Michele Braun, Director IMR No, we can’t be prepared for all eventualities.   “It’s a stochastic world,” my grad school stats prof would remind us.   There is variability associated with all possible outcomes:   just ask the National Weather Service’s forecasters or, for that matter, political pollsters. Still, I was more than a little surprised to read the lead-in quotation for the New York Times’ post-election DealB%k coverage [November 15, 2016], in which the CEO of a major corporation admitted that “If you were to look at our game board of all the possible outcomes of the election, this one wasn’t even on the sheet.”   Given that there were only two possible outcomes to the November 8 U.S. presidential election—a Clinton victory or a Trump victory—and two possible timings for that outcome—immediate or delayed—how is it that two of the four cells in a two-by-two matrix weren’t “even on the sheet”? Enterprise risk management is the practice of reviewing possible o

As ubiquitous as digital technology may be in our world today, it has created a set of complex challenges for modern marketers.  On one hand, digital communications and technologies have made it easier than ever to connect with buyers and customers. On the other hand, tracking, nurturing, and engaging potential buyers and current customers digitally can often seem completely disorganized, with no means of effectively managing or measuring the value of those interactions. Adding to this challenge is the fact that many marketers today are expected to integrate and organize those digital marketing efforts while still maximizing the value of non-digital assets, experiences, and resources. Not all of the marketers in today’s companies are digital natives, nor are the companies themselves. This means that businesses and their marketers are expected to market digitally, yet still incorporate and transition the decades of experience and millions of dollars invested in event

Today in the October 5th New York Times there was a wonderful article published about the success of a small business called MailChimp and how they accomplished this while taking the road less traveled. According to the article there are two ways to create a business.  The first is the typical way a business gets started; a young entrepreneur comes up with an innovative idea, next is the creation of a prototype along with participating in a start-up boot camp. This then leads to small investors hopping on board; which leads to the creation of a Kickstarter. If everything works out and the product is successful it’s time for the founders to enter the haphazard mode called expansion. This usually translates to selling off the company piece by piece for huge chunks of money from venture capitalists. Then, once a few years have passed, if all goes well, the founders hit it big time and then BANG their set.  The second and less well known option is just creating