Weekends are time when things slow down a little. Your weekend shouldn’t be two more regular work days. That’s a sure road to burnout. Take time to refresh yourself. Take time for something different. Take time for some of that reading you can’t find time for during the week.

Here are choice articles on hot leadership topics culled from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms. This week there are articles about technology and transformation,.

From Scott Erker: 4 Ways to Transform Your People Strategy for Industry 4.0

“To make the latest technology pay off, you’ve got to develop the talent and skills of your workforce.”

From Reinhard Geissbauer, Stefan Schrauf, and Steve Pillsbury: Digital Champions

“Industry 4.0 is not a group of technological platforms that can easily be adopted as a purely operational upgrade. It requires a clear strategy and top management commitment; the transformation of key operational activities; and a deep understanding of collaboration, across internal company boundaries and likely with other companies that share the same platforms and technologies.”

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger: It’s All About the Business Model, – Not the Technology

“In Reinvent Your Business Model, his recently published book, Mark Johnson argues that digital transformation and business model innovation are not the same thing. New technology alone, – no matter how transformative, – is not enough to propel a business into the future. The business model wrapped around the technology is the key to its success or failure. Johnson is Senior Partner in Innosight, the strategy consulting firm he cofounded with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen in 2000. He’s been conducting research on business model innovation for over a decade, and in 2010 published Seizing the White Space.”

From Nasir Wajihuddin: How Do You Plan for Explosive Technological Change?

“Since 1965, as predicted by Intel’s Gordon Moore, the capacity of a single microchip has steadily doubled every two years. Nasir Wajihuddin ’89, CEO of Anedom Mobile Group, says that after five and half decades of exponential growth, technological change is coming so quickly that longstanding strategic frameworks are becoming irrelevant, and businesses require new approaches to digital transformation.”

From Greg Satell: How Artificial Intelligence Is Making The Shift From System To Ecosystem

“Today, less than a decade later, artificial intelligence has been transformed from the incredible to something approaching the mundane. Not only do we have capabilities that are similar to the original Watson system on our phones, we can access top-notch resources from a number of companies, often for free.

Yet probably the biggest difference from those early days of Watson is how AI has evolved from a system to an ecosystem. Much like the evolution from mainframes to personal computers, companies now can access different components to build a system designed specifically for their business. That’s how a technology becomes transformational.”

Book Suggestions

Mapping Innovation A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age by Greg Satell

Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook For Business Leaders by Mariya Yao , Adelyn Zhou , et al.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

Every week I share some recommendations of business books that I think are worth a look. Follow this link to the most recent list.

Every Monday, I do a blog post about business reading and business books. Follow this link to the most recent post, my review of Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude.