly, the influence of the new technology on the outcome of cases involving theft of intellectual property, data, logos or even full product lines is still developing. The use of advanced technology as applied to the field of law is a direct result of litigation that displayed the need for this technology, and its impact is growing as the legal community becomes more familiar with its applications. Theft of intellectual property in the workplace can be offset to a great degree simply by leaving incomplete or inaccurate data in a place where a suspected thief can access it, and then waiting for the fireworks at the next staff meeting. Theft of intellectual property, not to mention products and services, on a corporate-wide scale, on the other hand, has more far-reaching and expensive implications. But the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to legal challenges is providing accurate, timely and ultimately less expensive paths to ensuring that we benefit from what we create, while providing a significant discouragement to those who would attempt to benefit from the work of others by underhanded means. Alissa L. Dubnicki is the Engagement Manager at Keystone Strategy, where she specializes in intellectual property disputes with a focus on digital issues. She holds a PhD in economics from Syracuse University's Maxwell School and a BA in economics from Princeton University.

November 2019 -- Keystone Co-Chair and Harvard Business School Professor Marco Iansiti spent several months in Italy supporting Sky Media with its digital transformation efforts. Their task was to ideate a variety of platform business model concepts and provide Sky with a prioritized set of opportunities to drive growth in both customer engagement and ecosystem influence. Keystone's work included developing a detailed business case and implementation plan for a transformative on screen commerce experience which moved forward into pilot phase. Keystone also advised Sky's senior leadership team on operating model best practices for launching the advanced analytics and data platform capabilities required by such initiatives. ‍From Product Business Model to Ecosystems Keystone's experience in platform business model approaches is extensive. Our work has shown us that when companies move towards platform-oriented business models, they often also undergo significant shifts in their operating models as well. The move from a product mindset to an ecosystem and network effects mindset can be significant. Contributors include: Seyla Azoz and Marco Iansiti

There is unprecedented level of focus and attention on data today. As consumers' lives get more digitized, every action they take, or fail to take, generates data. While this presents tremendous opportunities for companies and marketers to design data driven products and services, it also significantly elevates the risks associated with inappropriate usage of information. Companies, boards, regulators, and governments are grappling to find the right balance between utility of data and the risks of data use. Shifting business models: Businesses are rethinking their traditional silo style structures and are digitally transforming into data-centric platform companies with disruptive use cases that deliver value at scale. Our most innovative firms are powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning that run sophisticated algorithms on massive volumes of datasets pooled from within and outside the organization, often containing sensitive information. Such algorithms allow firms to mine their vast data sets and rethink value creation and value capture opportunities. Often this would mean entering new lines of businesses not previously possible. Increasing risks: In the wake of numerous data breaches and leaks, today's culture has become one that is valuing privacy more so than ever before. Large businesses with significant resources are not insulated and are in fact likely targets of malicious attacks. In recent times companies such as Marriott, Equifax, Yahoo and Target have been breached leading to reputational, financial and litigation related losses. These companies, among others, are being criticized by regulators for not doing enough to protect consumer privacy. Other related phenomena include the rise of fake news, algorithmic biases, and the increased ease of influencing the public for better or worse. Keystone's offering: Keystone helps firms develop top down principles to guide company behavior with regard to their usage of consumer information. From the board level down, these principles strike the balance between the value and potential monetization of data with the associated risks. These principles will seek to align companies with the continuously evolving regulations and public perceptions. Lastly, they will position firms in a differentiated light relative to competitors and other players. To be effective, a firm's principles will have to be appropriately customized and take a variety of criteria into account: External constraints on a firm's usage of information (e.g. regulations, public commitments) The business value derived from the information usage Where, within the organization, will be affected by any new implementation How the firm plans to continually audit and ensure compliance with implemented principles/requirements Keystone works with clients to develop best practices and processes across the entire data lifecycle. In working with clients, it is clear that data sharing and managing third party relationships is one of the biggest risks firms face. Concepts surrounding data ownership and appropriate consent are not well defined and thus very difficult to manage. Relevant parties: Certain sectors are facing these challenges more imminently and need to develop a strategy to address gaps. These include businesses with a significant online presence, large global footprint, those processing large volumes of sensitive data (PII, medical records, financial records), those supporting critical infrastructure – utilities, transportation, financial markets, and disruptors, etc., and early adopters of emerging technology. Keystone has extensive experience in working with Technology companies under regulatory scrutiny, as well as firms that are a victim to successful malicious attacks and breaches. Keystone differentiating expert network: The combination of its long tenure working with data-centric companies and its academic experts make Keystone uniquely positioned to work with companies on these particular issues. Our team combines complementary expertise from the leaders in the fields of platform economics, technology and computer science, cybersecurity, AI & Machine Learning, digital privacy, and online advertising. Each of these domains is evolving at an extreme pace, such that no one person or team can stay abreast of all the innovation and shifts across these fields. Keystone's Information Strategy and Risk practice is structured to bring together a triad of expertise in a coherent team to address the needs of organizations in a holistic fashion. Select experts involved with Keystone's ISR practice: Susan Athey: One of the world's most preeminent “tech economists” – her research focuses on the economics of digitization, marketplace design, and the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. Susan's expertise is of particular value in opining on issues such as trade-offs between privacy risks and economic value of data and the importance of data to advertising and platform business models. David Parkes: Leads research at the nexus between economics and computer science, with a focus on AI/ML, auction design, and digital currency. Brings to bear expertise in advertising technologies and provides insights into emerging thought leadership on privacy in the context of AI/ML. Michael Kearns: Has worked extensively in quantitative and algorithmic trading and served as an advisor to many technology companies. Michael contributes thought leadership on privacy as it relates to large technology companies, and their underlying data & AI/ML. Doug Schmidt: Extensive technological research and advisory experience with a comprehensive understanding and ability to communicate technical issues, e.g. infrastructure, storage, security, encryption, etc.

November 2019 -- Fortune 500 companies. Household brands. Biotech. Hi-tech. Much, much more. That's Seattle today. And for just about any of the firms in this region, digital operations, machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming more critical every day. That is the focus of Keystone Strategy's Seattle office, headed by Keystone Principal Jennifer Graves and Partner Sean Hartman. “AI and machine learning are causing fundamental change in the way we manage business,” Hartman said. Advances in big data, cloud computing and improved algorithms have created countless opportunities – companies just have to take advantage of them.” “We help companies become more strategic so they can get a better handle on potential risk,” said Hartman. “We help them use AI and machine learning to respond to massive amounts of data now available, and, ultimately, improve profitability.” “AI and machine learning can be used to help companies better manage cash, create a more efficient supply chain, greater inventory control and improved distribution networks,” Graves said. “We are passed the stage of discussing whether AI can help a particular business. Today, the discussion should focus on how can a business leverage AI to make predictive marketing decisions, improve efficiency and profitability,” Hartman added. Here's a simple example from the retail food businesses. Weather conditions often relate to different types of product sales. When inventory needs to change due to impending weather conditions, AI and machine learning allows for a near real time response by combining analysis of external factors, weather and what people eat during different types of weather, with internal data — actual sales and unit profitability. In cold, rainy weather, more people typically want hot beverages. If it is warm and sunny, there may be an increased demand for frozen yogurt. What is the historical data for each store in a retailer's chain? That can be a huge amount of data for a company with many locations. AI and machine learning can make it far earlier to analyze – and dramatically faster. There is a human element, too. Keystone will train a company's managers to use the data and understand the implications – and unique local conditions that may not be clearly reflected in the data. AI can use statistics and so-called big data for predictive analytics. It also can create an ecosystem of overlapping disciplines with responses to mimic a human response. “We help our clients focus on the results of the analysis, not on writing complex computer code and its related technical information. Keystone does that,” Graves added. Graves and Hartman and the Seattle team augment Keystone's Information Strategy and Risk practice. As well, they support client strategies related to Data Science and Analytics-enabled operating models. They are key to the firm's strategic growth and development across the West Coast. Before joining Keystone, Graves was a Senior Program Manager, U.S. Operations, at Starbucks. While there, she oversaw the margin, inventory and field analytics for 10,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. She implemented and led a $500 million waste management program, digitally redesigned inventory, and overhauled reporting for all the U.S. and Canada stores. A guest professor of Business at the University of Washington, she lectures on operations management and on finance for non-finance majors. Hartman joined Keystone in 2005 as one of the first employees in the company's original Boston office. Now in Seattle, his practice area covers many areas, including digital transformation, ecosystem strategy, product management, and corporate strategy. He works across diverse industries, including cloud services, digital agriculture, electric vehicles, telecom and media. He also advises clients like Boeing, Microsoft, Facebook and Oculus, among many others. In the last year, the Keystone Northwest team has doubled. Other team members now include: Ava Tichenor, Associate; Sydney House, Sr. Associate; Theo Arden, Associate; and Gloria Gross, Officer Manager. “We love what we do and are passionate about Seattle and the Pacific Northwest,” Hartman said. “Seattle and the surrounding area are teaming with numerous brands, and that makes it easier for us to join forces with them,” Graves said. “We love this area for many other reasons, including its immense beauty. The mountains, the coast, the cities, they are all breathtaking in their own way.”

