Harvard Business Review

JUNE 29, 2016

Armed with an array of sensors, commercial drones are about to become a new source for digital information. In the oil industry, for example, what used to be weeks of inspection work now takes just days, thanks to drone-based thermal imaging and gas “sniffer” technology to inspect oil rigs and pipelines.

Competitive Advantage 10

Competitive Advantage Company Outsourcing Analysis 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 2, 2014

For a retailer, it’s extremely useful to know whether a customer will be back or has abandoned you for good. Sure, human beings, with “their limited computational abilities and their incomplete information,” as the great social scientist Herbert Simon put it , need to rely on the mental shortcuts and rules of thumb known as heuristics.

Simon 10

Simon Retail Uncertainty Apparel 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 26, 2012

She also uses her smartphone to do a quick price comparison, and scans the QR code to get additional product information. Welcome to problem #1 for retailers: The company knows that a potential customer has interacted with it across a lot of touch points but it has no idea that all these interactions are with Jane.

Retail 12

Retail Loyalty Customer Loyalty ROI 12

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 6, 2014

In health care, these tools are changing the way doctors identify people at risk of developing certain diseases; in fashion, they crunch purchasing data to anticipate trends; sales and marketing experts use them to tailor ad campaigns. The definition of a market, customer, partner, or even competitor is now a moving target.

Strategy 11

Strategy Scenario Planning Scientific Management Supply Chain 11

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 3, 2014

An Accenture survey conducted last year found that only one in five companies said that they were “very satisfied” with the returns they’ve received from analytics to date. The retailer example mentioned above used root cause analysis to answer the question around what factors contributed to an unsuccessful marketing promotion.

Root Cause Analysis 8

Root Cause Analysis Metrics Analysis Information Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2016

Nevertheless, few would argue that information technology permanently increased unemployment. Research that I and my colleagues have conducted suggests that the skills gap persists mainly because employers are unwilling or unable to pay market price for the skills they require. However, I argue that this view is not correct.

Skills 12

Skills Education Policies Learning-by-Doing 12

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2013

Carr predicted that an organization''s ability to compete through investing in information technology was about to change dramatically. The IT boom of the 1980s and early ''90s had brought information technology to the corporate masses, unleashing the first full-scale technology revolution in the enterprise.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Competitive Advantage Information Technology How To 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Or, might they see images of Big Brother , and be repelled by a company snooping on the data they generate as they work? But companies are looking beyond cost savings—to driving outcomes. Companies like Google are taking this even further. It’s no coincidence that this sounds like consumer marketing.

Human Resources 11

Human Resources Information Technology Report Human Capital 11

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 18, 2014

CEOs of midsized companies who make big bets can lose the farm. The executives of Fortune 500 companies might be able to lose the same bet with impunity, and the founders of venture capital-funded startups are only renting the farm (with the VC’s money) anyway. The malfunction caused major delays shipping toys to retailers.

CFO 8

CFO Venture Funding IPO Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 18, 2014

For one thing, thanks to a long history of exclusive municipal franchising regulations that didn’t end until 1992, the two companies don’t overlap in any market—TWC customers will become Comcast customers (and get arguably better technology and service in the process), but no local market will see a decline in the number of competitors.

Technology 8

Technology Content Information Technology Franchising 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 23, 2014

It’s only recently, though, that advances in information technology have made it possible for predictive tools to access and manipulate big data, and to do so continuously — accelerating the generation of insights, and opening up opportunities to anticipate issues with unprecedented precision. But not for long.

Health Care 8

Health Care Pharmaceuticals Information Technology Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 3, 2013

Big Data is what enables banks to predict credit card fraud by analyzing billions of transactions, marketers to understand customer sentiment by analyzing millions of interactions on social media, and retailers to target promotions and offers by analyzing millions of purchases. Information & technology Marketing Social media'

Power 8

Power Health Care Information Technology Loyalty 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 19, 2017

While the Constellation study is careful to say that companies rise and fall for many reasons, digital disruption is clearly responsible for a large share. Research shows that since 2000, 52 percent of companies in the Fortune 500 have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist as a result of digital disruption.

