As Seen in CFO Studio Magazine 2015 Q3 Issue

Recent trends have shown that C-suite executives increasingly recruit talent from industries outside their own. Executives often find that people from varying sectors can have an excellent handle on best practices, more so than those with deep experience in a single field. One example is the former CEO of Louis Vuitton who, according to the Harvard Business Review, hired executives from Toyota to improve supply chain management and IT integration. Thanks to input from experts outside of the luxury-brand field, today Louis Vuitton is ahead of most of its competitors in sharing with suppliers real-time information about customer demand.

Career mobility often helps transfer best practices across different sectors and products. A skill set that at first glance may seem irrelevant to a particular field, may actually help inject new life into a management or design team. For example, an executive formerly with Apple, a company known as much for its design and style as its technology, may have excellent ideas for the development of high-tech clothing or jewelry lines, or to run a luxury watch brand that looks to meet precise performance benchmarks. The possibilities for this type of cross-pollination are endless once C-suite executives expand their views of what comprises a valuable skill set.