Posts Tagged As Best Buy

So Target Failed in Canada but How They Respond Matters More

Yesterday Target Corporation announced that it was closing its 133 Canadian stores. This announcement comes less than two years after they launched their first Canadian stores in March 2013. According to Target CEO Brian Cornell the decision came down to the fact that it would take six more years before they would see a profit on their Target Canada subsidiary.

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Failure Forums: Learning from Best Buy Media Label – Redline Entertainment

Seven years ago my team had just shut down the first of our two concept stores that we were running for consumer electronics retailer Best Buy.  My team had spent the last two years operating these concept stores in an attempt to understand more about the opportunities in “small box” retail.  During that time we had learned a ton and as a leadership team we were adamant that we needed to share what we had learned with the rest of the company.

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Killing Innovation With the Traditional Approach: The Story of Best Buy’s GIFTAG

Innovation projects fail for many reasons but often times the reasons point back to a disconnect with the customer or within the company.  Sometimes the customers weren’t sufficiently ready to buy or use the new product or service.  Maybe they didn’t yet understand the benefits, they weren’t comfortable enough with the novelty, or maybe they lacked the infrastructure to take full advantage of the new product or service?  There are an equal number of examples where companies were unable to operationalize the new product or service and had to abandon it.  But sometimes new innovations fail because a company can’t get out of its own way.  The story of Best Buy and their development of the innovative gift registry platform GIFTAG is just one of those stories.

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“Facing Failure” a New Monthly Column in Civic-Minded Publication “Pollen”

Failure knows no distinction to whether our institution is in business, government, education, or the nonprofit sector.  Facing Failure is a new monthly series that I have launched today with the civic-minded publication Pollen. The goal for this column is to bring the topic of failure to the forefront of our civic conversations in an attempt to remove the negative stigma. I intend to do this by sharing stories and the lessons learned from business, nonprofit, education, and government sector failures. The best hope for this column would be that we are able to learn from each other and strengthen our Pollen community. If you have a story that you would like to share please reach out and connect via my contact information below.

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Launching New Series of Failure Forums on Innovation Excellence

This article is the first in my new series of Failure Forums published in Innovation Excellence.  The series is focused on bringing the role of innovation failure to the forefront.  It will intentionally bypass the innovation success stories to focus on the lessons learned from failures.  It is never easy to disclose our professional failures but these brave innovation practitioners are doing exactly that so that others can learn from their experiences.  This is the story of Jeff Stratman, a corporate innovator, and his journey to launch a new corporate venture called Orgango.

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Build a Learning Organization: Embedding Failure Into the Culture

For the longest time business and military leaders wouldn’t dare utter the word failure in front of their organizations.  For many the credo was that failure wasn’t an option.  Times have certainly changed but many organizations are just scratching the surface in addressing the difficult issues surrounding failure.

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Leadership in Small Companies vs. Big Companies – Hiring for Passion

Earlier this week I was presenting in front of a group of successful entrepreneurs, each of whom had built a business from scratch and turned it into a $10m+ company.  As they talked about their businesses you could see the passion for their company oozing out of their pores.  They had “made it” by almost every definition of the word but you could tell that their entrepreneurial spirit hadn’t waned.  Their success had afforded them more control over their time but they certainly weren’t resting on their laurels.  They were passionate about growing their businesses.  This post is my first in a series on Leadership in Small Companies vs. Big Companies and covers how small companies can be more focused on hiring for passion.

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