A consultant I speak with estimates that 50 percent of his meetings are “single blind,” where he doesn’t even know the identity of the brand he is consulting on, or the specifics of the product they are paying him to comment on, because the people hiring him are too afraid he might share details with a competitor. Every single grocery executive I reached out to either demanded an off-record conversation or spoke in such vagaries as to render our conversation imbecilic. They were happy to outline a vision of the grocery store available to every second grader willing to open a Richard Scarry
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