David Wyld
Founding member
Bio
Professor, Consultant, Doer. Founder/Publisher of The IDEA Publishing (http://www.theideapublishing.com/) & Modern Business Press (http://www.modernbusinesspress.com)
Stories (241/0)
In Praise of the “Bad” Group Project Experience
Overview What is the quickest way to have your teaching evaluation fall precipitously on the very first day of class? Well, having been a management professor for now over three decades, I can safely say that the answer is easy - and it only takes saying 6 “un-magic” words in that first class meeting, the one that students often know, no matter how you slice it, will be some variation of “syllabus day.” So what then are the 6 words that will lead your student evals to instantly fall? They are: “You will be doing a group project…”
By David Wyld2 days ago in Education
The New Deal at Walmart: $200,000+ a Year
Overview How does $200 grand a year sound to you? Pretty good, eh? And what if you were 21, 22, or 23 years old and you were told that you could be earning not just six figures - but those six figures - in just two years time - and it’s with one of America’s leading companies?
By David Wyld5 days ago in Journal
The 1/5th Solution to the Supply Chain Crisis?
Overview What does it mean to truly be disruptive today? We live in a world where we expect the unexpected. We have come to expect innovations in every industry that are game changers on a routine basis. In short, as Paul Simon once so aptly put it, we expect that we are living in “the days of miracles and wonders.” And yet, every once and a while, there are truly “game changing” innovations that come down the pipe - innovations that at least have the potential for changing not just the rules, but the economics of the game.
By David Wyld2 months ago in Journal
The Celsius Manager
Overview Even as one who has taught, studied and consulted on management for a long time, every once in a while you are lucky enough to see something in real life that can top any great case study, book, or article that you have ever read about what it really means to be a good manager, a good leader, and a good person. This happened to me just the other day. It was an unexpected, fleeting moment that made an impression for a lifetime on me, providing me with probably the quintessential example of how to be a good manager that I will share again and again not just here in this article, but with my classes and consulting clients for years to come. For while we may give far too much attention in our current times to celebrity billionaire CEO’s like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, and more, the manager I saw while waiting in line at a convenience store just the other day deserves to be celebrated just as much - and probably a whole lot more - for the simple act he was doing for his workers.
By David Wyld2 months ago in Journal
Why Kohl’s Strategy of No Longer Wanting to Be Considered a Department Store Just Might Work
Overview If you were like me, you were scrolling Twitter a few days ago and suddenly the hashtag #Kohls was trending. In and amongst all the terrible and tragic news we face today coming out of Ukraine and the costly repercussions of the conflict here at home, one had to wonder just why the department store chain somehow managed to be trending on social media. Personally, my first thoughts were ones of fear that there had been yet another mass shooting in a retail store and of curiosity that maybe a Kohl’s employee had chosen to quit his or her job in a spectacular fashion (captured on video, of course) and that departure had gone viral.
By David Wyld2 months ago in Journal
The Ukraine Effect: How Companies Should Adjust Their Marketing and Advertising in the Wake of the Ongoing Russian Invasion
Overview Seemingly everywhere you turn today, you can’t help but see images of war that are gripping - and tragic. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has just reached the two week mark as of this writing, but when one turns on the TV or logs into one’s social media platforms of choice, the scenes from Ukraine, of death…
By David Wyld2 months ago in Journal
Companies Around the World Are Saying “Nyet” to Doing Business in Russia After the Invasion of Ukraine
“The answer to all your questions is money…” —- Don Ohlmeyer, as told to Tony Kornheiser Introduction All too often, as a strategic management professor and consultant, we talk in abstract terms about companies and their top management “doing the right thing” when it comes to really tough issues involving corporate ethics and social responsibility. In many classes across the business curriculum, the ethics chapter is put off to be the last one on the reading list. And if there’s a snow day, a professor sick day, or these days, maybe a COVID-19-related class cancellation, well, it’s okay if we never even get to talking about business ethics in class! Talking about ethics can make students - and yes even their professors - feel uncomfortable, as ethical issues are often intertwined with what are often controversial - and many times highly personal and highly charged societal, political, environmental, sexual, religious, etc. matters. Beyond the classroom and even the corporate training room however, we know that acting ethically is even harder, and oftentimes, making the ethical decision is not just hard - but it can also be very, very costly.
