The Future of Global Retail

PROFILE

Winter Nie’s expertise lies at the intersection of leadership and change management. She has a deep understanding of how people at different levels in an organization react to change and how leaders can effectively manage resistance and organizational dynamics. Her work focuses on the inherent tension between centralized power and localization, mature and emerging markets, technology push and market pull, internal and external focus, as well as short-term financial performance and long-term survival. Her work shows that the role of leadership is not to eliminate but skillfully navigate through these tensions into the future. She works with organizations on change at the individual, team, and organizational levels, looking beyond surface rationality into the unconscious forces below that shape the direction and speed of change.

Trained in business and psychodynamics, she uses both fields of knowledge to help the leadership team understand the team dynamics in the face of external and internal business challenges and how these forces affect organizational transformation.

Winter also has in-depth knowledge of doing business in emerging markets, low-cost competition, innovation culture, and customer centricity.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Winter has worked with many global companies in different industries (engineering and technology, service and consulting professions, fast-moving consumer products, banking and financial sector, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, gaming, and the internet). She primarily works in three areas: Organizational transformational journeys; Strategic initiatives (such as customer-focused organization, moving from products to solutions, and operational/service excellence) and change initiatives that require senior executives’ engagement; Senior leadership development.

Winter primarily works with executive teams and senior leaders. In addition, she works with both western and Chinese companies on CEO and senior executive succession (with emphasis on development) by anchoring on the organizational goals and business requirements, leveraging her keen observations of the team dynamics and individual behaviors, deep insights into human nature, and skillful coaching.

In addition to teaching and conducting research, Winter holds the position of the Dean of IMD China since 2016, responsible for business development and client relationships for the institute within the country. She has served as IMD’s regional director of Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania (2016–2019). She sits on the boards of Opsis, Singapore and Valuesense Group, China.

PROFESSIONAL INTERESTS AND RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Winter is well published in both academic and practitioner-oriented journals. Her forthcoming book, “The Future of Global Retail: Learning from China's Retail Revolution” (2021), provides both macro- and micro-perspectives for a deep insight into what is happening in China’s new retail market, including its latest digital innovations and new business models. The book provides a new retail framework as a roadmap for global retail executives: the “Beyond” Value Chain Model (More on: https://www.chinanewretail.org/).

“In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese Companies – and How It Will Change Business Forever” (2012), profiles key Chinese players and provides insights into subtle yet powerful strategies used to gain market dominance, their approach to going global, and the Chinese way of innovation. “Made in China – Secrets of China's Dynamic Entrepreneurs” (2009), takes an insider's look at Chinese entrepreneurs' path to success and offers insights on how MNCs could compete and/or work with them.

Mark Greeven is Professor of Innovation and Strategy at IMD. Drawing on a decade of experience in research, teaching and consulting in China, Mark explores how to organize innovation in a turbulent world. He has been collaborating with innovative Chinese companies and entrepreneurial multinationals to explore novel ways of organizing, accelerating corporate innovation, designing business ecosystems to thrive on uncertainty. He is a fluent Chinese speaker.

Thinker | On the "2017 Thinkers50 Radar list of 30 next generation business thinkers", an annual ranking that the Financial Times deemed the "Oscars of Management Thinking". Read Mark's interview here: Thinkers50 Q&A

Author | Mark has written Business Ecosystems in China: Alibaba and Competing Baidu, Tencent, Xiaomi and LeEco (Routledge, 2018) with cover endorsement by Tim Draper and Pioneers, Hidden Champions, Change Makers and Underdogs: Lessons from China's Innovators (MIT Press, 2019) with cover endorsement by Henry Chesbrough.

Academic | Mark is a research associate at China's National Institute for Innovation Management, Center for China and Globalization, Center for Global R&D and Innovation, and the US-China Innovation Research Center at Duke Kunshan University. Findings of his research have been published in international academic journals like the European Management Journal and Asia-Pacific Journal of Management as well as in newspapers like The Financial Times, Dialogue, LSE Business Review, Nikkei Asian Review, The Telegraph, South China Morning Post and China Daily. His writings are collected at his blog: www.markgreeven.com

Mark Greeven received a PhD degree from the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Before joining IMD he held faculty positions at Zhejiang University in China and the Rotterdam School of Management in The Netherlands.

Yunfei Feng is a researcher at IMD and had many in-depth interviews and discussions with the Chinese executives. She has kept up with the most cutting-edge development in China’s e-commerce and digital space. She had her own entrepreneurial venture in online business education.

James Wang is an economist and a Professor of Finance at City University of Hong Kong. His commentaries, written for hedge fund managers, on topics such as Sino-American relations, style and substance of the 5th-generation leaders of China, prospects of SOE reforms and other contemporary topics, were collected in the book Early Innings of A Long Game.