Harvard Business Review

JUNE 12, 2017

But at good jobs companies, these very skills are already demanded, developed, and put to use. Mercadona’s store employees are empowered to order products and present them in a way that satisfies their customers and improves company performance. When that future comes, who will have the competitive advantage?

Merchandising 8

Merchandising Retail Competitive Advantage Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Pioneers of new business models, such as Alibaba and Amazon, are launching innovations in rapid succession, such as voice ordering and real-time pricing, while simultaneously building scale and driving down costs. In the process, the company became better acquainted with its customers – what they liked to buy and how they liked to shop.

Retail 10

Retail Chief Executive Officer Supply Chain Operations 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 6, 2014

If round after round of profit warnings was not enough – group operating profits fell 20% between 2011 and 2013 and are likely to fall another 30% in 2014 — the company recently announced it had overstated its first-half profit by about $400 million. Troubles at Tesco, the UK’s leading retailer, are mounting. How did this happen?

Retail 11

Retail Merchandising Discount Price 11

You're Not the Boss of Me

OCTOBER 31, 2010

They are also imposed to provide structure in organizational settings that support the work and build a broad framework within which individuals are free to operate and contribute. They stifle creativity and innovation. As they often say in retail stores about handling merchandise, “ If you break it you own it”.

Maturity 50

Maturity Blog Merchandising McCarthy 50

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 24, 2013

In the words of its executive vice-president and chief merchandising and marketing officer, “This is really the year of localization.”. The infiltration of technology into every part of our lives has made many people seek out personal, low-tech/high-touch experiences and relationships with the companies they patronize.

Retail 8

Retail Merchandising Market Penetration Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2018

Amazon, born 24 years ago, had captured about 45% of online retail commerce in the United States by 2017, but still stood for just about 5% of total US retail gross merchandise volume in that year. Even if a technology race develops, some companies will adopt rapidly, but others less so—and the benefits of AI will vary accordingly.

GDP 10

GDP McKinsey Long-term Technology 10

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 2, 2017

Over the past year, we hosted current or former leaders from each of these retailers at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and all four talked about a corporate culture of setting high expectations and creating conditions that encourage employees to innovate. And every year, those partners come through; so the investment pays off.

Retail 13

Retail Merchandising Incentives COO 13

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 21, 2014

When I argue that e-commerce isn’t likely to destroy innovative omnichannel retailers , I typically receive passionate responses. E-commerce companies, like physical retailers, have wide-ranging cost structures and financial results. In general, however, e-commerce operations aren’t as cheap to run as most people think.

Retail 8

Retail Price Forrester Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 3, 2014

After forcing Nardelli out in 2007, founder Bernie Marcus got the company back on the competing-by-boosting-margins-through-innovation road. Clothing designers fought the concept, but our two heroes persevered (more drive), and today the company has more than 3 million members and is growing at nearly 100% year-over-year.

Merchandising 8

Merchandising Budgeting Restructuring PR 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 21, 2017

As more companies struggle to find their niche with the modern consumer, they’re turning to new technologies to recreate this sensory experience. To embrace this market shift, retailers will need to experiment with a range of technologies and strategies across marketing, supply chain, and merchandising. Insight Center.

Retail 8

Retail Supply Chain Merchandising Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 23, 2012

In fact, the company has about 500 metrics that it tracks every day, the majority of them relating to the customer experience. Many companies pride themselves on moving from quarterly to monthly customer feedback sessions. The company gets daily or hourly feedback from buyers and responds with continual improvements.

Merchandising 14

Merchandising Metrics Restructuring Library 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 6, 2011

Saving sales by pointing to merchandise locations is just one of the ways that store employees facilitate the sales process and perform a very important role. The most innovative employee managers we know use business analytics to understand the differences in how individual store associates perform.

Retail 15

Retail Merchandising Succession Taylorism 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 24, 2017

These have forced AirBnB, Tesla, and Uber to make costly concessions to their operating practices or to exit certain markets altogether. Uber has used petitions to demonstrate consumer—and voter—support in at least 10 cities, mostly in North America and Europe, where it has met resistance from local taxi companies.

Licensing 10

Licensing Proposal Retail Long-term 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 5, 2016

This painful decision cost tens of thousands of jobs but proved strategically, organizationally, and culturally essential to the company’s future success. The company will also eliminate a key chipset in the difficult tablet and smartphone market. But the past is merely a prologue.

Levitt 8

Levitt Disaggregation Kaizen Call Center 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 27, 2017

The bad news: Petabytes of new data and algorithmic innovation assure that “autonomy creep” will relentlessly challenge human oversight from within. In reality, “handoffs” and transitions prove to be significant operational problems. Versions of this are ongoing at companies such as Netflix and Alibaba.

Outsourcing 8

Outsourcing Software CAPEX Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 1, 2016

When CEO Brian Cornell took the reins two years ago, he inherited a company that had been struggling for years, taking far too few risks, and sticking too close to the core. ” was the guiding question that fueled Wollaert’s curiosity when he first joined the Coca-Cola Company designing new factories.

Diversity 8

Diversity Retail Discount Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 14, 2013

Companies are turning to "purpose" and "authenticity" as a way to engage consumers and employees. But it's hard enough to find a purpose in life if you're an individual, let alone an entire company. To understand the power of shared purpose, it's useful to look at the mission statements of leading companies.

Mission Statement 9

Mission Statement Sports Merchandising Brand 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2014

Both have signed on with Prism Skylabs , a software company, to map in-store customer behavior. ” Lezon, along with Alex and Ani’s head of merchandising and head of sales operations, used the data to inform product placement. “I don’t come in every morning and say, “How am I going to innovate today?

Retail 12

Retail Chief Technology Officer Technology Merchandising 12

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 23, 2015

Here at Machine Shop , the wholly owned innovation company of the alternative rock band Linkin Park, we identified the need to think differently years ago. For more than a decade, Linkin Park and Machine Shop enjoyed success and continued to innovate. of course). Photo by Lorenzo Errico. Enter Harvard Business School.

Business Model 8

Business Model Merchandising Restructuring Fashion 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2017

Each of these companies has aligned and integrated its culture and brand to create a powerful engine of competitive advantage and growth. Their leaders understand that a strong, differentiated company culture contributes to a strong, differentiated brand — and that an extraordinary brand can support and advance an extraordinary culture.

Brand 8

Brand Company Operations Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Data science can enable wholly new and innovative capabilities that can completely differentiate a company. But those innovative capabilities aren’t so much designed or envisioned as they are discovered and revealed through curiosity-driven tinkering by the data scientists. Sounds great, right?

Learning-by-Doing 10

Learning-by-Doing Engineering Metrics Cost 10

In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

The creative industry operates largely by holding ‘creative’ people ransom to their own self-image, precarious sense of self-worth, and fragile – if occasionally out of control ego. But even artists have to eat, and the fuel of commerce and industry is innovation and novelty. Economically I probably helped shift some merchandise.

Advertising 265

Advertising Creativity Industry Bottom-up 265

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 12, 2014

Any company building an online presence wouldn’t think twice about the need for sophisticated web analytics. Despite its success online, relatively few companies with physical venues employ advanced analytics solutions that track customer behaviors in their physical spaces. Operations. This is changing fast, however.

Retail 9

Retail Customer Intimacy Apparel Wireless 9

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 18, 2017

Since the pace of marketing is now determined by everyone with access to the internet or a mobile device who can gleefully tweet, post, or blog their feelings and experience, customers can instantaneously become an extension of your company’s story—for good or bad. ” Read More from Microsoft.

Sports 8

Sports Brand Content Industry 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

The challenge for the functional model today is that companies don't need to build generic functional strengths. They need to build more specific, bespoke capabilities that are part of the inherent identity of the company, and hard for anyone else to duplicate. No other company does these things the same way these two companies do.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Real Estate Short-term Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

At the same time, trade secrets are viewed as the stepchild of intellectual property because they operate, by definition, in secrecy, and we know much less about their role in market competition than we know about patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Why do some companies choose to patent their innovation while others choose to hide it?

Intangible Assets 8

Intangible Assets Merchandising Innovation Pharmaceuticals 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

We were supposed to be coming up with ideas for improving the company’s customer experiences, but the head of operations could not think of a single new customer service idea to explore. And the merchandising vice president had difficulty understanding why “product” was one of the categories we were discussing.

Brand 8

Brand Reis Objective Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 30, 2012

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company will emerge from bankruptcy. Department of Justice even convicted the company of illegal restraint of trade for selling food too cheaply. Hartford, remade their company again and again to keep in step with changing times. In 1946, the U.S. and John A.

P&L 14

P&L Retail Real Estate Discount 14

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 24, 2014

I’m on the board of Time Warner, we have just parsed off our third major part — our original company, Time Inc., So, it’s not uncommon to add a bunch of companies together, much less software products, and then divest yourself of them as the shareholders think they have more value standing alone than standing together.

How To 14

How To Technology Industry Venture Capitalist 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

Throughout the global economy, big companies are getting bigger. They’re more productive , more profitable , more innovative , and they pay better. The people lucky enough to work at these companies are doing relatively well. ” Its appetizer seems to have been smaller companies. Andrew Brookes/Getty Images.

Software 8

Software Company Competitive Advantage Henderson 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 3, 2018

These gold coasts are home to nine of the top 10, and 18 of the top 20, internet companies, as measured by market capitalization. The leading companies in online search, social media, and e-commerce are all based in one or the other of these two regions. Winner-take-all economics favored the companies in the U.S. Insight Center.

Company 8

Company Venture Capitalist GDP Retail 8