the rise of new technologies the gig economy platform business models and the increased focus on stakeholder capitalism are significant forces reshaping work moreover oldschool leadership is increasingly being challenged by a new generation of employees more interested in purpose over power and that’s good because the traditional leadership model is no longer effective in a world where work is more collaborative and decentralized concludes research published by bmj leader so what does all this mean for the leader of the future according to a recent study by the boston consulting group companies with a democratized leadership model are more likely to be agile innovative and customercentric they’re also more likely to have employees who are engaged and motivated for these reasons leadership is already being democratized in industries such as technology and media where companies are adopting more flat horizontal structures but the democratization of leadership is not just about changing the structure of organizations but also about how leaders think about their roles in the past leaders have often been seen as allknowing and allpowerful figureheads concludes research by the university of oxford but this is no longer the case in a world where work is more collaborative and decentralized for example consider the sharing economy where people can use technology to connect and share resources think airbnb uber and lyft in this model anyone can be a leader simply by providing a service or organizing a community there is no need for traditional hierarchies or intermediaries instead people can simply connect and access what they need without a centralized authority this kind of decentralized peertopeer model is increasingly becoming the norm within industries such as financial management for example streetbeat—a fintech application that harnesses algorithmic investing—connects users with data and strategies typically reserved for wall street’s elite this allows users to make decisions and trade without needing a broker in other words anyone can be a leader in the financial world regardless of their experience or education “wall street has many competitive advantages related to data and ip that are unavailable to normal investors” said founder and ceo of streetbeat damian scavo in an interview “we want to close the gap by giving everybody the same quality trading that only hedge funds have had” scavo added “we understand the power of data and ai to level the playing field and democratize financial solutions for everyone to access and leverage not just the 1 the wealthy invest 2550 of their money in alternative and actively managed strategies just like the one offered by streetbeat to everyone” further proof of the power gap customers of popular trading platforms like robinhood and coinbase reportedly suffered substantial losses in 2022—44 billion and 160 billion respectively in the first half of this year—while hedge funds were up 20 what is the primary reason for the discrepancy in results between individuals and hedge funds according to scavo it’s an issue of access to realtime alternative data and ai that provides instantaneous expert decisionmaking based on massive amounts of public and private data his view aligns with research suggesting that democratizing financial services is necessary to create a more inclusive and sustainable economy “streetbeat clients are faring better by autoinvesting and diversifying using our proprietary autotrading strategies” he added “we believe this is the future of investing for many globally” streetbeat’s customers which the company suggests grew by 60 to over 110000 in the most recent quarter can choose whether to automate their buys and sells with an auto trading bot—set it and forget it—or perform their transactions manually “our tools empower people to invest smarter and do better financially than they would on their own even in the current bear market providing less risk and a greater reward for our community” noted scavo andrew gray an intellectual property attorney and partner at morgan lewis  bockius in silicon valley foresees the significant potential for these solutions to empower individual investors—including marginalized and lowincome people—to participate in markets more quickly and easily “personalized portfolio management will become available to more people with the implementation and advancement of ai” gray said in an interview “when coupled with natural language processing technologies even greater democratization can result as inexperienced investors can interact with ai systems in plain english while providing an easier interface to financial markets than existing execution tools” naturally providing socalled alternative data sets to the new breed of ai investing platforms for retail investors has become big business as indicated by the most recent thirdquarter revenues reported by similarweb the publicly traded tel avivbased company posted sales of 50 million for the current quarter a 41 increase over the same period a year ago according to similarweb expert hedge fund managers invest nearly 3 billion annually in alternative data sets with yearly spending growing by 2030 from under 500 million in 2018 the “alt data” market will hit 100 billion by 2030 according to a recent forecast by grand view research giana eckhardt professor of marketing and vice dean at king’s business school at king’s college london points out that companies such as streetbeat and similarweb are part of a larger trend towards the “democratization of expertise” this is the idea that thanks to technology information and expertise are becoming more accessible to a broader range of people “in the past expertise was accessible only to the privileged” said eckhardt “but now thanks to the internet and other digital technologies expertise is much more democratized as a result people from all walks of life can now access information and knowledge that was once only available to a select few” eckhardt believes this trend will only continue as more people access technology and the internet “the democratization of expertise is inevitable” she said “we should embrace it as it can create a more inclusive and sustainable world” after all when everyone has access to information and expertise we can all make better decisionswhether we’re choosing which financial product to invest in or how to vote in an election in summary the democratization of leadership opens the door to new forms of expertise allowing people from all walks of life to access information that was once available only to a select few it’s an exciting time for everyone looking to participate in the markets and have their voices heard as technologies continue to evolve and make more things possible it’ll be interesting to see how this trend develops and shapes the future of work after all with the right tools everyone has the potential to play their part in creating a more inclusive economy