Learning from Altitude

Leadership Learning from Wharton Leadership Ventures and Beyond

 

Lei Wang, WG’03, is the first Chinese woman and the first Asian-American to climb the highest mountain on every continent and ski both the North and South Poles.  Lei came back to Wharton recently to lecture on her experiences and spent time with our Venture Fellows discussing leadership at altitude.

Being back on campus again last month for the first time since our graduation in 2003, everything looked so familiar and close to heart. The energetic bright smile on those leadership venture fellows’ faces and their insatiable desire to learn reminded me of our school days.

When I started my two-year study at Wharton in 2001, looking at the recruiting reports from career office, I confidently thought I had a clear picture for my future. Yet looking back, it was beyond my or anyone’s imagination that an “incidental” involvement in the leadership venture program totally changed my trajectory.

I started with the trip to Cotopaxi during my first year, followed by the ice climbing in Adirondacks in the second year, and Kilimanjaro, the first of my Seven Summits quest, upon graduation. During each of our leadership venture trips, our learning was more focused on team work. It’s not until I have gone down the path of pursuing my Seven Summits dream and look back over the past many years that I truly appreciate the bigger-picture learning from those experience.

Nano Tools for Leaders VIII

Market Segmentation: Connecting Data to Decisions with Customer Analytics

Nano Tools for Leaders® are fast, effective leadership tools that you can learn and start using in less than 15 minutes — with the potential to significantly impact your success as a leader and the engagement and productivity of the people you lead.

Contributors:

• Eric T. Bradlow, The K.P. Chao Professor; Professor of Marketing, Statistics, and Education; Vice-Dean, Wharton Doctoral Programs, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
• David J. Reibstein, William Stewart Woodside Professor; Professor of Marketing, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

The Goal:

Create long-term sustainable advantages through market segmentation and granular data.

Nano Tool:

Creating a sustainable advantage is challenging even in the best circumstances. But it can be particularly difficult when there is minimal differentiation between you and your competitors, when you are competing almost exclusively on price, and/or when you’re doing business in a stagnant market. Many organizations are already collecting the kinds of data that can help them identify that advantage, but they’re often not making the connection between that data and their decisions. Market research can be a powerful tool for strategic decision making, helping to identify the varied desires, motivations, and actions of consumers, who can then be grouped accordingly. Armed with those consumer groupings, firms can assess alternative segments to target and ultimately serve that segment(s) with a unique offering.