Over the past decade, algorithms have become the backbone for providing users with advanced services and new functionality. As algorithms make our lives more efficient, more entertaining, and even better informed, they also run the risk of violating our basic individual rights with how they collect and use our personal data to make decisions. In their new book, The Ethical Algorithm, Aaron Roth and Michael Kearns explore the emerging science behind creating ethical algorithms and the mathematically precise ways of analyzing algorithmic behavior. In this Q&A, Keystone's Gautam Basak (GB) checks in with the authors on the eve of their book release (Nov 1, 2019). Gautam Basak (GB): What inspired you to write about two seemingly unrelated topics – Ethical Values and Algorithms? AR + MK: The primary point of the book is to show people that these topics are not unrelated. When human beings are involved in important decision-making pipelines – education, medical treatment, lending, and criminal justice — we expect that these decisions are made ethically. Over the last decade, we've started to move algorithms into parts of these decision-making pipelines and that is going to have ethical consequences, whether they are made explicit or not. Our book and research argue that if we want to embed these nuanced social norms as constraints on the behavior of algorithms, we need to think about them in a mathematically precise way. The Ethical Algorithm focuses on the emerging science of how to do that. GB: Can you describe the rise and importance of algorithms today and implications going forward? AR: There are several key takeaways: Consider the methodology we propose to think carefully and precisely about definitions, and what we really want from our systems — and then trying to design algorithms that satisfy these notions, and soberly exploring the tradeoffs involved. It is hard, but can be done. There's an emerging community of scientists and engineers doing exactly this. Scientists and engineers will need to build the necessary tools, regulators must understand the science in order to legislate sensibly, and business leaders will need to prioritize their goals. Stakeholders in every industry will need to understand the costs and benefits of new technologies in order to engage in informed advocacy and decision making. MK: We deliberately set out to write a book for the widest possible audience. Although everything we discuss has rigorous underlying science, there's not a single equation in the book yet we have managed to bring the science alive by giving varied, real-world examples. GB: How was it teaming with each other on co-authoring this book? AR: It was great! When folks ask me how long it took to write the book, I always tell them that it went twice as fast as it otherwise would have, because there were two of us! I'd do it again for sure. MK: Yes, in my experience, the time to jointly write increases with the number of authors, not decreases, but this was entirely the opposite and I wasn't surprised at all — Aaron and I are simpatico in so many dimensions. GB: How can companies partner with you in driving ethical use of software and data in their businesses? AR: We both think of technology transfer as part of our jobs, on top of basic science, and both spend time consulting about practical applications of the science we talk about in the book. In the past I've worked with Apple during their rollout of differential privacy in iOS10 and with Facebook on their Election Research Commission, helping to facilitate giving social scientists the data that they need to study e.g. the spread of fake news without violating the privacy of Facebook users. We're interested in opportunities to put this new science into practice. MK: In addition to tech industry consulting, I have a long “shadow” career in quantitative and algorithmic trading on Wall Street, where the concerns we write about are rapidly being raised by regulators asking financial institutions about the ways they are using machine learning and AI, and whether those methods are beneficial to the institutions themselves or to society. If you are interested in learning more about ethical algorithms and the science behind measuring algorithm behavior, order your copy of The Ethical Algorithm here.

November 2019 -- Across the business landscape, data, analytics, and artificial intelligence-driven processes are transforming our work. This transformation poses a series of business and ethical challenges alike as a new type of digital firm emerges. When traditional operating constraints are removed, strategy becomes a whole new game, one whose rules and likely outcomes this book will make clear. Iansiti and Lakhani: Present a framework for rethinking business and operating models Explain how “collisions” between AI-driven/digital and traditional/analog firms are reshaping competition, altering the structure of our economy, and forcing traditional companies to rearchitect their operating models Explain the opportunities and risks created by digital firms Describe the new challenges and ethical responsibilities for the leaders of both digital and traditional firms Recently, Forbes profiled Competing in the Age of AI, citing just a few of the common traits between AI-centric firms like Airbnb, Peloton, Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix. AI capabilities are expanding every day. Stay informed and put your firm at the cutting edge by pre-ordering your copy of Competing in the Age of AI here.

Published in IvyExec.com in 2019. Below is an excerpt from the article: Employees want more than a paycheck from their employers. They're seeking a holistic job experience that takes into account their overall well-being—inside and outside of work. If you're looking for the best places to work as a consultant, you'll have to evaluate salary offers—but to get the full picture, you'll also need to consider other forms of compensation, including benefits packages. So what benefits do workers prioritize? In a Harvard Business Review survey, 2,000 American workers were asked which benefits they would give heavy consideration or some consideration. According to survey results, job seekers assign the greatest value to health, dental, and vision insurance, with 54% giving those benefits heavy consideration and 34% giving some consideration. Rounding off the top five benefits were flexible hours, more vacation time, work-from-home options, and unlimited vacation. If you're looking for similar perks at your next place of employment, here are five consulting firms that Ivy Exec members reviewed as having the most rewarding benefits packages. Keystone Strategy Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Keystone Strategy focuses on economics, antitrust, intellectual property, and product development. The firm believes in pulling expertise from academia and pairing it with practical industry experience—and their approach works. They serve high-profile clients, including Nike and LinkedIn. A senior consultant submitted this anonymous review of the organization: “There's a sign at the front door of our office that says “Work Hard and Be Kind to People,” and Keystone so perfectly embodies that ethos. The folks here are hardworking and kind, some of the most supportive and caring teams I've ever worked with. There is a large emphasis on personal growth and development goals here, and I constantly feel like I'm learning more not only about technology and strategy but also how to grow as a person.” Employees at every level agree that the company culture is warm and the work is engaging and innovative. Based on the reviews, most of the staff are also happy with the healthcare benefits, 401(k) matching, and flexible vacation and holiday scheduling. On average, employees receive close to three weeks of paid vacation time. With a benefits score of 4.3 out of 5, the top-rated benefits at Keystone Strategy are parental leave, telecommuting, and flex time. Read the entire article here.

Originally published on Oct 25, 2019 in Puget Sound Business Journal here. Every time there is a news report of an impending storm, hordes of shoppers head to the grocery store to stock up on water and candles, and in the winter, snow removal equipment or generators. In preparation, store managers order additional goods only to either not order enough, leaving the shelves quickly emptied, or order too much, leaving them with a surplus. Now, spikes in purchasing can be anticipated and regular orders can be supplemented with greater accuracy with the assistance of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In the food businesses, for example, inventory may need to change not only with fluctuating weather conditions — a heat wave may spur more purchases of ice cream — but also with other influencers, such as school closings. AI and machine learning can allow near real-time responses by combining analyses of varying external factors with internal data, including sales history and unit profitability. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning now can be used to review digital records of corporate clients to help them focus on bottom line profitability in supply chain, inventory and distribution networks. Through the use of AI a company can become far more flexible in anticipating both supply and demand, and it can provide more strategic management of cash flow and risk management. The evolution of AI and machine learning is becoming more visible and hands-on for both managers and consumers. Major retailers already are experimenting with robotic devices that patrol the aisles and can assist customers to find products through a searchable computer display, with the addition of advanced voice recognition and laser-based sensors that help them navigate. Some hotels offer room service delivered by robot. There also is limited use of proprietary drones to improve inventory management, and preliminary results indicate that inventory tasks that once took humans a month now can be completed in 24 hours using drones. The ability to understand the technical aspects of AI and machine learning and their role in solving daily problems faced by merchants as well as manufacturers opens a new door on efficiency and profitability. The wealth of data available can range from spread sheets to handwritten notes on sales, inventory and myriad other external factors, including weather patterns, community events, holidays, and even unscheduled school closings for snow days. For a chain of coffee shops, for instance, an extended period of warm, dry weather can be a harbinger of increased sales of iced drinks, while cold, wet weather can prompt spikes in hot beverages. During baseball season, demand for sports drinks and electrolyte replenishers may soar, and AI can be instrumental in helping managers focus more clearly on inventory requirements. The merger of AI and machine learning's high-speed capabilities to quickly analyze vast amounts of data with the human capacity to determine how those analyses fit with local conditions heralds a new age of efficiency for retailers and manufacturers alike. Taking the guesswork out of the equation and replacing it instead with accurate analyses and an improved ability to determine outcomes ultimately leads to profitability all around.

