In 2003, William Gibson wrote a prescient novel – Pattern Recognition – that explored the tension between art and mass commercialization in retailing, among other interestingly speculative themes.
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The Future Model for Big Box Last Mile Delivery
Last mile home delivery is a key driver shaping the growth and trajectory of the US online sales for large format category products.
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NRF Omnichannel Keynote
I recently delivered a keynote presentation with my A.T. Kearney colleagues and Wal-Mart at the National Retail Federation Supply Chain Summit in Dallas.
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Orchestrating Innovation Outsourcing in CPG and Retail
With escalating pressures to continually provide innovative market offerings while simultaneously demonstrating sustainable, profitable growth, it’s no surprise that CPG and retail companies are thinking more like their consumers.
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The 3 Dimensions of Distribution Excellence
What allows certain companies to deliver best-in-class distribution performance while others turn in only average performance or fail altogether? From our work in this area, we’ve observed that the leaders in distribution—
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Collaboration: Lessons from Medieval Trading
As global markets become more complex, companies are increasingly pursuing collaboration to unlock value chain efficiency and agility. From joint demand planning to asset sharing, companies are seeking to unlock cross-firm economies of scale and scope.
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Capital and Wealth … Was Marx right?
The prolonged US recession and recent increase in income inequality has energized viewpoints challenging capitalism as a sustainable economic model.
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Spain’s Colonial Wealth – enterprise building lessons
During the 16th century, Spain transformed from a modest European kingdom to a global hegemony. Spain’s success was driven by monetizing innovations in trans-ocean navigation and firearms to appropriate vast quantities of minerals
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“Princely” Insights in M&A Success
Business is often compared to war and statecraft, as reflected in management jargon (e.g. competitive positioning, stick vs. carrot, war-gamming, etc). If business is war then merger and acquisition integration (PMI), would be analogous to the capture and annexation of new principalities.
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Sourcing success under time pressure
Emergency room (ER) physicians constantly make critical decisions with limited information and under extreme time pressure. What separates best-in-class ER physicians from the pack is that they not only “do the right things,” but also “do things right.”
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Strategic outsourcing is not an oxymoron
The term “strategic outsourcing” may sound like an oxymoron since the central dogma of outsourcing calls for companies to sequester strategic capabilities in-house and only source non-core activities from 3rd parties.
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CNN and the house of brands strategy …
Take a look at some of the key shows on CNN and one cannot but notice the network’s recent adoption of an explicit “House of Brands” strategy in an effort to better wage the battle for “viewer eyeballs”.
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The More Things Change, The More They Stay the Same …
The mortgage CDO initiated market crash of 2008 has surprising similarities with the rail road induced market crash of 1873. Both are driven by greed induced risk taking
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Obama, Hillary and a case of Innovator’s Dilemma
Like so many favored incumbents, Hillary Clinton could not escape the Innovator’s Dilemma in a competitive bid for the market place (the democratic primary in this case)
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The illusion of fast pace in the high tech industry
Many have characterized the high technology industry, in particular software, as one of rapid change where one must be ever vigilant and paranoid, constantly scanning the horizon for emerging threats from competitors and partners alike. However, this mental model of the high tech industry is too broad in its analysis.
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