Ananth Raman

Foundation Professor of Business Logistics at Harvard Business School

Retailers can offer great product selection and value, but those who lack empathy for their customers are at risk of losing them, says professor Ananth Raman.

There’s a famous line from the movie The Godfather, which is often repeated in corporate settings: “This is business, not personal.” Ironically, though, that statement is actually bad business advice.

During the Consortium for Operational Excellence in Retailing (COER) conference held May 10-11 at Harvard Business School, professor Ananth Raman discussed the importance of empathy in customer-facing business.

Eilene Zimmerman

An author finds what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur…Five years ago, Amy Wilkinson was attending a birthday party in New York City when she looked around at the prominent guests and saw several well-known entrepreneurs.

They included the founders of Google, eBay, and Gilt Groupe.That got Wilkinson, a fellow in the White House Trade Office at the time, thinking. She wondered what had made these entrepreneurs successful when so many others had failed.

Klaus E. Meyer

Professor of Strategy and International Business; Director of CEIBS Research Centre for Emerging Market Studies

Is there ever anything to be gained from buying a brand that’s left for dead?

When I first read about Pearl River Piano, it was a story about an acquisition of a famous German piano maker named Ritmüller that helped Pearl River to advance in the premium segment. Yet, there was a little problem: Ritmüller was supposed to be from the city of Göttingen and even though I had lived there for five years, I had never heard the name. So, I called an expert on the German music industry, and he hadn’t heard about the company either. Now I was intrigued, and did what professors do when the facts don’t fit: I dug into the archives. It turns out the real story is much more interesting.

Julie Irwin

Professor of Marketing and Business, Government and Society McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin

The other night I watched Raymond Reddington, fictional star of the TV series The Blacklist, pull off another impossible plotline without breaking a sweat, explaining calmly to one of his minions that the key to winning is to “value loyalty above all else.”

The notion of loyalty as a protective force that leads to great success is so much a part of how we think about leadership that it is very easy to accept, even when it is not espoused by someone as exceptionally interesting to watch as James Spader.

I would contend that loyalty is linked with success in many people’s minds because the archetypal successful leader always demands utmost loyalty and in turn this demand is linked with a special competence. Remain loyal, the story goes, things will go well.

Martin Garguilo

Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD

Weak players in organisations can overcome their dependence on powerful actors, but it comes at a cost.

Alexis Tsipras, the new left wing prime minister of Greece, is in a tight spot. Having spent much of his time trying to coerce the powerful countries of Europe into accepting Greece’s rejection of the agreements signed between the EU and the prior Greek government, he’s not getting any closer to achieving his goals. He cannot reduce Greece’s dependence on the “troika” and has been unable to rally allies to his cause. Greece is running out of money, and out of time.

The case of Greece reminded me of my recent paper with Assistant Professor Gokhan Ertug, The Power of the Weak (2014), which examined the strategies weak organisational players can employ to attenuate their dependence on the powerful. Greece is the weak, but has tried to negotiate from an illusory position of strength. Such an approach was unlikely to work. To understand why, I would like to revisit our analysis of how weak organisational members can reduce their dependence on the powerful.

Peter Golder

Marketing Professor at Tuck School of Business

Tuck marketing professor Peter Golder talks about industry pioneers, memory bias, and healthy paranoia.

Brand leadership is extremely important for firms because the academic literature supports the fact that brand leaders are going to be more profitable. There’s also a view that leading brands will be especially long lived.

I’m more in agreement with the first point. Leading brands are profitable, but much of my research shows that the belief of long lived brand leadership is overstated in many ways.