In late 2018, Keystone participated in the PROGRAMMATIC I/O conference in New York City, a semi-annual gathering of the leading thinkers in marketing and advertising technology. The conference takes its name (programmatic) from the increasingly prevalent form of digital advertising in which ads are transacted in an automated fashion, typically in the form of real-time auctions where algorithms bid on the chance to show a user an ad. In aggregate, these auctions are conducted tens of billions of times per day and contribute to what is currently a $90B digital advertising market in the U.S. alone. The advertising-funded model is a core driver of multi-sided platform businesses such as Facebook and Google, in which users pay nothing for the service while advertisers pay for a chance to reach and influence those users. With market share concentrated into the hands of a few dominant players, the industry is rapidly evolving and this has brought increased scrutiny from economists, governments and antitrust regulators. In recent years, innovations such as header bidding and cross-device measurement have fundamentally transformed the industry—not to mention regulatory currents such as the GDPR in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Actively engaged in the digital advertising space, Keystone works with clients to help them better understand the wide-ranging implications of new technologies and trends. Here are the business drivers we predict will shape the digital advertising landscape and technologies in 2019 and beyond: Data Ownership: The increased focus on data privacy—coming from lawmakers, privacy advocates, and the general public alike—will have sweeping effects in the digital advertising industry. ePrivacy in Europe, when it comes into effect in 2020, will further strengthen restrictions on data usage and tech initiatives such as Apple Safari's Intelligent Tracking Protection (ITP) will pressure other players to adopt more privacy-friendly measures. New Entrants: Amazon continues its rapid growth into the digital advertising market. Its ads business is now estimated at $10B annually, making Amazon one of the few viable challengers to the Facebook and Google ad duopoly. Amazon's valuable assets include its huge trove of user data and its status as the default place consumers begin their online shopping journey. Other nascent ad players include Musical.ly (renamed TikTok, this is a popular lip-syncing video app now pushing into ads) and Twitch (the video game live-streaming site; also part of the Amazon empire). Accountability and Fraud Reduction: Ad fraud, estimated at $8B annually in lost sales in the U.S. , continues to be a pervasive problem in digital advertising. In Fall 2018, BuzzFeed News published an exposé detailing a network of fraudulent mobile apps which secretly tracked the behavioral patterns of real-life Android users and then used that data to program a botnet which generated “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of fak ad impressions and clicks. Meanwhile, researchers have discovered significant holes in Ads.txt, a technology adopted by the industry in order to reduce fraud. We expect new technologies such as Ads.cert and OpenRTB 3.0 to gradually improve the outlook here. Transformative Technologies: There are numerous technologies with the potential to eventually disrupt the entirety of digital advertising, but which are still premature. Blockchain and artificial intelligence are generating much buzz in the industry, but the immediate applications aren't there yet. Another transformative trend was highlighted at the conference by Adam Heimlich, a Keystone consulting expert and SVP of Media at Gale Partners, who urged advertisers to shift from a “channel-based” view of media to an “audience-first” paradigm. In the channel-based view, advertisers have separate, siloed media teams buying television, digital display, and search advertising but ultimately waste advertising dollars targeting the same user across myriad channels. In contrast, an audience-first approach allows the advertiser to become channel-agnostic, ultimately improving an advertiser's efficiency and ROI. Contributors include Adam Heimlich, Ben Weissler and Samantha Price. ________________________________________ https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/328730/advertisers-lose-billions-of-dollars-to-ad-fraud.htmlhttps://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/how-a-massive-ad-fraud-scheme-exploited-android-phones-tohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/scammers-target-ad-industrys-initiative-to-thwart-fraud-11549537200

Originally published on October 10, 2019 in Forbes by Joe McKendrick, a Contributor for Forbes' Enterprise Tech beat. As hard as it is to believe, artificial intelligence (AI) was rarely mentioned in the discussions related to digital transformation that began almost a decade ago. Now, no mention of transformation would make sense without how AI is making it all possible. The intertwining of digital transformation and AI is the subject of an upcoming book by Marco Iansiti and Karim Lakhani, both Harvard University professors. In their new book, Competing in the Age of AI, they look at successful digitally savvy enterprises across the globe, and how they do things differently. Success in today's digital economy comes from cloud, data science, and nurturing a well-networked ecosystem of partners and contributors. “The new breed of digital firm is all about innovation in the business model, experimenting and recombining various aspects of value creation and value capture,” according to Iansiti and Lakhani. Previously, value creation was usually achieved through simple transactional processes with customers in traditional organizations. In the digital world, things are more multi-dimensional. Read the entire article here.

NEW YORK (PRWEB) OCTOBER 01, 2019 -- Keystone Strategy, which delivers transformative ideas in strategy, economics and technology to the world's most influential companies, has expanded its West Coast leadership with two strategic hires.Jennifer DeWhitt Graves, of Seattle, and Ryan Drake-Lee, of San Francisco, have been named Principals at the firm effective immediately. They will augment the firm's Digital Transformation and Digital Operations practices, respectively; supporting client strategies related to Data Science and Analytics-enabled operating models. They will also support Keystone's strategic growth and people development across its West Coast offices.The duo brings extensive consulting and tech industry experience to the forefront, coming from Google, Starbucks, Bain & Company and McKinsey & Co.Prior to joining Keystone, Graves was a Senior Program Manager, U.S. Operations, at Starbucks overseeing the margin, inventory and field analytics for 10,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. While at Starbucks she implemented and led a $500 million waste management program, digitally redesigned inventory, and overhauled reporting for all 10,000 US and Canada stores. Earlier, she worked at Bain & Company in private equity, consumer products, retail, manufacturing, and education.Graves brings a wealth of knowledge in operations, innovation, and digital transformation. Her focus is on expending the firm's offerings and leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning within supply chain, inventory, manufacturing processes, and distribution networks. Graves is a guest professor of Business at the University of Washington, lecturing on operations management and on finance for non-finance majors.Drake-Lee joined Keystone after working at Google, where he led a 15-plus person team, driving $30 million of incremental revenue. While at Google, he also scaled the vendor team from 14 to 200 plus agents across four locations. He was involved in an operating plan that secured a $13 million budget.Prior to Google, Drake-Lee was a Director and Project Manager at Tomra of North America, where he advised the Senior Leadership Team. He also performed acquisition due diligence for two potential targets in the hardware and equipment segment, ranging from $12 million to $24 million. Prior to this, he spent five years at McKinsey & Co., where he was an engagement manager and business analyst.“Both Jennifer and Ryan are critical additions to our leadership team,” said Keystone President, Jeff Marowits. “Keystone was created to advise technology companies on how best to approach challenges associated with the next wave of business transformation be it through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), or more general digital transformation of strategic business objectives,” he said. “Jennifer and Ryan are wonderful additions, who will expand our reach on the West Coast while offering new and current clients unequaled talent, insights and technology fluency.”About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas and novel solutions to global enterprises and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, and science. The firm's expertise in information strategy & risk, economics, product development, digital transformation, AI/ML and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. Learn more about Keystone at keystonestrategy.com.

Published in IvyExec.com in 2019. Below is an excerpt from the article: The intersection between business, economics, and technology is where Keystone Strategy makes its stand. Keystone Strategy is a strategy and economics consulting firm that's focused on helping clients navigate some of the most difficult challenges facing business today. They work mainly with a variety of Fortune 50 technology companies, some of the world's biggest law firms, and large companies that are being transformed through technology. In fact, it wouldn't be surprising to find Keystone working with any of the companies on our Tech/Digital Disruptive Companies to Work For List. Primarily, you'll find Keystone Strategy working on the leading edge of sciences, technology, and business, says Samantha Price, the first female Partner at the firm. This includes dealing with issues that come up in a legal context, such as intellectual property, competition, and anti-trust. “As part of that work, we leverage strategic insights from leading experts at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton, and other top universities,” explains Price. “Pairing their insights with the practical experts at our firm—made up of MBAs, technologists, and economists—is what makes us unique.” So, it should be no surprise to discover that Keystone Strategy is ranked highly on our list of Top Boutique Consulting Firms. But how exactly did Keystone gain such prestige? The biggest driver of their success is their talent. Read the entire article here.

NEW YORK, Aug. 22, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Keystone Strategy is now ranked number 40 in the Vault 2020 North American Consulting Rankings, Vault and Keystone announced. In addition, Vault ranked Keystone in the top 25 firms in five categories: innovation, diversity, internal mobility, benefits and informal training. The 2020 Vault Consulting rankings, made public this week, are based on responses from more than 17,000 consulting firm employees surveyed earlier in 2019. This is Keystone's fourth consecutive year on this list. "Inclusion in the Top 25 in so many categories is humbling," said Jeff Marowits, Keystone president. "It speaks volumes to our culture which places outsized emphasis on innovation, collaboration across diverse teams and delivering breakthrough approaches to complex business issues." "We recognize the quality and expertise of our peers in the annual Vault Consulting 50 rankings and are thrilled to have moved up to 40th place overall," Marowits added. Keystone was ranked number 43 for 2019 and number 45 for 2018. Vault is particularly known for its annual rankings of law firms, accounting firms, bank investment firms and advertising agencies. The firm also publishes rankings of media and entertainment companies, internet and social media firms, among others. See Keystone's Vault Rankings here. About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology, and business. Keystone regularly combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Learn more about Keystone at http://keystonestrategy.com.About VaultVault is the most comprehensive resource for employers, universities, and internship program rankings, ratings, and insight. Vault's influential rankings and reviews are sourced from directed surveys of professionals and students, and evaluate companies, schools, and internships in terms of prestige, the best place to work, diversity, quality of life, compensation and other categories. Vault provides users with in-depth information on employers, industries, interviews, and available jobs and internships. In addition, Vault partners with employers to help build their brands and assist with recruiting efforts, and with universities to help their students with employment placement and career selection.

