Executive Education

The pandemic had a significant impact on everyday retail, creating opportunities for brick and mortar and online retailers as well as exposing real vulnerabilities in supply chains. As we move into the post-pandemic era, it appears that some of these impacts will be short-lived, and others will be long-lasting. Understanding what to do in the medium and long-term in the changing retail landscape will separate growth leaders and laggards.

The business cycle has not been repealed. We have inflation, rising interest rates, and recession. All are a part of the current conversation. How will your business be impacted by the current climate? What will you do to keep your head above the turbulent waters of change? This course gives you the opportunity to apply your knowledge and insights from preceding sessions to a real-life business challenge or opportunity you are facing.

Developing any brand is a strategic endeavor. Working with store brands has additional considerations. In this session, you’ll learn the nine strategies to contemplate as you work to grow store brands -- quality, pricing, merchandising, sourcing, omnichannel, marketing, design, packaging, and loyalty. Small groups will discuss and evaluate how these components interact towards a common goal and they will be asked to grade a specific retailer on how it's faring in this essential process.

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to efficiently match supply with demand is a critical success factor in supply chain management. This talk delves into the world of data mining techniques, drawing on industry examples from AI, blockchain, and big data to equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to optimize supply chain management, streamline inventory control, and enhance decision-making processes. Through a combination of theoretical foundations and recent practices in the field, you will explore the power of data mining algorithms, predictive analytics, and machine learning models. You'll learn how to extract valuable insights from vast datasets, uncover hidden patterns, and forecast demand patterns accurately.

Artificial Intelligence has always been viewed as having the potential to transform entire industry sectors by simplifying and streamlining processes, improving reliability, and reducing response times. There have already been moments in which this transformation happened, for example, with the introduction of expert systems, of automated planning and scheduling, and recommender systems. We now face another moment, with AI-based technologies that have potential to disrupt markets, sectors, and everyday lives. This course will provide an overview of promising AI technologies and of how businesses can take advantage of them. Discussion provides a principled understanding of developments by AI researchers and practitioners, and of the directions companies in this sector are likely to pursue. We will cover aspects related to supply chains, contracts, and business processes.

In a noisy marketplace with more variety than ever before, how do we motivate retail customers to select our products from the shelf? This session will apply scientifically proven, fundamental principles of consumer psychology to understand how product perceptions, preferences, choice, and satisfaction are influenced by branding, package design and retail merchandising. Participants will learn easy and affordable strategies to attract a target audience and positively influence consumer decision-making.

Never have stakes been set higher for retailers to leverage innovation and product development and differentiate their brands as a means of generating shopper excitement and loyalty. But where does innovation start within organizations; how is innovation translated into products and the retailer’s brands; what roles do private label suppliers play, and how do retailers manage product development processes for everyday products as well as new and innovative items? What are the blocks to innovating private label and how can success be measured? We will examine what it means to innovate by studying examples from retailers here and abroad. Case studies provide actionable insights for product development teams creating strategies and execution plans to launch new products.

In this workshop, participants will organize and apply what they learned across previous sessions to practice the art of consumer-centric product innovation. Key to this process is identifying a target audience, understanding consumer needs and preferences, and facilitating relevant ideation. Additionally, participants will need to consider building into this process the development methodology, including manufacturer and retailer processes and limitations. The outcome of this session will yield a conceptual toolbox for product innovation that can stand the test of time.

To win today you need to solve both shoppers and retailers’ needs and expectations. Doing so, you need to transform both your personal leadership approach and your team identity. Becoming solution centric will transform your in-market results. However, to achieve transformative results, you need a methodology to realign their strategies, organization structure and upgrade staffing to achieve more ambitious top-line and bottom-line growth goals.

The greatest challenge of executive education is to carry home learnings that are most relevant to your work activities and interactions, and to assume an expanded role as the agent for changes within your own company. This wrap-up gives you the opportunity to apply your knowledge and insights from preceding sessions to a real-life business challenge or opportunity you are facing. It is modeled after the “grand rounds” approach of medical education where teams of doctors and healthcare professionals meet to diagnose and discuss challenging cases.