Kasra Ferdows, a professor of operations and information management at Georgetown University, notes that Zara’s adroit use of imitation has helped make Inditex the largest fashion apparel retailer in the world. Its success, he and two coauthors concluded in a company profile written for the Harvard Business Review, “depends on a constant exchange of information throughout every part of Zara’s supply chain—from customers to store managers, from store managers to market specialists and designers, from designers to production staff.” Crucially, the “information” that flows so freely at the
...more
