How are “great retailers” winning in the battle for marketshare?

Purpose is where your talents and the needs of the world intersect. — Roy Spence, Speech at Retailing Summit

Last week, I attended (and presented at)the Retailing Summit put on by the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University. There was a compelling storyline at the Summit that went like this …. Retailers must be prepared for a flat to declining retail market Craig Boyan, the CEO of H-E-B, one of the nation’s [...]

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Does your brand have a social life?

fabulous-social-life

Think about your favorite brand. What about that brand do you love? Beyond the product or service, do you enjoy the social encounters you have around and with this brand? Do you connect to the brand’s ideals and values? Does it feel like you are part of a brand community? It is easy to recognize [...]

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The Pursuit of Human Potential — Not All Goals Are Created Equal

The Pursuit of Human Potential — Not All Goals Are Created Equal

We continue to explore the idea of organizations as a platform forpursuing human potential. This post is focused on goals. From a scientific perspective, we can understand goal pursuit as three discreet mental processes: 1.) Goal representation – people think about, picture, and create a clear notion of what the goal is and then hold [...]

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In Memory of Paul Lawrence, Renowned Scholar & Teacher

In Memory of Paul Lawrence, Renowned Scholar & Teacher

If you look at the word cloud for this blog, you will see that the biggest name of all is Paul Lawrence. That is because Paul Lawrence was more than a scholar to The Maritz Institute, he was ourteacher and encourager. There are teachers who simply impart their knowledge through books, lectures, and articles.And, then, [...]

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Perspective-taking is the Key to Good Humans and Good Business

The ability to entertain the perspective of another has long been recognized as a critical ingredient in proper social functioning. Piaget marked the ability to shift perspectives as a major developmental breakthrough in cognitive functioning, and Kolhberg recognized its importance in his classification of moral reasoning. Batson noted that the presence of perspective-taking can inspire great gestures of altruism, and its absence can incite the devastations of social aggression. — Edited from Adam Galinsky

The Maritz Institute Network has been studying perspective-taking over the past couple of months with the help of Emily Falk, a neuroscientist who works with the University of Michigan. Emily has introduced us to the work of Adam Galinsky with Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University who does research on perspective-taking, negotiation and other [...]

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