In November 2018, the five Commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) upheld the ruling that agreements between 1-800 Contacts and its competitors harmed competition in The Federal Trade Commission v. 1-800 Contacts Inc., Docket no. 9372. Stanford GSB Professor and Keystone Expert, Dr. Susan Athey provided analysis on the anticompetitive effects of the agreements, which played a central role in the initial and appeal courts' decisions. The Commissioners cited that “this case grapples with issues of enormous import. We consider here consumer marketplaces that embody the very basic institutions of 21st century commerce.”The FTC initially brought the case against 1-800 Contacts in April 2017. 1-800 Contacts had entered into bilateral agreements with competitors that prohibited them from placing advertisements on online searches that included each others' names. The FTC alleged that 1-800 Contacts, which is both the market and price leader, harmed consumers by entering into these agreements.Dr. Athey provided the court with her extensive industry and academic expertise with search engines. The FTC asked Dr. Athey to evaluate the impact of the agreements on consumer welfare.Using a statistical model to predict the agreements' effects on consumers. Dr. Athey found that removing the agreements between 1-800 Contacts and its competitors would have led consumers to see many more competitor ads when searching for 1-800 Contacts. Further, the absence of the agreements would have diverted clicks from 1-800 Contacts' site to competitors' sites. Since 1-800 Contacts' prices tended to be higher than its competitors, Dr. Athey concluded that absent the agreements, 1-800 Contacts' prices likely would have fallen and consumers would have been better off.In April 2017, the Chief Administrative Law Judge who heard the initial 19-day hearing concluded that the agreements were anticompetitive and issued a cease-and-desist order against 1-800 Contacts from enforcing them, citing Dr. Athey's testimony. Likewise, at 2018 appeal, the Commissioners highlighted the importance of Dr. Athey's analysis in their judgement, saying “the but-for model… [from Dr. Athey] predict[s] the substantial number of ads that were not displayed….this evidence directly shows the Challenged Agreements cut off advertising in a way that interfered with the operation of competitive forces in the online sale of contact lenses and disrupted consumers' mechanisms for comparing and selecting between alternative online sources.”‍ To view the full judgement on the FTC website, click here.

July 2019 — When Amdocs, a leading provider of software and services to communications and media companies, stopped working with Vesta, a fraud and payments solutions company for online commerce and telecom, it sparked a case alleging misappropriation of trade secrets by its former partner (Vesta Corporation v. Amdocs Management Limited et al T.C. Docket No. 3:2014cv0114). This project would focus on working with industry-leading experts to assess where true innovation was happening in the payment solutions software industry, as well as an insider's view of how large mobile companies decide on their IT solutions. Carnegie Mellon University professor, Michael Shamos and mobile payments industry expert, Christopher Bierbaum were a part of the Keystone's team of technical and industry experts retained by Amdocs to analyze the trade secrets and determine their potential impact in a vendor selection process. Dr. Shamos, who has been engaged as a technical expert in over 230 computer cases, conducted a technical trade secret analysis by running a series of code analyses and prior art analyses to trace the origin of the alleged trade secrets. He ultimately concluded that the technical trade secrets alleged by Vesta in the case did not constitute as trade secrets. Dr. Shamos' findings were corroborated by Mr. Bierbaum, who has over 15 years of experience in the mobile payments industry. Mr. Bierbaum's analysis involved building a vendor scorecard for mobile payment vendors and assessing vendors against the scorecard to determine likelihood of winning a mobile operator's business. The scorecard analysis drew upon his experience of evaluating numerous mobile payment vendors while at Sprint and Softcard (a collaboration between AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile). Ultimately, Mr. Bierbaum concluded that Vesta's alleged trade secrets had no material impact on a mobile operator's selection of a mobile payments vendor. The case was ultimately settled in November 2018. Keystone's work highlighted the firm's ability to provide technical expertise in conjunction with the A-list of experts. Contributors include: Ruby Maa, Anand Natu, Dr. Rohit Chatterjee, Solomon Sia, and Jeff Marowits

July 2019 — Keystone's focus on innovation strategy advisement has often led to transformative projects with biotech leaders. Most recently, Keystone partnered with Roche to help support the development of a platform for digital disease management and monitoring. Keystone tested adoption strategies for patients, physicians and insurers through in-depth interviews and online surveys. Keystone's work also served to expand our network of platform business model and digital healthcare experts by forging a partnership with Harvard Business School Professor, Robert Huckman. Professor Huckman is Chair of the HBS Healthcare Initiative and a leading voice in digital health. Contributors include: Seyla Azoz, Shengjie Zhou, Sean Hartman, and Marco Iansiti

Originally published in Popular Electronics on May 3, 2019. Consider that you are the leader of a firm that has made a significant breakthrough in your field, and your firm is actively spreading the word about your products and developments through a well-thought-out and attractive product. Everything is going well until you discover that out on the Internet there is another firm that suddenly is marketing a very similar product. You are certain that you are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in business to the interloper, but aren't certain that you can prove what your eyes are seeing. Are you the victim of a trademark, trade dress, or copyright infringement? And if so, how do you prove it? Until very recently you would have had a difficult, time-consuming, and costly road before you. Recently, however, researchers applied a subset of artificial intelligence to the legal arena and achieved some remarkable results that can be used to unmask and prove commercial/industrial theft with reasonable certainty. This endeavor is discovering bold new ways to develop existing technology and apply it in previously unexplored areas. To assess a trade dress or trademark infringement claim, two important questions must be answered: 1) does the original product or mark have characteristics that show it has a uniqueness when compared to similar products? And 2) if viewed by potential customers is there a likelihood of confusion between the two products? Previously, courts required plaintiffs to prove that these conditions exist by submitting evidence provided through expert testimony and surveys of potential customers. But recently, by leveraging cutting edge machine learning techniques, it is possible to evaluate the distinctiveness of a mark and the likelihood of confusion with another. These questions can be answered faster, with less cost, and best of all, with documentable results that rely on scientific data not human opinions. The analyses created by this technology provide additional, scientific, supporting data in these cases. In fact, several of the leading experts in this area are already applying machine learning technology in support of testimony. Much as DNA evidence revolutionized criminal trials in the late 1980s, the results provided by AI techniques will push courts to consider the admissibility of such approaches. This is as of yet an untested area, but could significantly lower legal costs. The goal was to achieve a result that would not only meet, or preferably exceed, as yet undefined legal evidentiary criteria with statistical significance, but also withstand spirited cross examination. On a technical level, the program is a convolutional neural network-based binary classifier which is taught to differentiate between products of the target company, and similar, but non-infringing, third party products. Based on the characteristics of the datasets, various data augmentation strategies are used, and some information (such as colors or logos) can be stripped out if the algorithm should not rely on such attributes to make its determination. In test cases, the algorithm performs well at distinguishing between the target product and non-infringing products. However, when asked to classify images of the infringing product, the accuracy drops significantly. This drop indicates that the algorithm struggles to distinguish these potentially infringing products from authentic ones. In other words, it can't tell the difference. Therefore, it can be used a proxy to estimate the “likelihood of confusion.” In addition, this approach provides new avenues for data mining that are impractical with manual methods, such as preemptively analyzing large image sets to identify potentially infringing products. Besides protecting businesses from competitors that are attempting to unfairly infringe on their research and development, this approach also can be used prior to a new product launch to ensure that it does not infringe on brands developed by competing firms that already are on the market. Other uses include research applications that can analyze trends and the diffusion of significant designs through specific markets over time.[1] This approach was developed using core technology that is a direct result of litigation needs that themselves pushed the technology. In a sense, it is similar to doing a manual Internet search for a specific subject, or using Facebook facial recognition technology, but it is exponentially faster and more thorough. It can be applied in the US and overseas, depending on international laws, and overall is a modern technological breakthrough that will provide a significant asset to the legal community. Authored by Cedric Garcia, a former Senior Engagement Manager in the New York office of Keystone Strategy, a management and economics consulting firm. ____________ [1] Neural network-based analysis: authors Cedric Garcia, Shehryar Hasan, Sepehr Saroukhani, Mark Karlson, Alissa Dubnicki, Samantha Price

