Retail & consumer goods

There may be fewer, but they'll be more useful.

How Nespresso used a simple business model canvas to change face of the coffee industry.

We all know the power of the killer app. It's not just a support tool; it's a strategic weapon. Companies questing for killer apps generally focus all...

The new commercial reality is the emergence of global markets for standardized consumer products on a previously unimagined scale of magnitude. Technology,...

While most business leaders recognize that bureaucracy squashes initiative, risk taking, and creativity, it continues to thrive. In a complex global environment,...

Over the past century, breakthroughs such as brand management and the divisionalized organization structure have created more sustained competitive advantage than anything that came out of a lab or focus group. Here’s how you can make your company a serial management innovator.

As digital technology has enabled shoppers to easily research and buy products online, sellers have been scrambling after them, trying to understand and...

Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. But even in highly respected companies, decisions can get stuck inside the organization like loose change....

Coming up with creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. Entrepreneurs, sales executives, and marketing managers often go to great lengths...

A good business model begins with an insight into human motivations and ends in a rich stream of profits.

An experiment at Gap that cost $30,000 resulted in $3 million in revenue.

After working at his family's coat manufacturing company for a few years, the author realized that high-end coats made in Canada could become a luxury...

The leaders of such global powerhouses as GE, Wal-Mart, and Toyota seem to have grasped two crucial truths: First, far from becoming submerged by the...

Intel’s Andy Grove is a Silicon Valley legend, Time‘s Man of the Year (1997), and the subject of a magisterial biography by Harvard Business School historian Richard Tedlow. He’s also one of the toughest-minded strategic thinkers around, the kind of boss who writes books with titles like Only the Paranoid Survive. Which is why it’s […]

Year-old Priceline.com has already changed the way many people shop for airline tickets, hotels, and even cars. Founder Jay Walker discusses his company's...

Companies intent on wooing the Chinese consumer are ramping up their local research and development efforts. In the past five years, global fast-moving consumer goods companies have announced plans to pour over $5 billion into R&D; in China. The case is compelling. The rationale includes the need to tailor products and develop original ones that […]

Scrooge is alive and well.

Online marketplaces such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb have the potential to reduce racial, gender, and other forms of bias that affect the off-line world....

The Internet promises to give marketing the same boost in productivity that new operational strategies have given to manufacturing.

Stores that adapt to a digital model are doing just fine.