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Business Model Innovation is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

Harvard Business Review

With the Winter holiday shopping season, fashion apparel retailer Zara has been the focus of media attention — the New York Times recently profiled the innovative fast fashion business model pioneered by Zara, while Elizabeth Cline's book on the costs of fast fashion has climbed up the sales charts. Why wasn't it copied immediately?

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Growing, or Not, in an Age of Permanent Volatility

Harvard Business Review

After pricing (89 percent), executives cited their primary competitive weapons as improving product value (88 percent), improving innovation (85 percent), and increasing product promotion (69 percent), pointing to a world where firms are grappling for larger pieces of a static pie, not a world where the pie itself is growing larger.

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A Survey of 3,000 Executives Reveals How Businesses Succeed with AI

Harvard Business Review

And AI success stories are becoming more numerous and diverse, from Amazon reaping operational efficiencies using its AI-powered Kiva warehouse robots, to GE keeping its industrial equipment running by leveraging AI for predictive maintenance. Investment in AI is growing and is increasingly coming from organizations outside the tech space.

Survey 11
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What Investors Need to Know About Zimbabwe After Mugabe

Harvard Business Review

In this environment, multinationals that are willing to accept some risk and invest in the country could benefit from first-mover advantages – but only if the new administration follows through with much-needed economic reforms. billion a decade later. Now the country is at a crossroads. Years of economic mismanagement.

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Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn’t Apply to Silicon Valley

Harvard Business Review

With low entry costs, trivial sunk capital, easy switching by consumers, and disruptive innovation showing no signs of tapering off, every internet-based business faces risk, even if it has temporarily achieved winner-takes-all status. That is a very short run compared to the great network industries of yore.

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The Health Care Industry Needs to Start Taking Women Seriously

Harvard Business Review

Instead, according to new research from the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), the fundamental issue is the health care industry’s failure to develop a nuanced understanding of, and commitment to, women as consumers and decision makers. What is the greatest impediment preventing Americans from getting good health care?