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- September–October 2022
- Article
Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price
By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant
Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers.
In this article, the authors present a scorecard to...
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Keywords:
Retail;
Retailing;
Online Business;
Ecommerce;
E-commerce;
E-Commerce Strategy;
Omnichannel Retail;
Omnichannel Retailing;
Amazon;
Amazon.com;
Sales;
Digital Marketing;
Internet and the Web;
Business Model;
Retail Industry;
Consumer Products Industry;
Fashion Industry;
Advertising Industry;
Battery Industry;
Apparel and Accessories Industry;
Beauty and Cosmetics Industry;
Distribution Industry;
Electronics Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
United States
- September 2022
- Case
Blake Sports: Evolution of the CEO and the Executive Team
By: Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden
Cameron (Cam) Barker, CEO and Founder of Blake Sports Apparel, sat in his office at his company’s headquarters in Birmingham, England, feeling stunned and disappointed. Only a few minutes prior, he had wrapped up a meeting with CFO James Ryan, a highly-respected star...
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- August 15, 2022
- Article
Preparing Sales for a Changing Economy: Part 2: Getting More from Your Training Spending
A previous article discussed changing business development requirements and some implications. This article discusses three areas that are fundamental to getting ROI from training initiatives and how engagement between Sales and L&D professionals, completed by smart...
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- August 9, 2022
- Article
Preparing Sales for a Changing Economy: Part 1
Companies spend more per capita on sales training than any other function, but the return on investment is disappointing. One recent estimate indicates “that 85-90% of sales training fails to translate into a lasting improvement in productivity.” A major reason is...
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- June 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Dollar Tree: Breaking the Buck
By: Jill Avery and Marco Bertini
For thirty-five years, Dollar Tree, a discount retail chain selling general merchandise, had held its fixed price point steady, pricing all of its household items, food, stationery, books, seasonal items, gifts, toys, and clothing that made up its diverse and...
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- May 2022 (Revised July 2022)
- Case
The Voice War Continues: Hey Google vs. Alexa vs. Siri in 2022
By: David B. Yoffie and Daniel Fisher
In 2022, after five years of pursuing a new "AI-first" strategy, Google had captured a sizeable share of the American and global markets for voice assistants. Google Assistant was used by hundreds of millions of users around the world, but Amazon retained the largest...
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- 2022
- Book
The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI
By: Paul Leonardi and Tsedal Neeley
The pressure to "be digital" has never been greater, but you can meet the challenge.
The digital revolution is here, changing how work gets done, how industries are structured, and how people from all walks of life work, behave, and relate to each other. To thrive...
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- April 2022
- Case
NIO: A Chinese EV Company's Global Strategy
By: William C. Kirby, Shu Lin and Noah B. Truwit
Founded in November 2014 and based in Shanghai, NIO designed, jointly manufactured, and sold premium “smart” EVs. Its mission was to “shape a joyful lifestyle by offering high-performance smart electric vehicles and being the best user enterprise. At NIO Day 2021,...
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- March 2022 (Revised August 2022)
- Case
Swvl: Smart Mobility for the Masses
By: Krishna Palepu, Esel Çekin and Menna Hassan
The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at Swvl, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kandil on his journey from founding the company to its listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017,...
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- March 3, 2022
- Article
How to Build a Life: The Kind of Smarts You Don't Find in Young People
By: Arthur C. Brooks
- February 2022
- Case
Sekisui House and the In-Home Early Detection Platform
By: John D. Macomber and Akiko Kanno
To address an aging population and sales declines, major Japanese homebuilder considers pivoting to provide and support an in-home health detection platform, in competition with tech companies. This case considers the point of view of major builders regarding how...
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- February 18, 2022
- Article
Why Really Smart Executives Do Really Stupid Things
CEO exits due to workplace misconduct are all too common. Over and over we hear about top officials at companies, universities or in government resigning, either because they had affairs with subordinates in their inner circles or made verbal advances to junior workers...
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- January 2022 (Revised February 2022)
- Case
Envision Group
By: Gunnar Trumbull, Bonnie Yining Cao and Dawn H. Lau
Based in China, Envision was one of the world’s leading Greentech companies. Chief Executive Officer Lei Zhang had set the goal of achieving carbon neutrality across the company’s global operations and supply chain by 2022 and 2028 respectively. As part of its...
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Keywords:
Green Technology;
Climate Change;
Emerging Markets;
Information Technology;
Strategy;
Management;
Renewable Energy;
Energy Policy;
Environmental Sustainability;
Manufacturing Industry;
Auto Industry;
Green Technology Industry;
Battery Industry;
China;
United States;
Japan;
United Kingdom;
France
- January 10, 2022
- Article
The Secret Ingredient of Thriving Companies? Human Magic
By: Hubert Joly
The traditional corporate approach to motivating people has been a combination of carrots and sticks: a system of financial incentives designed to mobilize everyone around a plan designed by a few smart people at the top. Multiple studies have confirmed that, for any...
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- November 2021 (Revised January 2022)
- Case
KFA, Inc.: Building the Future
By: Lynda M. Applegate and Elizabeth M. Adams
In 2021, Greg Bush, Jr., owner, president, and CEO of KFA, Inc. is working with his leadership team to plan for the future. KFA provides consulting services on software and project management needs for infrastructure projects. Bush and his team have just debuted a new...
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- September–October 2021
- Article
Frontiers: Can an AI Algorithm Mitigate Racial Economic Inequality? An Analysis in the Context of Airbnb
By: Shunyuan Zhang, Nitin Mehta, Param Singh and Kannan Srinivasan
We study the effect of Airbnb’s smart-pricing algorithm on the racial disparity in the daily revenue earned by Airbnb hosts. Our empirical strategy exploits Airbnb’s introduction of the algorithm and its voluntary adoption by hosts as a quasi-natural experiment. Among...
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- Article
Regulatory, Legal, and Market Aspects of Smart Wearables for Cardiac Monitoring
By: Jan Benedikt Brönneke, Jennifer Müller, Konstantinos Mouratis, Julia Hagen and Ariel Dora Stern
In the area of cardiac monitoring, the use of digitally driven technologies is on the rise. While the development of medical products is advancing rapidly, allowing for new use-cases in cardiac monitoring and other areas, regulatory and legal requirements that govern...
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- April 2021
- Case
Transforming BlackBerry: From Smartphones to Software
By: Ranjay Gulati and Nicole Tempest Keller
On the verge of failure, BlackBerry brought in John Chen as CEO in 2013 to orchestrate a bold turnaround of the company. Once an iconic leader in the smartphone market, BlackBerry was best known for its tactile QWERTY keyboard, strong security, and a focus on business...
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Keywords:
Pivot;
Managing Change;
Turnaround;
Smartphone;
Change Management;
Leading Change;
Transformation;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Digital Platforms;
Change;
Information Infrastructure;
Applications and Software;
Competitive Strategy;
Cybersecurity;
Technology Industry;
Transportation Industry;
Canada
- Editorial
The Start of Time Smart Leadership
By: Ashley Whillans
The author discusses the concept of “time poverty,” which she defines as “having too many things to do and not enough time to do them.” It is a problem because it undermines happiness and productivity and increases stress. For instance, in 2012, 50 percent of working...
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- December 2020 (Revised December 2021)
- Case
Komatsu and Smart Construction
By: Rajiv Lal, David J. Collis and Akiko Saito
Komatsu, Japan's leading construction equipment manufacturer, is considering investing in a digital platform "Smart Construction" that will digitise the entire work process on a construction site, allowing for substantial reductions in cost and time while improving...
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