Some managers develop strategy by focusing on problems in the present, and that’s especially true during a crisis. But Mark Johnson , co-founder of the innovation consulting firm Innosight, argues that leaders should imagine the future and then work backward to build their organization for that new reality. In this episode, he outlines the practical steps managers can take to look beyond the typical short-term planning horizon and help their teams grasp future opportunities. Johnson also shares ...
Sep 18, 2024•26 min
Is your company’s existing growth formula finally reaching its limit? Bain & Company partner Chris Zook says you may need to redefine your core business if you want to power new growth. Zook was co-head of Bain’s Global Strategy practice for 20 years. He’s also a best-selling business author. In this episode, he shares three warning signs that indicate your core business needs to be redefined, and he explains how to approach that transformation. In particular, he focuses on how to uncover wh...
Sep 11, 2024•19 min
Many people aspire to entrepreneurship. But Bill Aulet , who has advised founders for decades, warns that it remains a high-risk endeavor. In this episode, he outlines concrete steps anyone can take to get a new venture off the ground — including intrapreneurs within large organizations. He also breaks down some of the important trends he’s seeing in entrepreneurship, like the increasing commoditization of products and lower barriers to entry, due to technology. Aulet is a professor of entrepren...
Sep 04, 2024•29 min
The Super Bowl isn’t just American football’s championship game. It’s also one of the world’s biggest stages for brand messaging. In 2024, the average 30-second Super Bowl ad cost $7 million —and that doesn’t even include production costs. So how do brand managers know if they’re getting a good return on that huge investment? In this episode, Bentley University assistant professor of marketing Shelle Santana discusses the evolution of corporate branding, using lessons from classic Super Bowl ads...
Aug 28, 2024•33 min
Online influencers are an increasingly important way for companies to find new customers and drive sales. But if you’re a marketer hoping to target consumers, it’s important to understand how the social media industry works. In this episode, Emily Hund , a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, explains that influencers grew out of Great Recession-era job cuts that forced people in creative fields to innovate. She offers advice for brands developing influencer marketing strategies. You’ll...
Aug 21, 2024•33 min
More and more companies are turning to pricing algorithms to maximize profits. But many are unaware of a big downside. Marco Bertini , a marketing professor at Esade Business School in Barcelona, says constant price shifts can actually hurt the perception of your brand and its products. He warns that employing AI and machine learning without considering human psychology can damage your relationship with customers. In this episode, he outlines steps you can take to avoid these pitfalls, including...
Aug 14, 2024•28 min
In 2010, Japan’s largest e-commerce platform Rakuten was rapidly expanding into global markets when CEO Hiroshi Mikitani made a surprising announcement: Rakuten’s internal language would be changing to English. That meant that all meetings, emails, and other communications would have to be conducted in English. The company’s employees had two years to become proficient in the language or be demoted. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case, “ Language a...
Aug 07, 2024•20 min
Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail . That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike must sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport . He has researched some of the biggest stumbling blocks to long-lasting success and he explains how to successfully transition out of the start-up phase. Rayport argues that success has a lot to do w...
Jul 31, 2024•28 min
What do LEGO, GoPro, and CarMax have in common? Wharton professor David Robertson says they all have a similar strategy for growth that involves building families of complementary innovations around a core product or service. It’s an approach to innovation that’s neither disruptive nor incremental, but rather somewhere in the middle. And Robertson argues it’s a strategy that any company, no matter the industry, should consider. In this episode, you’ll learn how to use customer feedback to identi...
Jul 24, 2024•25 min
It’s an idea that’s a non-starter at many organizations: collaborating with a competitor. But Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff says leaders who refuse to consider teaming up with other companies—even when there are clear mutual benefits—may be leaving value on the table. In this episode, you’ll learn how companies like Apple, Ford, Google, and others have analyzed and capitalized on what Nalebuff calls “co-opetition” opportunities. You’ll also learn how to think strategically a...
Jul 17, 2024•26 min
As the chair and CEO of Sodexo, the France-based food services and facilities management company, Sophie Bellon leads one of the largest employers in the world, with front-line workers in nearly 50 countries. Managing that workforce—and the supply chains that enable them to do their jobs—is a complex undertaking that involves balancing both global strategy with local execution. In this episode, Harvard Business Review executive editor Alison Beard sits down with Bellon to discuss her approaches ...
Jul 10, 2024•31 min
In early 2015, Microsoft’s senior leaders were facing a set of difficult decisions. The firm had been struggling to innovate and grow as fast as its competitors. Now they were considering new opportunities that would yield higher growth but lower margins — like shifting away from perpetual licensing to focus on subscription sales. Harvard Business School professor Fritz Foley studied this period of transformative change at Microsoft for a business case study he wrote. In this episode, he shares ...
Jul 03, 2024•20 min
It’s a dilemma facing more and more brands: Should your business sell on Amazon? It’s the most visited e-commerce platform in the U.S. and the dominant retailer in 28 other countries. But that reach comes at a price. Harvard Business School associate professor Ayelet Israeli says there are downsides for many Amazon sellers, like costs, competition, and the lack of data. In this episode, Israeli offers a scorecard that can help you decide, step by step, whether or not the Amazon marketplace is ri...
Jun 26, 2024•30 min
Companies of every size across the world are basing more of their work around projects than at any time in the past. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez , who has studied projects and project management for decades, argues that at least some of the blame for these failures lies with executives who misunderstand the fundamentals of projects and fail to dedicate enough of their time to those they sponsor. In this episode, Nieto-Rodriguez explain...
Jun 19, 2024•26 min
Booking.com was founded by a Dutch university student in 1996. It grew slowly for almost a decade. By 2011, the company was generating more than a billion dollars in profits annually — making it the most financially successful digital travel market at the time. The secret to that accelerating growth was the company’s use of large-scale testing and experimentation. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke explains how the company created and sustained a culture of innovati...
Jun 12, 2024•28 min
So much has been written about how to future-proof a strategy. But Peter Scoblic says that too many companies still rely on short-sighted strategies that don’t effectively plan for different potential future scenarios. Scoblic is a co-founder and principal of the consultancy Event Horizon Strategies. In this episode, he explains how thoughtful and ongoing scenario-planning exercises can help organizations decide which investments will allow them to thrive — even in a crisis. He also shares how t...
Jun 05, 2024•28 min
As the CEO of one of the largest energy holding companies in the U.S., