Harvard Business Review

JUNE 12, 2017

The blizzard of conferences, initiatives, articles, and reports on how to prepare for the changes technology will bring to our economy is important. But at good jobs companies, these very skills are already demanded, developed, and put to use. Work currently does not work for millions of Americans.

Merchandising 8

Merchandising Retail Competitive Advantage Technology 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

MAY 30, 2014

Strategic consistency is the hallmark of many great companies. over the last half-century, but also one of the best-performing companies in any industry. But the corporate landscape is also littered with once-great companies whose strategies became obsolete faster than they were able to reinvent themselves. Or consider U.S.

Company 8

Company Supply Chain Airlines Health Care 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

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2018

New research from the McKinsey Global Institute simulates the potential global macroeconomic impact of five powerful technologies (computer vision, natural language, virtual assistants, robotic process automation, and advanced machine learning). We know that technologies often take a long time to diffuse and to deliver benefits.

GDP 8

GDP McKinsey Long-term Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 11, 2018

I believe the smartest choice — one that will help them compete against online retailers like Amazon — is to create a better experience for customers and to achieve operational excellence in stores. Many companies can no longer grow profitably just by adding stores — they need to get more out of their existing stores.

Retail 8

Retail Operations Merchandising Motivation 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 23, 2015

Technology has forced music artists to completely rethink the way they approach their businesses. They’re extending their brand into areas like technology, gaming, fashion, and lifestyle content — essentially becoming entertainment platforms. We’ve all had to adapt. Photo by Lorenzo Errico.

Business Model 8

Business Model Merchandising Restructuring Fashion 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 11, 2016

Scratching our heads, we saw the Census tables showed that general merchandise stores — which is where they code Wal-Mart — had only $88 million in online sales in 2013. That couldn’t be right, since Walmart.com was a multibillion-dollar operation that year. So we started digging.

Merchandising 8

Merchandising Retail GDP Report 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 10, 2014

In the early days of the digital revolution, many leaders of established companies did their best to ignore the upheaval, convinced that the threat from new technologies wouldn’t ever amount to much,” writes Rigby. “As Digital operations don’t tend to obviate the physical ones. Retail Technology' We may soon find out.

Retail 9

Retail Directory Merchandising Technology 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 17, 2015

Some executives may be reluctant to admit – perhaps for sentimental or political reasons — that their brand is sucking out more value from the company than it creates. There may have been another business that they could have started, utilizing the company’s assets (real estate, technology, staff, etc.)

Brand 8

Brand Merchandising Retail Real Estate 8

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

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Executives have a choice in how they run their operations. In my research, I’ve found that retailers using an employee-centered operations strategy, which I call the good jobs strategy , have two strategic advantages. Second, they are better at adapting to changes in customer demand, technology, and regulation.

Retail 8

Retail Operations Depreciation Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

That’s why Alibaba and Amazon, for example, create and sprinkle autonomous cross-functional teams across their respective companies to invent and deliver products in new ways. By incorporating these disruptors into its own operations, a retailer can more easily pose challenging questions and embrace change more quickly.

Retail 8

Retail Chief Executive Officer Supply Chain Operations 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.

Retail 8

Retail Supply Chain Merchandising Brand 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 21, 2014

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. Amazon, whose results are similar to those of other e-commerce companies and divisions, has averaged only 1.3%

Retail 8

Retail Price Forrester Merchandising 8

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. This is changing fast, however.

Retail 8

Retail Customer Intimacy Apparel Wireless 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 29, 2013

Companies seeking to create scalable social businesses need a measurement system that monitors their progress in delivering social benefits and economic value. The company also closely monitors the costs associated with the effort to ensure its cost effectiveness and efficiency. But it, too, remains very much a work in progress.

System 8

System Merchandising Retail Class 8

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. “It’s tribal.

Sports 8

Sports Brand Content Industry 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 13

Merchandising Metrics Restructuring Library 13

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Data science can enable wholly new and innovative capabilities that can completely differentiate a company. We have more than 100 data scientists that power algorithmic capabilities used throughout the company. This way the data scientist focuses more on driving business value through testing and learning, and less on technology.

Learning-by-Doing 8

Learning-by-Doing Engineering Metrics Cost 8

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. Given today's technology available for data acquisition as well as new developments in analytics, it is possible to do much better than this.

Retail 14

Retail Merchandising Succession Taylorism 14

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 24, 2014

Yes, digital technology enables a lot of unbundling. I’m on the board of Time Warner, we have just parsed off our third major part — our original company, Time Inc., It was incredibly profitable for the big music companies and for a lot of the artists. Andreessen: I think a lot of it is based on the underlying technology change.

How To 12

How To Technology Industry Venture Capitalist 12

Strategy Driven

JUNE 22, 2012

Some companies claim that purchasing their product is the ‘be all, end all’ panacea for life’s dilemmas. Any company or organization is like a tree. None of the limbs and twigs on each branch (staff-consultants) provide all nourishment required to breed a healthy tree (company). by Hank Moore.

Brand 50

Brand Analysis Advertising Software 50

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2014

Both have signed on with Prism Skylabs , a software company, to map in-store customer behavior. The redder the location, the more frequently it was trafficked: For chief technology officer Joe Lezon, the results were both helpful and surprising. .” This is changing with the emergence of location analytics.

Retail 9

Retail Chief Technology Officer Technology Merchandising 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 27, 2017

In reality, “handoffs” and transitions prove to be significant operational problems. At one American retailer, an autonomous ensemble of algorithms replaced the entire merchandising department. They frequently find the technologies are less of a hassle than the people. All-In Autonomy.

Outsourcing 8

Outsourcing Software CAPEX Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 3, 2014

A lot of people may think it’s strange that an internet company would be so focused on the telephone, when only about 5% of our sales happen through that channel. When we started to look at new locations for our call center operations, we initially considered outsourcing to India or the Philippines and met with a few potential providers.

CEO 8

CEO Call Center Real Estate Merchandising 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

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

AUGUST 6, 2014

Editor’s note: When the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba goes public, as it will soon, Yahoo will earn many times its significant original stake in the company — a surprising ending to a tale of experimentation and discovery. search engine company Inktomi in 2002. Things hadn’t gone well up until that point.

Chief Financial Officer 8

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 4, 2015

Lola is a labor and delivery nurse, an administrator and partner in a 65-bed long-term-care facility, president and consultant in a software technology company, director of operations in a long-term-care consulting company, chair of several hospital committees, and volunteer for a women’s fertility organization that travels to Africa.

PR 8

PR Long-term Consultative Career 8