Application

How these trends impact your company

STRATEGY

Recognition, scoring and privacy are strategic challenges as well as opportunities for growth. Algorithmic scoring systems automate factors of strategic importance to companies—consumer intent, financial risk, workplace satisfaction—but they should be used as part of a clear set of plans and actions. Approach scoring with unconventional or contrarian thinking: What will be scored, and why? How would scoring lead to downstream risk for our business? How does scoring fit into our longer-term growth ambitions? Chief strategy officers should take an active role in these conversations.

INNOVATION

In what ways could algorithmic scoring itself be improved? Companies that engage in scoring have ample opportunity to disrupt the current model and make needed improvements to address bias, how vulnerable communities are scored, and how the vast dimensions of people are reflected in outcomes. Innovation teams can play an important role by working together with product, risk, consumer insights, UX, and e-commerce teams on their expectations and road maps.

R & D

R&D teams working on algorithms and scoring need to have a good degree of autonomy to design, build, and test new ideas and to experiment with models— but given the sensitive nature of scoring, they should coordinate their activities with strategy, innovation, and risk teams. New research should prioritize transparency. Show other teams what work is in progress, and invite discussion about ethics and accountability. This will build trust within the company and will ensure an easier go-to-market strategy down the road, whether the intended customers are other teams inside the organization or external people and customers.

GROWTH

Scoring presents tremendous opportunities to help businesses understand their customers better. But the challenge is data: high-quality data, ethically sourced, can be difficult to get and it still must be cleaned, refined and accessible by others within the organization. Companies should prioritize good data collection and governance practice in 2022.