Technology 8

Technology Industry GDP Content 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 28, 2014

Take a look at “Change and Progress” and “Transformation of the Automobile Market,” chapters in Sloan’s autobiography, My Years with General Motors , published in 1963. If you substitute “social media” or “apps” or “digital revolution,” you’ll find that Sloan’s description of changes in the auto market from 1924 to 1926 (three years!)

Strategy 8

Strategy Competitive Advantage Marketing Information Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

To avoid getting overwhelmed by all the data and the possible opportunities it could uncover, companies should slow down and just focus on the things that matter — it’s much easier to focus on resolving five issues that could truly make a difference instead of 500 issues that might help the business. Information & technology Leadership'

Banking 8

Banking Hypercompetition Constraint Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 24, 2012

Brands and companies that are able to develop big insights — from any level of data — will be winners. Here's a four-step marketing data-centered process that doesn't stop at the data, but focuses instead on generating insights relevant to specific segments or affinity groups: 1. Big data is great. Analyze and Discover.

Metrics 15

Metrics Media PR Benchmarking 15

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 28, 2014

Today, the company does roughly $50 million in total sales, with the home market accounting for over 80% of them. That’s a healthy company. Consolidation shrinks the market down, often to one remaining, integrated producer, who can still profit by serving a small group of legacy customers. There is no paradox.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Supply Chain Technology Parcell 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2013

It boasts 85 companies in the Global Fortune 500 list of the world’s largest corporations. Moreover, the population is aging and the size of the labor force is set to plateau in 2016 (See “China’s Labor Market” chart below). China, too, needs more technological innovation. China Economy Global business'

GDP 12

GDP Supply Chain Globalization Technology 12

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 21, 2011

My team would have people with deep functional knowledge and skills (strategy, sales, marketing, finance, and information technology) to align surrounding processes. Consider Lowe's , America's second-largest home improvement retailer worldwide, with revenue of $49 billion and more than 1,700 stores.

Six Sigma 14

Six Sigma Skills Team Compliance 14

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Whatever your discipline, doing business today means immersing yourself, and your organization, in a wealth of messy, unstructured, real time data from customers, competitors, and markets — and finding ways to use such data visibility to see what's coming. Big Data examines what people say about what they have done or will do.

Real Estate 8

Real Estate Merchandising Retail Chemicals 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 11, 2016

A 2015 Nielsen Global Sustainability Report found that 43% of consumers say that a company’s commitment to social value “very heavily” or “heavily” influenced their purchase decisions. The company was built on the belief that people can trust each other enough to stay in each other’s homes.

Technology 8

Technology Price eBook Globalization 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

What actually matters is how the people are connected together by computers and how, as a whole, they create a financial market, or a government, a company, or any other social structure. Markets are not just about rules or algorithms; they're about people and algorithms together. They can all be made better with Big Data.

System 15

System Analysis Retail Focus Group 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 16, 2012

Part of his winning formula was in functional centralization, appointing the company's first Chief Marketing Officer — in function if not in name. Making the most of a company's data requires oversight and evangelism at the highest levels of management. Making sure the company is collecting the right data.

Venture Funding 15

Venture Funding Price Technology Tactics 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 31, 2017

Ash Gupta is President of Global Credit Risk and Information Management at American Express, and Guy Peri is Chief Data Officer and Vice President of Information Technology at P&G. The company also built an expert system that helped advertisers at P&G to use, modify, and reuse the company’s advertising assets.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Technology System Early Adopters 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 26, 2012

In other words, the advantages of size gave some companies a bit of safe harbor. Where most managers are forced to spend their days figuring out the next best iteration on their products or services, a handful of companies have been able to exploit scale instead of vision in their pursuit of profit. Consider Porter's value chain.

