Technological innovations have radically transformed the business landscape in many ways over the last two centuries, from the introduction of steam power to the market conquest of radial-ply tires. Research by McKinsey & Company and the McKinsey Global Institute shows that digitization is having the same radical impact. In particular, our research shows how digitization can significantly hurt incumbent firms in many industries -- depleting as much as half the revenue growth and one-third of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) growth of companies that neglect to embrace digital innovations. It is not too late for incumbents to reverse the digital curse and re-create a more profitable growth path if they are willing and able to invest more in digital than their peers and take the offensive by reshuffling their activity portfolios and beefing up remaining activities with new business models. On top of that, incumbents would be wise to choose a "platform play" -- creating value by intermediating in transactions between other parties, such as suppliers and consumers -- because it opens the way to capture more value in disrupted industry chains.

The one-time giant of smartphones has gone through tumultuous times over the past six years, and become a much smaller software company. Its results last week showed just how small: third-quarter revenues were $226m (£169m), its lowest three-monthly total since 2004, with an operating loss of $258m. The Canadian company's chief executive, John Chen, is a turnaround specialist who believes that the future is in self-driving cars, where automakers and software firms alike see huge promise. It is investing hope in QNX, which it bought in 2010: a maker of software that underpins car entertainment and data systems. That is a long way from the early 2000s, when BlackBerry was one of the world's biggest smartphone makers and Apple had yet to launch the all-conquering iPhone.

SingularityNET raised $36 mln in one minute, completely selling out of its native AGI tokens. While this is an enormous amount of money to raise in an incredibly short period of time, it's somewhat unsurprising considering demand. The company asserts that the issue was massively oversubscribed, with 20,000 people registered to participate, seeking to buy $361 mln worth of tokens. "[Screening] all applicants using layers of algorithms, in addition to manual review, to comply with global KYC/AML regulations. This reduced the pool of contributors to 5,000, but also set a new standard for fundraising via Blockchain with respect to global legislation."

Investors in Didi's new funding include Japanese mega-fund-manager SoftBank Group Corp. and Mubadala Development Co., an Abu Dhabi state fund, people familiar with the matter said Thursday. The company announced the funding without naming the investors. The injection gives Beijing-based Didi $12 billion cash reserves and a valuation of $56 billion, these people said. It also means that added together Didi has raised about $19 billion, the most venture capital ever raised by a startup, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. While Uber's valuation was roughly $68 billion based on its last funding round in June 2016, a current SoftBank offer to purchase a sizeable stake at a large discount would lower the U.S. ride-sharing firm's valuation in the range of about $50 billion.

Didi Chuxing has announced another gargantuan equity funding round, as the Chinese ride-hailing giant reveals it has raised a further $4 billion. This latest round comes just eight months after the company raised $5.5 billion, which followed a year after it raised $7.3 billion from big-name backers including Apple. This new cash injection takes Didi's total inbound investments to $19.7 billion, though the company didn't reveal who the investors were beyond stating they were "Chinese and international institutions." With another $4 billion in the bank, Didi said that it plans double down on its artificial intelligence (AI) investments, support its global expansion, and support other initiatives such as "new energy vehicle service networks," according to a statement issued by the company. Similar to Uber, Didi Chuxing offers smartphone-based car services, such as carpooling, taxis, and premium cars with drivers, while it has previously revealed how it's lending its data to cities which are leveraging it in all manner of ways to fight road congestion.

Over the last 12 months, we've seen some incredibly stirring and thoughtful conversations from our members on LinkedIn about hot topics like the opioid crisis, immigration reform, the U.S. tax bill, healthcare coverage and harassment cases. These events sparked hundreds of thousands of insightful comments from professionals on LinkedIn around the world -- and will certainly have lasting consequences for years to come. Amazon has become a kind of corporate obsession in 2017. Companies big and small are watching the retailer: A review of last quarter's earnings calls shows that Amazon's name came up almost four times as often as President Trump's, and six times as often as wages. Amazon's moves this year proved that it's corporate tentacles are expanding, from purchasing Whole Foods to searching for its HQ2, a $5 billion project that promises to bring 50,000 high-paying jobs to the winning locale.

One Concern today announced it has closed a $20 million funding round to "future proof the world," according to a company spokesperson. The funding will be used for research and development to expand One Concern's use of machine learning to predict and mitigate the impact of natural disasters like fires, floods, and hurricanes after they happen. Predictive AI from One Concern called Seismic Concern currently focuses on earthquake preparedness and response. For example, AI models trained with information about building structural integrity and seismic activity is deployed to help cities know where to dispatch emergency workers after an earthquake. Demographics of people impacted, such as age and economic status, are also provided.

DigitalGenius, a fledgling artificial intelligence (AI) startup that's setting out to automate many facets of customer service, has announced a $14.75 million series A funding round led by Global Founders Capital, with participation from Salesforce Ventures, MMC Ventures, Paua Ventures, Kairos, Runa Capital, RRE Ventures, Lumia Capital, Compound, Spider Capital, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Founded out of London in 2013, DigitalGenius connects with companies' CRM and customer service platforms to train AI assistants using transcripts from historical customer service interactions. Using these learnings, the AI is able to predict relevant meta-data about a new case in real time, and even channel a query to the most relevant (human) team members based on the content. It's more about helping human customer service personnel respond quickly to queries using historical precedence, so that when a message is received over email, social media, or other text-based messaging platforms, DigitalGenius can suggest the best answer for an agent to approve. In theory, the model should improve with each human interaction.

When DigitalGenius participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield competition in New York City in 2015, there weren't a lot of companies working on AI and machine learning. Today, it's become much more commonplace, and the company announced a $14.75 million Series A. Global Founders Capital led the round. MMC Ventures, Paua Ventures and several other unnamed new investors also participated They also got help from previous investors Salesforce Ventures, Runa Capital, RRE Ventures, Lumia Capital, Compound and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Today's investment brings the total to $26 million, according to the company. DigitalGenius may have been ahead of its time, but the market is finally catching up.

There is no force on earth more powerful than an idea whose time has come. Robotic companies continued their two-week pattern of underperformance this week relative to the broader markets. Fully twelve members of the 30 stock Bot Index fell over 3% during the week and drove the Index to a virtual flat performance versus the S & P 500's .35% Four stocks in the health-care sector were among the greatest losers due to a Motley Fool article that focused on competition in the sector. Despite a two for one stock split on December 4th, shares of Cognex traded down over seven percent.