The showroom of death

Maybe you have noticed that e-commerce has been growing far faster than brick and mortar retail. That’s been true for years and it’s not changing any time soon. Maybe you have noticed the explosion in comparison shopping sites that allow customers to easily search for the merchant with the best price. The number and quality [...]

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Taking Pitches

In baseball we often see a batter “take a pitch.”  In other words, before the ball is thrown the batter decides he’s not going to swing regardless of how good the pitch is.  Sometimes this is a tactic to tire his competition–the pitcher–out.  Sometimes it’s an attempt to draw a walk because that’s the best [...]

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Wrong Turn at Lung Fish: Critical Decisions in Strategic Evolution

Twenty years ago the brilliant Chicago-based Steppenwolf Theater Company debuted Garry Marshall and Lowell Ganz’ play Wrong Turn at Lung Fish.  This farcical piece is an inquiry into the often harmful peculiarities of human behavior.  In a pivotal scene, one of the characters wonders whether mankind may have made a profound wrong turn along the [...]

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Blockbuster: In Search of Customer-Centricity

By most accounts Blockbuster will soon seek bankruptcy as a last ditch effort to address its mountain of debt and incredibly shrinking business model. While Blockbuster’s immediate term issues are capital structure related, the Blockbuster story is one of a company that has neglected to embrace even the basic tenets of customer-centricity for more than [...]

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