Strategy

While the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have accelerated trends for much of the retail industry, the impact on the grocery world is not so clear-cut. Darden Professor Tim Laseter discusses the state and future of the grocery industry and his “How to Win in Online Grocery” research.

China manufactures nearly a quarter of the world’s high-tech goods, but most of those goods’ microchips come from the U.S. When tension rose in U.S.-China relations, one Chinese company found an M&A win-win with a European chipmaker looking to expand in China’s market. Here’s how a CEO turned around an existential threat and supply chain weak link.

How can managers promote consistent ways of working among team members from diverse cultural backgrounds who are based all over the world? And how can leaders help workers develop solid relationships with their colleagues even though they may not meet them regularly — if ever? Darden Professor Yo-Jud Cheng sheds light on those questions.

When Apple’s longtime design guru Jony Ive announced that he’d be starting his own agency, it meant major change. The situation serves as a case in point for any organization whose success rests on strategic human capital: If strategy is intrinsically tied to talent, how does a firm support that talent or proceed if that talent disengages?

What does it take to transform? What if the challenges are huge: globalization, economic uncertainty, technological disruption, market innovations, changes in customer expectations, new competition — maybe all of the above? Here’s how luxury goods distributor and retailer The Chalhoub Group is responding to a changing world.

Stakeholders don’t just respond to companies’ harmful practices — they respond to perceived harm. Darden Professor Andy Wicks examines how companies should respond to stakeholders’ responses. For example: Assembly Bill 5. Are Uber drivers employees or contractors? Stakeholders and the company disagree.

When it comes to the most popular pieces of the year, in 2019 Darden Ideas to Action readers cared about teamwork, self-awareness, strategy, leadership and navigating innovation in evolving industries. Here’s a rundown of what Ideas to Action readers read the most in 2019 and what it was all about.

Football is typically a major source of revenue for university athletics departments — so when game attendance shrinks, money’s left on the table. In this case in point, Professors Sean Martin and Jim Detert discuss ideas UVA explored to energize the fan base, as well as tenets of any strategic turnaround.

Successful execution of a company’s strategy depends on four elements. Two of them are detailed here: architecture — the design of the organization — and agility in a landscape of change. Drawing from their recently published book, Scott Snell and Ken Carrig offer steps to excel at each and critical questions for leaders to ask.