Harvard Business Review

MAY 12, 2015

Consider BuildDirect, a home improvement products platform that delivers heavyweight goods directly to customers.(Disclosure: These manufacturing and logistical choices used to be made qualitatively by merchandisers. It turns out that the results are much better when humans are removed from the decision-making process.

Delegation 8

Delegation Supply Chain Merchandising Banking 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. These teams regularly come up with innovations that enable these online retailers to roll out more new products and services faster than their competitors.

Retail 12

Retail Chief Executive Officer Supply Chain Operations 12

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 4, 2015

“I’m pretty convinced that there are superficial differences in culture and communication and how people do things,” said the global human resources officer. In the 1990s, P&G, like other companies, sought to take advantage of global scale and technology platforms, rolling out their products worldwide.

Globalization 8

Globalization Company Self-aware Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

Second, they are better at adapting to changes in customer demand, technology, and regulation. The score is a combination of three components: customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and productivity. Even collecting data on employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and productivity was challenging.

Retail 8

Retail Operations Depreciation Merchandising 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 6, 2014

In each iteration, we spent a lot of time thinking about what might make the best use of our existing product. 3721’s core product was essentially an early form of search: a browser download that helped users in China go directly to destination web sites. Not surprisingly, this didn’t sit well with the local team.

Chief Financial Officer 11

Chief Financial Officer Operations Learning-by-Doing IPO 11

In the CEO Afterlife

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

On a productive day, aside from the mountain of dead trees (recycling hadn’t been invented in 1982), stacked polystyrene coffee cups and an overflowing ash-tray, there would also be a satisfying thick sheaf of “concepts.” Time moved on, and during the nineties technology overran, and transformed the creative industry like it did most others.

Advertising 265

Advertising Creativity Industry Bottom-up 265

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 26, 2017

If your culture and brand are mismatched, you can end up with happy, productive employees who produce the wrong results. For example, at a grocery store chain I worked with, employees were steeped in an operations culture that valued efficiency and productivity.

Brand 8

Brand Company Operations Merchandising 8