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2019. Below is an excerpt from the article: There's something compelling and prestigious about the thought of working for a boutique consulting firm—a firm that specializes in niche markets, bringing innovation and cutting-edge expertise to clients in a wide range of industries. It's a job that's rarely boring and always holding the promise to learn something new. And, it's the kind of job that can be personally rewarding in very tangible ways. Here we take a look at Consulting Firms that Ivy Exec is keeping our eye on in 2019 as some of the “Best Boutique Consulting Firms You Should Know.” Read on to see if one of these firms has what it takes to make your “companies I want to apply to” list. Read the entire article here.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in February 2019.Summary. In the digital economy, scale is no guarantee of continued success. After all, the same factors that help an online platform expand quickly—such as the low cost of adding new customers—work for challengers too. What, then, allows platforms to fight off rivals and grow profits? Their ability to manage five aspects of the networks they're embedded in: network effects, in which users attract more users clustering, or fragmentation into many local markets the risk of disintermediation, wherein users bypass a hub and connect directly vulnerability to multi-homing, which happens when users form ties with two or more competing platforms network bridging, which allows platforms to leverage users and data from one network in another network When entrepreneurs are evaluating a digital platform business, they should look at these dynamics—and the feasibility of improving them—to get a more realistic picture of its long-term prospects. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2019. Below is an excerpt from the article: Do you lack opportunities to learn and develop your skills at work? You're not alone. A long-term research project by Middlesex University found that 74% of surveyed employees felt they didn't achieve their full potential at work because they weren't offered career development opportunities. Few companies prioritize their team's professional growth—and that presents problems for employees and stakeholders. Not only is on-the-job training valuable for workers, but it's also crucial for business success. According to the Association for Talent Development (ATD), companies that offer comprehensive training earn a 24% higher profit margin than companies without formalized training. Professional development is also key to improving business functionality—it can streamline operational processes, refine revenue streams, improve the customer experience, and spur innovation. When it comes to professional development, everyone stands to benefit from more on-the-job training, from employees to business owners and consumers. Some organizations are leading the pack when it comes to embracing those initiatives. Read the entire article here.

SAN FRANCISCO (PRWEB) -- Keystone Strategy, an economics and strategy consulting firm, debuts a novel technology to measure trademark infringement by analyzing millions of images in seconds. This unique application, developed by the Keystone Intellectual Property Group in collaboration with the Keystone Advanced Technology Services (K.ATS), team, will be presented today at a poster session at the National Association of Business Economists – Tech Economics Conference (NABE-TEC). The Keystone Team of authors consists of Cedric Garcia, Shehryar Hasan, Samantha Price, Alissa Dubnicki, Sepehr Saroukhani and Mark Karlson.“Current trademark infringement evaluations are missing an enormous opportunity to develop objective and measurable evidence using machine learning and visual recognition technologies,” notes Cedric Garcia, a Keystone Engagement Manager and co-author of the poster. “After working on many high-profile trademark infringement disputes, we developed a scalable, data driven application that can analyze thousands of images of products and measure their similarity within seconds.”Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are transforming the way technology companies serve consumers, but the impact of these innovations has yet to be fully realized in legal disputes. Keystone's development of AI and Machine Learning applications will provide the most sophisticated trademark owners and their attorneys with a new legal strategy and evidentiary tool to greatly improve the evaluation of trademark infringement. In addition, the speed and accuracy of Keystone's technology has broad use outside of the legal industry, from startups creating new products to academic research.The announcement of this unique application continues Keystone's mission to bring actual industry experience and the vanguard of academic approaches to consumer, policy and high-tech litigation disputes supporting companies including Facebook, Oracle, Yeti, and Microsoft. It also recognizes the second year in a row that Keystone's technology has been selected for presentation at NABE's premier technology conference. In 2017, Keystone was recognized for its development of a suite of applications to analyze innovation in visualizing massive software code bases.About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas to global enterprises and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, and science. The firm's Economics and Digital Technology Group applies advanced technical, economic, and engineering knowledge to litigation disputes involving topics like intellectual property, antitrust and tax. Keystone Advanced Technology Services (K.ATS) team focuses on complex issues at the intersection of technology, business, economics, and law. Team members collaborate with some of the world's foremost computer science academics to develop deep technical analysis in bleeding-edge technologies – Virtual Reality, Machine Learning/AI, Blockchain – for our clients at Fortune 50 technology companies. A part of Keystone's suite of services and products, K.ATS is called upon to: assess the value of technology assets, advise a client on future technology investments, or partner with our in-house software development team, Keystone Labs, to build a product offering to improve Keystone client delivery. The firm's expertise in strategy, economics, product development, intellectual property, tax and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. Learn more at keystonestrategy.com.About NABE-TECArranged around the theme "Economics in the Age of Algorithms, Experiments, and A.I.,” TEC2018 brings together leading thinkers in economics and data science in an intellectual exchange on how interdisciplinary developments in these fields are impacting today's approaches, frameworks, tools, and techniques. World-class business economists will elaborate on the emerging and future data science needs in economic research and practice.

BOSTON, Oct. 1, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Keystone Strategy, an economics and strategy consulting firm, announced today that Dr. Rohit Chatterjee has been promoted to partner at the firm effective immediately. Dr. Chatterjee is the first Indian-born partner in Keystone's 14-year history and hails from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Since joining Keystone in 2011, Dr. Chatterjee has grown his practice areas into one of the industry's most sought-after and transformative expert groups supporting Fortune 100 technology companies in the areas of tax transfer pricing, intellectual property, and competition. Dr. Chatterjee continues Keystone's mission to bring actual industry experience and the vanguard of academic approaches to high-tech litigation disputes supporting companies including Facebook, Oracle, and Microsoft. His work with clients such as Amazon and Coca-Cola have transformed the field of tax transfer pricing and Intellectual Property through the integration of platform economics and advanced computer science tools to value innovation. A graduate of the R.V. College of Engineering, Bangalore, Dr. Chatterjee received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. At Keystone, he is co-chair of the firm's Economics and Technical Practice Group. Within that group, he also leads the Firm's Tax Dispute and Computer Science and Innovation Practices, now the fastest-growing practices at the firm. Named a 'Rising Star' by Consulting Magazine in 2016, Dr. Chatterjee is known for his unique ability to synthesize complex economic, legal, and technology issues, his work in the high-profile Amazon v. IRS dispute in 2014 highlights his ability to develop path-breaking methods of thinking about software and technology and changing the way both are understood in tax proceedings. Royce Tidwell, partner, Tax Controversy and Litigation at Skadden Arps, State, Meagher & Flom LLP notes his experience with the firm, "Having worked with many firms like Keystone, I can say that Rohit is among the best in his field. He combines all of the attributes I need in a litigation support partner. He's not just strong technically and analytically, which is critical, he's fully dedicated to solving my client's problems. Taking ownership of issues by thinking independently and strategically, and delivering on unfairly short timeframes is where Rohit excels. Truly an asset that enables me to deliver on my clients' needs." About Keystone Keystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas to global enterprises and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, and science. The firm's Economics and Digital Technology Group applies advanced technical, economic, and engineering knowledge to litigation disputes involving intellectual property, technology valuation, product pricing, and valuation of marketing and other intangibles. The firm's expertise in strategy, economics, product development, intellectual property and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. Learn more at keystonestrategy.com.

NEW YORK (PRWEB) AUGUST 22, 2018 -- For its third consecutive year, Keystone Strategy climbs the list of the Vault North America Top 50 Consulting Rankings and is recognized with two top 10 placements for both innovation and internal mobility. Out of 50 firms on the 2019 Vault rankings, Keystone placed in the top 25 across six categories, including innovation, internal mobility, diversity, benefits, informal training, and satisfaction. Vault received more than 17,000 survey responses from over 70 consulting firms in North America to compile this year's results.Founded in 1996, Vault has established itself as a go-to resource for information on companies for job candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. This includes intelligence on nearly 5,000 companies spanning 120 industries and 840 professions. Consulting is the second highest viewed industry on Vault.“To be ranked second in Innovation out of 50 of our colleagues and competitors is an absolute honor,” said Jeff Marowits, president, client services and staff. “With the rapid pace of change across every business segment brought on by emerging technologies, we see first-hand how critical a sense of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity are when serving our clients. It's great to see these elements of our culture at play in the Vault results,” he continues.About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology, and business. Keystone regularly combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Learn more about Keystone at http://keystonestrategy.com.About VaultVault is the most comprehensive resource for employers, universities, and internship program rankings, ratings, and insight. Vault's influential rankings and reviews are sourced from directed surveys of professionals and students, and evaluate companies, schools, and internships in terms of prestige, the best place to work, diversity, quality of life, compensation and other categories. Vault provides users with in-depth information on employers, industries, interviews, and available jobs and internships. In addition, Vault partners with employers to help build their brands and assist with recruiting efforts, and with universities to help their students with employment placement and career selection.

