Latest posts
Designing Deals to Improve Demand Forecasts
Why supply chain partners rarely collaborate to reduce demand uncertainty, and what can be done.
Unpacking the Amazon-Whole Foods Deal
Even if Jeff Bezos’s gambit succeeds, there is still cause for concern.
Rethinking Resilience in Global Supply Chains
Attempts to diversify may make supply chain disruptions more damaging when they occur.
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Welcome to the Social Media Shopping Mall
The future of e-commerce belongs to social apps like China’s WeChat. Here’s how brands can start preparing.
How Bike Sharing Could Become Mainstream
Bike sharing could scale up enough to make a real impact on urban air pollution and plug public transport gaps.
Geolocation is Changing the Retail Business Model Yet Again
And maybe that’s why Amazon is moving into bricks-and-mortar.
Car Dealerships Are a Bad Deal for Customers
The car dealership model no longer provides the value it once did. Letting market forces prevail is what’s best for customers.
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Ceaseless Innovation
Amazon’s latest reinvention demonstrates its ability to constantly challenge its business model.
At Last, a New Business Model for Tesla
Two weeks back, Tesla Motors, the company behind the Tesla Model S, arguably the most promising all-electric challenger to the century-long domination of fossil-fuel cars, announced an innovative switching station based infrastructure that would bring its flagship product one step closer to being the first all-electric no-compromises luxury sedan.
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Extreme Focus and the Success of Germany’s Mittelstand
In a recent post on Harvard Business Review bloggers network, we discuss the extreme focus business model of Germany’s famed Mittlestand:
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Business Model Innovation: The Gift that Keeps Giving
In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Review bloggers network, we discuss the sustainability of the advantage that come from innovating the business model.
With the Winter holiday shopping season, fashion apparel retailer Zara has been the focus of media attention — the New York Times recently profiled the innovative fast fashion business model pioneered by Zara, while Elizabeth Cline’s book on the costs of fast fashion has climbed up the sales charts.
Outclassing Sourcing Champions
With increasing specialization, technological complexity, and globalization, firms now buy a long list of products and services from many outside providers. In industries like automobiles, consumer electronics and retail, reliably sourcing a multitude of products from supply chain partners is the key to success.
Generating New Business Opportunities
Over the last 2 weeks, I have been teaching a newly developed INSEAD MBA course on Identifying New Business Opportunities (INBO). The class is structured as a hands on experiential workshop that combines three novel approaches to Innovation/Entrepreneurship: Business Model Innovation, Idea Tournaments and Lean Startups/Discovery Driven Planning.
SXSW: INSEAD @ South by Southwest
The 2012 edition of the South by Southwest conference (SWSX) wrapped up in Austin last week. Over the last years, this has become one of hottest stops on the startup circuit, earning a reputation as the biggest breeding ground for new ideas and creative technologies– notably, both foursquare and twitter catapulted to the big leagues after they presented early versions at SWSX.
The Henry Ford of Cardiac Surgery
Cardiac surgery is a sophisticated, dangerous and delicate procedure; but an Indian surgeon and his hospital group have successfully transformed it into a factory style mass operation, bringing high quality care to the many millions who could never before afford it. Dr. Devi Shetty’s Bangalore based flagship, 1,000-bed Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospital, charges $2,000, on average, for open-heart surgery, compared with hospitals in the U.S. that are paid between $20,000 and $100,000, depending on the complexity of the surgery.
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The Renaissance Innovator joins the INSEAD bloggers network!
From today, our blog,The Renaissance Innovator, is part of the official INSEAD bloggers network. So if you arrived here through the INSEAD blog, Welcome to our blog and read on for what this blog is about. For our loyal regular readers, nothing changes, you can read our blog posts exactly as you did before, and we’d also recommend checking out some of the other excellent posts on the INSEAD blog.
Changing the Way People Give…
The world is full of problems– poverty, malnutrition, medical access, climate change, natural disasters, etc. It is also full of many tenacious do-gooders with solutions, and thankfully many generous souls who would like to financially support these do-gooders. Unfortunately, the “marketplace” that matches the do-gooders with solutions is what economists would call very inefficient, that is many matches that are in the interest of everyone involved are not made.
A New Model for Gifts!
Christmas is in the air and I am sure many of you have been buying gifts for your loved ones. Not to be the Grinch– but there is strong empirical evidence that shows that gift-giving destroys a third of gift value. Gift-receivers on average, value gifts a third less than what the gift giver paid for it! Essentially, gifts are really inefficient ways to show you care. But, a startup conceived and developed in one of our classes on renaissance innovation has an elegant solution to offer.
