Retailers must innovate or fall behind
Times Colonist
Canadian retail managers are among the best in the world at running their own stores, but when it comes time for a strong corporate vision, Canadians remain a step behind their U.S. and overseas counterparts, a report said yesterday.
The Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity interviewed more than 660 senior managers in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom last summer and divided the results into operations, performance and people-management categories.
Overall, Canadian managers scored poorly on most operations questions, but did well in setting goals and managing personnel.
“Canada is not achieving its full prosperity potential,” the report warned. “A key component of closing our prosperity gap is for Canada to broaden its approach to innovation. Strong management practices are a critical contributor to more innovation.”
The institute, a non-profit organization that serves as the research arm for the Ontario government’s task force on competitiveness, recommended governments pay more attention to post-secondary business education and research, and encouraged global expansion for retailers.
“Better-educated managers produce better performance,” Roger Martin, chairman of the institute, said in the report. “We also find that large-scale, multinational retailers are better managed than those focused only on their home market.”
Martin, who is also the dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said Canada’s retailers are lagging behind manufacturers.