Originally published on May 8, 2018 in Forbes Technology Council here. As the technology industry booms, so do the legal battles that surround, shape and support it. In the first quarter of 2018, half of the top 10 global companies, ranked by their highest market cap, were rooted in tech, with many of Keystone's clients like Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft reigning over traditional conglomerates and retail giants. With that progress has come a surge in high-stakes, high-profile litigation. Several major cases have grabbed the spotlight in recent years — from the European Union's antitrust charges against Microsoft and Google to the $1 billion smartphone patent dispute between Apple and Samsung to Amazon's billion-dollar transfer-pricing conflict with the IRS to another one of Keystone's clients -- Uber's $245-million trade secret settlement with Waymo. As these cases bring widespread scrutiny to the technology sector, they present critical business challenges. Here are some factors to consider when navigating this growing intersection of technology and the law. 1. Tech Lawsuits Are Complex Legal disputes involving the technology industry are complex. First, the underlying technology at issue in the lawsuits can be difficult to understand. Because of the fierce competition in emerging technology platforms, the real differentiation in the platforms may come down to a very low-level technology feature (e.g., a particular algorithm for optimizing a process embodied in source code) or abstract concepts embodied in the form of trade secrets. This is further complicated by the fact that the underlying technology may actually be evolving during the course of the dispute. As a result, the ligation and pre-litigation arguments involving patents, valuation, competition or even tax need quick resolutions. Second, when it comes to technology disputes, legal precedent may have been originally designed for traditional businesses. However, with the emergence of new business models, creativity may need to be applied to existing laws to work for these new types of companies. With the explosion of the ride-share industry, Uber and Lyft have been hit with several suits based on outdated laws that were designed for taxis. These have slowed down the companies' growth and slowed expansion plans. 2. Make Legal Matters Part Of Your Business Strategy Approaching legal matters as a part of your broader business strategy is vital because the decisions made in these cases can directly impact your product and services. It can also impact your competitor(s) and the broader ecosystem in which you compete. As the fair use settlement in 2015 in favor of Google Books showed, these cases can have wide-reaching precedents that go well beyond the tech industry. Legal battles may stall innovation. Take the case of Vlingo, a voice recognition company on the verge of partnering with Apple, Google and other technology giants in 2008 before it was hit by a patent infringement suit by a competitor called Nuance. Funds originally earmarked for research and development were unexpectedly diverted to court fees. While Vlingo triumphed in the trial, the financial setback forced its eventual sale to its competitor. Many of the lawsuits bubbling up in the tech sector that may relate to licensing, infrastructure projects, collaborations, outsourcing agreements, breach of data or media rights can cause significant rifts in your established business model and impact the direction your company takes moving forward. Both Apple and Qualcomm are suffering as a result of their longstanding legal battles. With the most prominent dispute hinging on basic mobile-phone performance, Apple is at risk of falling behind its competitors in connectivity technology while the chipmaker could take a huge hit to its revenue as it faces losing one of its biggest customers. The two companies that should be growing their businesses together instead are suffocating each other with a long list of lawsuits that have kept them focused on mediation. When your company is not well prepared to deal with potential legal issues, the consequences can be costly and sometimes impossible to overcome. It's crucial to build a business plan that recognizes risk and potential conflict, allowing your team to minimize the impact of these setbacks. 3. Call On The Experts While many judges or juries may lack the expertise to parse the details in highly technical cases, what I have seen time and again is that having experts on your side is advantageous. In the court battle between Apple and Samsung over smartphone patents, the experts on each side guided the decision makers to a thorough understanding of the technology assets involved and related them to real-life business scenarios. They also offered ways to measure and assign a value to the complex technical assets at the center of the dispute. A major point of contention during the trial was that Samsung's expert witnesses argued Apple's patents were worth around $38 million, while Apple asked for $2.2 billion in damages. The outcome is pending a retrial. With the right people in your corner, it's possible for them to understand, measure and value complex technology, provide benchmarks and most importantly, make complex concepts relatable to judges and jurors (e.g., through visual aids or analogies) who may have the power to decide the fate of your company. As in nearly all cases, third-party opinions lend unmatched credibility to your argument. Industry veterans, academics and consulting companies can provide invaluable expertise when it comes to technology-related legal matters. Not only that, but they can provide experience across all phases of litigation, from early exploration and in-depth analysis through depositions and trial testimony. There is a lot at stake here. It pays to invest in people with exceptional problem solving and analytical skills to help you navigate the challenges. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Rohit Chatterjee has 10+ years of work in strategy, operations, product development, innovation, technical & economic consulting across myriad industries.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2018. In this webinar, our panelists tackle the timely topic of Diversity as a Business Strategy. While many business leaders are attempting to implement diversity recruitment, promotion, and retention strategies, many struggle with the essential steps. Our panel of experts and practitioners bring their knowledge in the diversity space to help educate our audience on driving critical thinking and change. Dr. Susan Fleming (Sr. Lecturer at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management), Dr. Andrei Cimpian (Associate Professor of Psychology at NYU) and Megha Mathur (Sr. Engagement Manager, and head of the Diversity Initiative at Keystone Strategy) will discuss: The business benefits of diversity How to get a diversity program started How to properly implement and empower an existing program Moving toward parity in representation in senior leadership Watch the webinar here.

Originally published in Forbes Technology Council on March 16, 2018. Below is an excerpt from the article. Hiring for any position can be a challenge most of the time. You want the perfect candidate that will not only fit in your corporation but has the most talent for the role. This means you need to weigh not only their information technology skills, but soft skills as well, in order to decide who you should make your offer to.Given a wide range of needs, it's hard to know what abilities or skills to value over others. To help bring some clarity on what to look for, 14 members of Forbes Technology Council provide the traits they typically seek when hiring to their tech teams, from innate curiosity and desire to learn to passion, discipline and integrity. Here's what they said:1. A Curious MindBeyond just core technical skills, I look for candidates with genuine intellectual curiosity. A curious mind will never stop learning, ask real insightful questions and conduct themselves with humility. - Rohit Chatterjee, KeystoneRead the entire article here.

Originally published in Forbes Technology Council on March 13, 2018. Below is an excerpt from the article. With technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality top of mind for tech executives at companies around the world today, the next great technological advancement is very likely only moments away. But, are you ready for it?While finding success as a technology executive requires being innovative and ready for the next big thing, as well as understanding how new technologies can positively enhance your company and its operations, those are not the only things you have to keep in mind. Leaders not only need to keep track of upcoming trends, they need to be strong communicators and effective leaders of their teams, making sure that the buzz of tech doesn't pull them away from the moment when they're speaking to a group.Below, 14 members of Forbes Technology Council weigh in on the most important thing that technology executives need to be doing differently today to be successful. Here is what they had to say:[. . .]13. Build A Platform Business Technology executives should think about transforming their business from product led to a platform business instead. When executives start thinking about their business as multi-sided platforms with shared economic value and risks for the various participants in the ecosystem, they unlock valuable new business models and opportunities to create/sustain an important position in the ecosystem. - Rohit Chatterjee, KeystoneRead the entire article here.

NEW YORK (PRWEB) MARCH 05, 2018 -- Keystone Strategy, an economics and strategy consulting firm, announced today that Samantha Price has been promoted to partner at the firm effective immediately. Ms. Price is the consultancy's first ever female to hold the role of partner in the firm's 14-year history. Price joined Keystone in 2011 and has grown her unique practice areas into one of the industry's largest and most transformative expert groups supporting technology companies in the area of intellectual property, competition and antitrust.Ms. Price extends Keystone's mission to bring actual industry experience and the vanguard of academic approaches to litigation disputes through techniques that address: economics of competition in platform markets, advanced computer science tools to value innovation and large-scale consumer behavioral data analysis.As Co-Chair of Keystone's Economics and Digital Technology Expert Group, Ms. Price, a Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) alumna, is among the foremost female principals to lead such a practice in the U.S. Her client successes have resulted in a significant increase in revenue for this business segment, which provides companies such as Facebook and Amazon with a comprehensive set of growth services ranging from defending Intellectual Property (IP) rights to damage assessment within an array of technology and social media industries, including software development platforms, open source, cloud-based software business models and digital real estate.Judy Jennison, a Partner in Perkins Coie's Intellectual Property practice and Chair of the firm's Trade Secrets Group, said of Ms. Price, "I have worked with Sam for several years and am continually impressed with her ability to bring creative solutions to complex legal problems. Her deep familiarity with the technology industry, ability to leverage the Keystone network and commitment to client service are an invaluable combination."Keystone President Jeff Marowits adds, “Sam's promotion is the result of stand-out work on some of the most high-profile, transformative matters within the technology industry. Sam has embraced and extended these values resulting in outsized growth for our business and our clients.”“The Keystone executive team has been 100% committed to growing a pipeline of diverse leaders to lead the firm,” said Gabrielle Toledano, a Keystone Board Member and Chief People Officer, Tesla. “The recognition of Samantha Price's strong contributions and leadership through her appointment to Partner reflects the fruits of this investment for Keystone and its clients.”About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm delivering transformative ideas and novel solutions to global enterprises and law firms on leading-edge challenges in technology, business, and science. The firm's Economic and Digital Technology Expert Group applies advanced technical, economic, and engineering knowledge to litigation disputes involving intellectual property, technology valuation, product pricing, and valuation of marketing and other intangibles. The firm's expertise in strategy, economics, product development, intellectual property and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have a far-reaching impact on business, consumers, and public policy. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact. Learn more about Keystone at keystonestrategy.com.

