has inspired marketing campaigns that persuade has inspired marketing campaigns that persuade consumers to buy the wine for tens of thousands of dollars a bottle. Even with a promising internal career path, many talented people will still leave a group to pursue a track not available there or to work with a particular team elsewhere. But some groups don’t treat this as a rejection, and many of their executives stay in touch with former employees. LVMH routinely rehires ex-employees (although this is not the case for other groups). One senior executive we spoke with left to work for a high-tech cosmetics start-up and then came back to Guerlain with ideas about how to integrate beauty products with digital technologies. Another went to Google and returned with expertise in designing high-tech wearable items. A senior executive commented, “It’s good for our people to leave, learn from the competition, and come back.” Career mobility has helped groups identify and transfer best practices across products. Consider watches, which luxury brands have traditionally marketed on the basis of technical and aesthetic excellence. To boost sales growth, the groups’ watchmaking companies started hiring marketing managers from their groups’ cosmetics and fashion companies. People from those businesses have proved adept at developing stories that explain why a company created a particular model of watch and what the aspirations of its creators were. The ability to draw on deep brand-building and advertising expertise from other companies within their groups gives affiliated watch brands an advantage over independent watch companies, which have to hire it externally, often at a hefty price. Experts from outside the watch business offer new hard skills as well. One executive reflected, “I’m responsible for a luxury watch brand in Asia. My team never had a CRM function, so I recruited an executive who had experience in CRM in fashion and cosmetics firms in our group. She brought the tools and the processes, as well as the knowledge about performance benchmarks. She helped our people change their mindset from being focused on the product to being more customer-oriented.” The new CRM systems improved the brand’s customer understanding and reduced its risks of stock buildup, since they provided quick feedback on market reactions to products. And the relationship-based approach the former fashion executive introduced has played an important part in making this brand one of the mostsought-after luxury lines in China. Leveraging International Experience It’s well known that spending time overseas is critical to executive development and performance. One of the advantages of luxury groups is that with their worldwide operations, they can easily find managers who’ve had jobs outside their home countries or can easily put people into such positions. This has contributed to the success of the groups’ flagship brands in two ways: A source of inspiration. In our statistical analyses of fashion performance, we found that fashion designers were more likely to produce creative collections if they had worked abroad. (See the exhibit “Foreign Experience Gives Designers an Edge.”) Working in two to three foreign countries was particularly beneficial. At LVMH the leading designers all bring cross-cultural perspectives to their work. Phoebe Philo, a Paris-born British fashion designer educated at Central Saint Martins, in London, runs Céline—a quintessentially French brand—from London. Marc Jacobs, who during his tenure at Paris-based Louis Vuitton expanded its product mix from travel accessories to clothing, was born and trained in the United consumers to buy the wine for tens of thousands of dollars a bottle.Even with a promising internal career path, many talented people will still leave a group to pursue a track not available there or to work with a particular team elsewhere. But some groups don’t treat this as a rejection, and many of their executives stay in touch with former employees. LVMH routinely rehires ex-employees (although this is not the case for other groups). One senior executive we spoke with left to work for a high-tech cosmetics start-up and then came back to Guerlain with ideas about how to integrate beauty products with digital technologies. Another went to Google and returned with expertise in designing high-tech wearable items. A senior executive commented, “It’s good for our people to leave, learn from the competition, and come back.” Career mobility has helped groups identify and transfer best practices across products. Consider watches, which luxury brands have traditionally marketed on the basis of technical and aesthetic excellence. To boost sales growth, the groups’ watchmaking companies started hiring marketing managers from their groups’ cosmetics and fashion companies. People from those businesses have proved adept at developing stories that explain why a company created a particular model of watch and what the aspirations of its creators were. The ability to draw on deep brand-building and advertising expertise from other companies within their groups gives affiliated watch brands an advantage over independent watch companies, which have to hire it externally, often at a hefty price. Experts from outside the watch business offer new hard skills as well. One executive reflected, “I’m responsible for a luxury watch brand in Asia. My team never had a CRM function, so I recruited an executive who had experience in CRM in fashion and cosmetics firms in our group. She brought the tools and the processes, as well as the knowledge about performance benchmarks. She helped our people change their mindset from being focused on the product to being more customer-oriented.” The new CRM systems improved the brand’s customer understanding and reduced its risks of stock buildup, since they provided quick feedback on market reactions to products. And the relationship-based approach the former fashion executive introduced has played an important part in making this brand one of the mostsought- after luxury lines in China. Leveraging International Experience It’s well known that spending time overseas is critical to executive development and performance. One of the advantages of luxury groups is that with their worldwide operations, they can easily find managers who’ve had jobs outside their home countries or can easily put people into such positions. This has contributed to the success of the groups’ flagship brands in two ways: A source of inspiration. In our statistical analyses of fashion performance, we found that fashion designers were more likely to produce creative collections if they had worked abroad. (See the exhibit “Foreign Experience Gives Designers an Edge.”) Working in two to three foreign countries was particularly beneficial. At LVMH the leading designers all bring cross-cultural perspectives to their work. Phoebe Philo, a Paris-born British fashion designer educated at Central Saint Martins, in London, runs Céline—a quintessentially French brand—from London. Marc Jacobs, who during his tenure at Paris-based Louis Vuitton expanded its product mix from travel accessories to clothing, was born and trained in the United