By David Wyld3 months ago in Journal
The Kim Kardashian-Tom Brady Effect
Overview The recently retired quarterback has launched a high-end men’s apparel line. Is the NFL legend showing other sports stars - and all of us - how to become a billionaire today and rewriting the rules of marketing and business?
By David Wyld3 months ago in Journal
The Metaapp: How Solving the Frustrations of Streaming Video Users is the Next Big Business Opportunity at the Intersection of the Worlds of Media, Entertainment, and Technology
Introduction PSSSST! I’ve got a billion dollar idea! Check that, it may be a ten - or even tens - of billions of dollars idea! As a strategic management consultant and professor, I can safely say that this idea will pay HUGE dividends for whoever actually solves one of society’s greatest problems today. Well now, it’s not world peace or curing COVID for all time. However, it is an idea that addresses a very real problem that almost all of us experience on a daily basis. It is an idea that could improve dramatically - yes, in a very real way in the digital age in which we live - user experiences (UX) and heighten both customer satisfaction - and customer retention - for the corporate giants - Netflix, Disney (parent of both ESPN and Hulu), Alphabet (yes, otherwise known as the company formerly known as Google and the parent of YouTube), AT&T (parent company of HBO), Discovery and more - who feed the content machine that almost all of us access every day for our entertainment, news, and sports fixes.
By David Wyld3 months ago in Journal
The 7% Conundrum: Why Today’s Inflation Numbers Are Not as Bad as You Might Have Been Led to Believe
Introduction Inflation. You can’t turn on the TV today or visit your favorite news site without seeing a story touting just how bad the inflation situation is currently. Of course, you see the very real effects of inflation in your life everyday, as everything, from your fast food meal to gas for your car and especially, cars themselves, seem to be constantly going up, up, up! And so when you see, read, or hear a news story on inflation, you know that yes, inflation is all too real today and that it is directly - and negatively - impacting you and your family’s finances!
By David Wyld4 months ago in Journal
The Challenges and Opportunities of Virtual Selling
Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed so many aspects of the way we not only do business, but the way we carry out our daily lives. Study after study shows that working from home (WFH) will continue to be a part of many, if not most, of our work lives. There are a multitude of factors involved as to why WFH “works” for people - saving time and money, better balancing work and family needs, being just as productive at home as in the office, etc. While there are certainly drawbacks to having one’s home also be the place where one does business - including blurring the boundaries between work duties and family duties and the sometimes serious mental health concerns due to the isolation involved with working remotely, on balance, both workers and companies are fast coming to the realization that the benefits of WFH outweigh the costs. And companies see that while they have serious concerns in trying to coordinate and collaborate remote workers effectively, they also see that with WFH, they have both the ability to save a great deal on office costs (since they don’t need nearly the office space that they did prior to the pandemic) and the newfound capability to attract - and retain - the “best” workers to meet their needs, regardless of where they are located. Thus, working from home - and the cultural changes, both in terms of organizational cultures and the culture at large - appear to be here to stay long after the coronavirus has faded away (or at least when it will - hopefully - become an endemic, rather than a pandemic!).
By David Wyld5 months ago in Journal
Defeating the “Don’t Look Up” Mentality in the Corporate World
The movie of this holiday season didn’t turn out to be yet another reboot of The Matrix or one more Spiderman sequel. It didn’t turn out to be the next Disney animated musical made for young and old alike. No, the film that generated the most buzz wasn’t even a movie that you had to go to a movie theater to see (and yes, your local multiplex may well be on its way to extinction quite soon because of a whole host of factors!). Instead, the movie that has everyone watching and many folks talking about it on social media is a cheery flick, “Don’t Look Up!” It has all the ingredients for what we used to term “box office success” - a fantastic team behind it (led by director and writer Adam McKay, who has given us “The Big Short” and a whole host of other films in recent years), a star-studded cast (including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Mark Rylance, Ariana Grande and more) to rival those old “buddy movies” of the 1970’s and 80’s, and yes, an uplifting, “feel good” plot - where the entire planet’s population is wiped out!
By David Wyld5 months ago in Journal