Below is an excerpt from the article originally published on Law360.com: A California federal jury on Wednesday cleared OculusVR's founder and a Facebook subsidiary on allegations that the billionaire lied about his progress on virtual reality headset designs that Total Recall Technologies contracted him to create and then sold them to Facebook for $2 billion. The trade secrets trial against Oculus VR's billionaire founder Palmer Luckey wrapped Wednesday when the jury unanimously held that Total Recall Technologies had failed to prove that Luckey breached a contractual obligation to it or that Luckey committed constructive fraud. The jury unanimously held that TRT also failed to prove that Luckey had entered into a confidential relationship with it. You can read the entire article here with a subscription.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A technology tug of war is playing out in a San Francisco courtroom. The ride-sharing company Uber is accused of stealing trade secrets from Google's self-driving car company, Waymo. A chauffeur-driven SUV that delivered Uber's co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick to federal court. Kalanick resigned as Uber CEO amid controversy last June, and is the star witness in a trial that could shape the self-driving car industry. "This is Google against Uber for our futures," said David Franklin, a trade secret attorney. "This is a case about domination of the future, [a] hugely important area of technology." Google, which has been developing self-driving vehicles since 2009, is claiming Uber stole trade secrets to advance driverless cars -- secrets so sensitive they have been revealed only to the jury. Kalanick built Uber into the dominant ride-sharing company while building his own reputation as a fierce and volatile competitor, even fighting with one of his own drivers, who recorded the confrontation. It's an image Google's attorneys accentuated, in a remarkable moment in court Wednesday, showing the jury a famous Michael Douglas speech from the movie "Wall Street." "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good," Douglas' character says in the film. Greed, Google contends, led Kalanick to hire a former Google engineer Anthony Lewandowski, who stole Google's self-driving trade secrets. But Uber says it has only used technology that is common knowledge.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in October 2017.Summary. A small number of digital superpowers—Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others—have become “hub firms” because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and claim a disproportionate share of the value being created in the global economy. The authors argue that the hub economy will continue to spread across more industries, concentrating more power in the hands of a few. As an example, they take an in-depth look at the auto industry and how Apple and Alphabet/Google are poised to become the main beneficiaries as cars turn into digitally connected spaces for work, entertainment, and shopping. As hubs proliferate and expand their reach, the danger is that they will exacerbate economic inequality and threaten social stability. It is thus incumbent on all stakeholders—traditional companies, start-ups, institutions, and communities—to make certain changes in the ways they do business. Moreover, hub firms themselves must lead responsibly for the good of all, not just creating and capturing value but doing more to sustain other players in the ecosystem. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Keystone Strategy is proud to now be ranked in the Vault 2018 North American "Consulting 50" Rankings, Vault and Keystone jointly announced. The 2018 Vault Consulting rankings, made public this month, are based on responses from more than 17,000 consulting firm employees surveyed earlier in 2017. This is Keystone's second year on this list. Vault's rankings are based on exclusive insider information from verified employees in the consulting industry. Each year, Vault surveys thousands of consulting professionals. From these results, Vault ranks the top consulting firms in prestige, quality of life, and overall best to work for. View Keystone's Vault profile here. About Keystone Strategy Keystone is a leading innovative strategy and economics consulting firm dedicated to delivering transformative ideas and cutting-edge solutions to Fortune Global 500 companies, top law firms, and government agencies. Our unique expertise in technology-led strategy, AI-driven digital transformation, product development, healthcare, finance, antitrust, and litigation enables us to create bold strategies that have far-reaching implications on business, consumers, and public policy. We leverage a unique combination of strategic insights from the world's leading industry and academic experts with the practical expertise of our accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact for our clients. Learn more about Keystone Strategy at: http://www.keystonestrategy.com.About VaultVault is the most comprehensive resource for employers, universities, and internship program rankings, ratings, and insight. Vault's influential rankings and reviews are sourced from directed surveys of professionals and students, and evaluate companies, schools, and internships in terms of prestige, the best place to work, diversity, quality of life, compensation and other categories. Vault provides users with in-depth information on employers, industries, interviews, and available jobs and internships. In addition, Vault partners with employers to help build their brands and assist with recruiting efforts, and with universities to help their students with employment placement and career selection.

NEW YORK – Keystone Strategy proudly announces the firm has been recognized in Forbes magazine's list of Top 25 Intellectual Property Valuation Service Firms. “This is a great achievement for all those who work in our Intellectual Property practice at Keystone,” says President Jeff Marowits. “At Keystone, we pride ourselves on using our expertise in technology, business, and economics in order to bring transformative ideas to challenging problems, including those in intellectual property.” As noted in Forbes, the world of intellectual property has been fast-moving, with technology issues often at the forefront. Keystone works to offer exceptional intellectual property valuation services to their clients by partnering with leading experts in the industry. About Keystone Strategy Keystone Strategy, LLC (“Keystone”) is a leading innovative economics, technology, and strategy consulting firm dedicated to delivering transformative ideas and cutting-edge solutions to Fortune Global 500 companies, top law firms, and government agencies. Our unique expertise in technology-led strategy, AI-driven digital transformation, product development, healthcare, finance, antitrust, and litigation enables us to create bold strategies that have far-reaching implications on business, consumers, and public policy. We leverage a unique combination of strategic insights from the world's leading industry and academic experts with the practical expertise of our accomplished professionals to deliver extraordinary impact for our clients. Learn more about Keystone at www.keystone.ai or www.keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2017. Below is an excerpt from the article: But when it comes to actually walking the walk, far fewer companies actually make hiring women a priority. But top global consulting firm Keystone Strategy is the exception to that rule. With offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and New York, the firm has brought on a new coterie of female consultants who are ready to shake up their industry and break boundaries. Seyla Azoz is a Senior Consultant in Keystone's San Francisco office. She joined the firm in 2015 after graduating with a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Yale. Over the past two years, she has worked with some of the company's most impressive clients. She provided expert analysis of technology data during the intellectual property trial between Oracle and Google working with a Keystone client that represented Oracle. She's also worked with Fortune 500 companies to optimize how they link online and offline information and has provided expert recommendations for how to improve industry best practices for consumer technologies. Read the entire article here.

NEW YORK, NY (PRWEB) -- Keystone Strategy, an economics and strategy consulting firm, provided economic and technical support to several testifying experts on behalf of Amazon in the recent $1.5 billion tax transfer pricing dispute with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) which resulted in a favorable outcome for Amazon. At issue in this case were the tax implications related to how Amazon valued the intangible assets required to run their European website business, transferred from Amazon U.S. to a European subsidiary. In his March 23, 2017, ruling, U.S. Tax Court Judge Albert G. Lauber rejected the IRS's position that the intangible assets had a perpetual or “indefinite” useful life and should be valued jointly as a whole business using a discounted cash-flow based analysis (Amazon.com Inc. & Subsidiaries v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 148 T.C. No. 8, Docket No. 31197-12, March 23, 2017). Amazon's experts argued that the intangibles should be treated as three distinct collections of assets (website technology, marketing intangibles, and customer information), each with its own value based on its useful life.Working closely with Amazon and its representing law firms Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, Keystone partnered with four academic experts whose collaborative work was instrumental in evaluating the transferred intangible assets, determining their useful life, and the appropriate decay rates upon which royalty rates were calculated. As part of the ruling, the judge agreed that the transferred intangible property had a finite useful life.The Keystone experts that supported Amazon are: David C. Parkes, George F. Colony Professor of Computer Science, and Dean for Computer Science, Harvard University, who evaluated eight (8) separate major software components of Amazon's website technology, and determined the expected useful life of Amazon's website technology by measuring the degree to which those components were actually modified over time. Alan D. MacCormack, MBA Class of 1949 Adjunct Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, who evaluated actual changes to Amazon's source code and testified on its useful life and its rate of decay over that useful life. David Franklyn, Professor, and Director of the McCarthy Institute for IP and Technology Law, University of San Francisco (USF), who testified to the value of Amazon's transferred marketing intangibles (comprised of trademark and domain names), by analyzing the relative allocation of the marketing intangibles between the European portfolio and the U.S. portfolio. Marco Iansiti, David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration and Unit Head, Technology and Operations Management, Harvard Business School, who testified to the rate of innovation and technological change in e-commerce during the years at issue, and provided an upper bound to the value of Amazon's technology. About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology, and business. The firm's Tax Practice provides deep technical, economic, and engineering knowledge on such topics as technology valuation, economic and Industry analysis, product pricing, and valuation of marketing and other intangibles. Keystone regularly combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Learn more about Keystone at http://keystonestrategy.com.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in February 2017.Summary. Contracts, transactions, and records of them provide critical structure in our economic system, but they haven't kept up with the world's digital transformation. They're like rush-hour gridlock trapping a Formula 1 race car. Blockchain promises to solve this problem. The technology behind bitcoin, blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that records transactions safely, permanently, and very efficiently. For instance, while the transfer of a share of stock can now take up to a week, with blockchain it could happen in seconds. Blockchain could slash the cost of transactions and eliminate intermediaries like lawyers and bankers, and that could transform the economy. But, like the adoption of more internet technologies, blockchain's adoption will require broad coordination and will take years. In this article the authors describe the path that blockchain is likely to follow and explain how firms should think about investments in it. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Originally published in Harvard Business Review in January 31, 2017.Below is an excerpt from the article: In just a few years digital technology has connected an ever-growing number of people, sensors, and devices. It's created new business and social networks, resulted in new ecosystems, and transformed our economy. Of course, not all organizations have responded to it in the same way. While some have invested significantly in technology, operational, and cultural changes, others are lagging behind. Our research shows that digital transformation is paying off for those who embrace it: Digitally transformed organizations (“digital leaders”) performed much better than organizations that lagged behind (“digital laggards”), effectively creating a “digital divide” across companies.Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2017.

