Today’s customer journey has become an increasingly complex maze for marketers to follow, with multiple entry points into the purchasing cycle and new influences that can detract them from reaching the end point. Customers can simultaneously bring their digital shopping experience in-store, share product insights on social media and compare competitor’s products across physical and digital channels.

Merger activity is at a fever pace this year, on pace to hit new record levels. But are many of these deals doomed to fail, driven more by fear than coherent strategy? Overcoming market pressures to pursue M&A activities that are both strategic and successful in driving business results takes more than simple due diligence. You need to understand the pitfalls along the path, have a strategy for success and a playbook that helps to guide the process.

Economic downturns are one of those events for which there are no written rules. There are no courses that prepare you for the multitude of “what if” scenarios that can unfold when it strikes. I’ve had the ‘pleasure’ of experiencing two downturns in very different ways, but I’ve learned a lot from the journey and emerged stronger for it.

A recent chat with my colleagues about our kids turned into a great lesson about building resonant brands. I’d mentioned my daughter’s recent obsession with everything Ivivva – the Lululemon spinoff brand for tween girls – and one of the folks around the table suggested the company must be losing out on a lot of brand equity by going with the “Ivivva” brand, instead of calling itself “LuluKids.”

As anyone who has worked to build and expand a business knows all too well, growth is hard. Expanding your offering in existing markets rubs elbows with the competition and can erode differentiation, leading many companies to turn their sights overseas. But branching out into new regions has become more complex than ever.

Growing your business used to be simple. Gather data, analyze it, select a market and develop your strategy, then reap the returns. To say now it’s not that straightforward is stating the obvious. The tactics to entering a new market…

When building a business from the ground-up, your first inclination may be to bootstrap it and do everything yourself; I know mine was. But after awhile you realize your time and energy is better spent on the 20 percent of things where you add the most value to the business. So you pivot to hiring folks who can support your growth. Sometimes you make mistakes along the way, but here is what I’ve learned from them.

Mid-May marks the start of the annual business school graduation season. Over the next few weeks, schools from Anderson and Booth to Wharton and Yale will graduate some of the top new business talent, who all feel “ready to lead organizations into the future.” I put that in quotes – why? Because that’s the mindset coming out of business school, of the graduates themselves…but the reality is that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Most of us wouldn’t think of Walmart as a premiere shopping destination for ethnic foods, but walk through one of the company’s supercenters in certain neighborhoods today and you might be surprised. Mangoes and papaya are stocked next to Chinese eggplant, and the next aisle over might feature imported foods from South America – all carefully curated to appeal to growing local Hispanic and Asian populations.

Big data. It’s THE game changer your company has been looking for. It can drive dramatic cost reductions and productivity improvements, help you discover the next best product and transform your marketing strategy. After all, big data helped UPS review…