Fresh thinking to stay ahead of the curve

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ESI ThoughtLab is an innovative think tank that offers fresh ideas and evidence-based analysis to help business and government leaders understand and respond to economic, industry and technological shifts around the world.

Our in-house team of over 40 economic, industry, and thought leadership specialists excel at creating valuable decision support that combines visionary thinking, analytical excellence, with engaging multi-format content.

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Our Latest Thought Leadership Work

The Value of Automation to Businesses

Thinking beyond the war between machines and humans. The value of automating manual processes in companies—what experts call robotic processing automation (RPA)—is greatly misunderstood. For many, it is seen simply as a way to cut costs, and at its worst, to eliminate jobs. But the benefits of automation go well beyond cost efficiencies, particularly for […]

Urban Experts Join Forces to Develop Results-Driven Playbook for Becoming a Smart City

Study will define cost-benefits of smart-city investments and provide city and business leaders with an evidence-based guide for future sustainable growth May 6, 2019 (Philadelphia, PA) – ESI ThoughtLab announced today the launch of its 2019 Smart City Research Initiative, Building a Hyperconnected City: Business models, use cases, and benchmarks behind high performance. Given the […]

Boosting the ROI on Thought Leadership

According to a recent survey conducted by Edelman and LinkedIn, only 18% of executives give high marks to the thought leadership they receive. For these executives, much of today’s thought leadership is derivative: it lacks the vision, analytical insight, and valuable advice that busy executives desire. During my years as a publisher with Business International, […]

2019 Global RPA Survey

Companies across all industries are embracing robotic process automation (RPA). In as little as two years, RPA leaders – those companies our research identified as ahead of the curve – […]

Jobs of the Future Quarterly Index

To benchmark the emergence of new jobs, Cognizant created the Jobs of the Future Index (CJoF Index). This quarterly index measures the changes in demand for a set of 50 jobs […]

KPMG: Consumer Loss Barometer

As digital transformation propels organizations worldwide to deploy digitally-enabled products and services that increasingly collect and leverage abundant amounts of data, protecting that data and maintaining consumer trust is increasingly […]

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Building a Hyperconnected City

Businesses and residents are embracing technological innovation faster than many cities can react. With digital change happening in hyper-speed, urban leaders need to act now to bridge the technology gap between their cities and stakeholders.

Building a Hyperconnected City will provide urban and business leaders with the definitive playbook for creating a digitally-enabled and seamlessly interlinked ecosystem.