Product Description
by Michael Mazzeo (Author), Paul Oyer (Author), Scott Schaefer (Author)
While playing hooky from a conference in Boston a few years back, three former colleagues from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management hopped in a car and headed on a road trip. They pulled into a shoe store in Maine and noticed that the sales help was unusually pushy. After a few questions, they discovered the store had a "secret shopper" program, in which employees would be marked down if they were not sufficiently aggressive with customers. A lightbulb went off.
Instead of teaching the tried-and-true case studies involving GE and Microsoft, what if these three wise men pulled their heads out of their ivory towers and went in search of insights about product differentiation, pricing, brand management, building a team, and organization? Why study Mrs's Paul's fish sticks when you can learn from the 80-year-old proprietor of Joe Patti's, the leading and legendary local fish monger in Pensacola? Want to learn about scaling a business? Come meet Dr. Burris, the flying orthodontist, who operates multiple, profitable practices in rural Arkansas.
The book isn't all egghead as the chapters are spiced with the type of vehicular mishaps and Maalox moments that are common on any road trip.
Author Biography
Michael Mazzeo is an Associate Professor of Management & Strategy at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management where he teaches the school's core MBA class in Business Strategy. Mike has a PhD in Economics from Stanford University, and lives in Chicago with his eight-year-old son and many, many Legos.
Paul Oyer is the Fred H. Merrill Professor of Economics at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Paul has a PhD in Economics from Princeton University, and lives in Stanford, California with his two children. Scott Schaefer holds the Kendall D. Garff Chair in Business Administration and is Professor of Finance at the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business. He has a PhD in business economics from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and lives in Salt Lake City with his two children.