Originally published in CIO Magazine on September 21, 2016. Below is an excerpt from the article, written by Clint Boulton, Senior Writer at CIO. Consultants like to warn CIOs that if they don't embrace modern technologies to meet customer demands that they will be left in the dust by more nimble rivals. Such sky-is-falling proclamations have been taken lightly because they've been difficult to back up. However, new research from Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Marco Iansiti and Keystone Strategy suggests that a divide is forming between organizations that have accelerated their digital transformations and those that are still figuring out a working digital model. Digital leaders, defined in the report as companies that landed in the top quarter of its research, generate better gross margins as well as better earnings and net income than organizations in the bottom digital quarter. Leaders post a three-year average gross margin of 55 percent, compared to just 37 percent for the laggards. Leaders also outstrip laggards in three-year average earnings 16 percent to 11 percent. And in three-year average net income, leaders have the advantage 11 percent to seven percent. "It's a pretty substantial gap and it correlates with performance in significance ways," says Iansiti, a professor of business administration at HBS, who collected his research from more than 300 senior business and technology decision makers from large enterprises. "The bad news is that it's not going to go away so this is a call to action to go out there and do something about this." Read the entire article in CIO Magazine here.

Keystone Strategy has been named to the Vault 2017 North America Consulting Rankings with two top 10 placements for both innovation and internal mobility. Out of 50 firms, Keystone ranked in the top 20 in five categories, including overall business outlook, selectivity, and exit opportunities. The company was rated among 62 qualifying consulting firms with more than 17,000 consulting professionals participating in the North American survey. Specific areas of focus in the survey included firm culture, quality of life, career development, compensation, outlook and hiring process.Founded in 1996, Vault has established itself as a go-to resource for information on companies for job candidates, recruiters and hiring managers. This includes intelligence on nearly 5,000 companies spanning 120 industries and 840 professions. Consulting is the second highest viewed industry on Vault, with Keystone achieving this recognition in its first year on the list.Keystone is a firm that offers the best of the boutique experience: the opportunity to work on clients' most pressing concerns without the travel and bureaucracy of life at a larger outfit. And all of the signs from insiders suggest that the firm is achieving that balance, while also building its reputation in the process.“We have worked hard to build an exceptional team whose members are deeply committed to solving complex problems on behalf of our clients, but without sacrificing quality of life,” said Greg Richards, co-founder and CEO at Keystone. “We are pleased to be in such good company on this list and to see the results of the survey demonstrate our vision to reality when we hear how positive and passionate employees are about Keystone's work, culture and business outlook.”About Keystone StrategyKeystone is a premier technology-industry consulting firm that delivers extremely novel solutions to the most challenging strategy and economics problems. We work with the world's leading companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola, Facebook, GE, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Nike, Oracle, Zillow, and others. Our team members apply the most advanced strategy, analytical and general management practices commonly practiced while also developing entrepreneurial skills to build high growth businesses. We also provide thought leadership in management science and economics working alongside experts from country's top institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Berkeley and MIT.About VaultVault is the most comprehensive resource for employer, university and internship program rankings, ratings and insight. Vault's influential rankings and reviews are sourced from directed surveys of professionals and students, and evaluate companies, schools, and internships in terms of prestige, best place to work, diversity, quality of life, compensation and other categories. Vault provides users with in-depth information on employers, industries, interviews, and available jobs and internships. In addition, Vault partners with employers to help build their brands and assist with recruiting efforts, and with universities to help their students with employment placement and career selection.

NEW YORK (PRWEB) APRIL 07, 2016 -- Keystone Strategy, a global strategy and economics-consulting firm, announces two awards of recognition for excellence in consulting for 2016. IvyExec annual rankings show Keystone as the top Boutique Consulting firm with a focus on the Technology industry, and the #2 firm with a specialization in Economics Consulting, and a top 10 firm overall. Separately, Consulting Magazine named Keystone Principal Samantha Price a 2016 Rising Star of the Profession.The IvyExec annual award considers survey results from more than 5,000 consultants at more than 100 large and boutique consulting firms globally. Respondents provide insights on consulting firms across five areas: Work, Culture, Money, Leadership and Prestige.On March 8, Principal Samantha Price, was named one of Consulting Magazine's Rising Stars of the Profession. Price was recognized for her breakthrough work on engagements that span economics, business strategy and technology. Consulting Magazine selected its Rising Stars from over 250 submissions. Keystone Partner Jeff Marowits notes, “Sam's depth of industry knowledge, brilliant insights and staunch analytical skills have contributed to building our exceptional Legal and Technology team. She deserves to be named one of the top consultants under the age of 35 in the country.”Sharing Marowits' enthusiasm, Keystone CEO Greg Richards said, “we are thrilled to receive recognition from two of the top publications in strategy consulting. Everyone on our team has contributed to the firm's success. It is a great honor to be recognized in this very public way and to see Sam Price acknowledged by the industry for her incredible client and firm contributions. Both of these awards reinforce our commitment to delivering transformative ideas and the highest quality work to our clients.”About KeystoneKeystone is an innovative strategy and economics consulting firm that delivers transformative ideas to the market. The company partners with Fortune 500 companies on leading-edge challenges in science, technology and business. The firm's expertise in business strategy, economics, product development, intellectual property and antitrust is ideally suited to developing bold strategies that have global impact. Keystone combines the strategic insights of leading experts from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Wharton and other top universities with the practical industry expertise of its accomplished professionals. Keystone is actively recruiting exceptional talent with advanced degrees in business, economics and engineering. Learn more about Keystone and its careers at http://keystonestrategy.com.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2016.

Originally published in IvyExec.com in 2015. Below is an excerpt from the article: Richards, a former robotics engineer and software product developer with Silicon Valley start-ups, and Iansiti, his former Harvard Business School professor and advisor, saw the business opportunity, but also wanted to build a different kind of consulting firm. Richards and Iansiti felt management consulting and economic consulting firms were underserving the tech industry, even as technology was on the cutting edge of business strategy and business model decision-making. According to Richards, “We felt it was fertile ground to bring a new set of skills to solve these problems. The basic idea was that we would need software engineering talent, econometricians who could manipulate data and draw insight from information in large scale, and traditional MBAs with business experience, business intuition and managerial skills. Combining these skill-sets presented a unique juxtaposition of talent that was not common at that time.” ­­ Today, Keystone is a strategy, data analytics and economic consulting firm with about 80 employees and offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco and Seattle. The firm also has a network of over 20 experts, including professors from leading business schools – Harvard, Stanford, MIT Sloan, Wharton, the University of Chicago – and experts in intellectual property, economics, Internet businesses and technological innovation, among others. Expert Susan Athey, Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, is one of the world's most renowned economists on Internet marketplace design, Bitcoin and digital currency. Co-founder Iansiti, head of Harvard's Technology and Operations Management Group and chair of Harvard's Digital Initiative, is an expert himself, brought in on some of Keystone's most challenging projects. Read the entire article here.

Below is a summary from the article published in Harvard Business Review in June 30, 2015.Summary. It's time to rethink what we mean when we talk about “operations.” Operations is not only about manufacturing. Operations is and has always been what gives an organization the power to act: to create value for its customers; to capture value for its shareholders; and to share value with its ecosystem. In the era of ubiquitous digital technologies, operations empowers an increasing variety of organizations, ever more modular, connected, and distributed, ever more centered on software and data. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.

Originally published in Harvard Business Review in November 2014.Summary. When Google bought Nest, a maker of digital thermostats, for $3.2 billion just a few months ago, it was a clear indication that digital transformation and connection are spreading across even the most traditional industrial segments and creating a staggering array of business opportunities and threats. The digitization of tasks and processes has become essential to competition. General Electric, for example, was at risk of losing many of its top customers to nontraditional competitors—IBM and SAP on the one hand, big data start-ups on the other—offering data-intensive, analytics-based services that could connect to any industrial device. So GE launched a multibillion-dollar initiative focused on what it calls the industrial internet: adding digital sensors to its machines; connecting them to a common, cloud-based software platform; investing in software development capabilities; building advanced analytics capabilities; and embracing crowd-based product development. With all this, GE is evolving its business model. Now, for example, revenue from its jet engines is tied to reduced downtime and miles flown over the course of a year. After just three years, GE is generating more than $1.5 billion in incremental income with digitally enabled, outcomes-based business models. The company expects that number to double in 2014 and again in 2015. Read the entire article on HRB.com here.