Porter 12

Porter Competitive Advantage Safe Harbor Efficiency 12

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

She is a 58 year-0ld farmer who has seen a dramatic increase in household income as a result of the factory job her son has and the retail earnings of her daughter in law. Our analysis shows that by the year 2020, the combined consumer markets of China and India will amount to some $10 trillion annually. Approximately $6.2

Health Care 8

Health Care Policies Information Technology Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 9, 2012

The retail giant tracks customer behavior so rigorously that it had accurately predicted when a teenaged customer was pregnant based on her buying patterns; this was before she had even told her father, who was outraged when Target started sending her baby-product promotions. (It Consider the case of Target.

Competitive Advantage 8

Competitive Advantage Retail Comparison Business Intelligence 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 21, 2013

Social media data combined with mobile phone data combined with retail data might be necessary to provide a fuller picture of what's needed after a global crisis, such as a natural disaster or another economic downturn. This type of analysis might require that various private sector companies share potentially sensitive information.

Analysis 16

Analysis Globalization Crisis Price 16

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 28, 2016

And you probably won’t even know you’ve been affected until it’s too late to prevent significant damage to your company’s finances, operations, and reputation. But the scale of the problem means cybersecurity should be a concern for every executive, from HR to Marketing. The risk is growing.

Content 8

Content Industry Finance Report 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 28, 2012

Acutely aware of the competitive edges timely data offers sophisticated investors, the company's ever-entrepreneurial cofounder once proposed that Google launch a hedge fund. After all, what company on earth enjoyed greater access to more insights more quickly from more people searching for more information? More >>.

Hedge 15

Hedge Core Competence CFO ROI 15

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 17, 2013

Our research, which has involved studying more than 50 international organizations in a variety of industries, has identified an alternative approach to big data and analytics projects that allows companies to continually exploit data in new ways. Instead of the deployment of technology, it focuses on the exploration of information.

Project 8

Project Call Center Information Retail 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 22, 2010

He advises some of the world’s biggest companies on environmental strategy. The Ministry of Commerce was showing how some companies "have made use of technology to.promote a low-carbon economy and environmental protection." Follow him on Twitter at @GreenAdvantage. And on and on. In the U.S. and the West for best practices.

NGO 14

NGO Chemicals Guidelines Telecommunications 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 18, 2016

A retailer’s point of sale (POS) system falls into that category. They are essentially R&D investments in unproven ways to use digital technologies. They are driven by novel ideas or perhaps a new technology. Given that a company depends on its core systems, non-availability or sub-optimal performance is not an option.

Tools 8

Tools Competitive Advantage Operations Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2012

For a decade or so now, we've seen technology and data bring new levels of personalization and relevance. Online retailers are able to offer — via FedEx, UPS, and even the U.S. Brokering augments the value of information. For example, retailers like Amazon could sell raw information on the hottest purchase categories.

Business Model 9

Business Model Dunning Advertising Content 9

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

Rising to this challenge, defense companies have made major strides in image processing and analysis. Companies like our own have deployed technologies and software solutions for troops in Afghanistan that help soldiers quickly make sense of imagery and video feeds captured by unmanned systems flying overhead. More >>.

Technology 8

Technology Analysis Health Care Industry 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 16, 2013

Companies like Google and Verizon are hoping people will pay by tapping their phone instead of swiping a card. It has the potential to, as no technology before, bridge the gap between virtual and real. What has retailers so excited about NFC is the ability to bring the seamless connectivity of the offline world to the online world.

Download 8

Download Loyalty Objective Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 21, 2013

Social media data combined with mobile phone data combined with retail data might be necessary to provide a fuller picture of what's needed after a global crisis, such as a natural disaster or another economic downturn. This type of analysis might require that various private sector companies share potentially sensitive information.

Analysis 9

Analysis Globalization Crisis Price 9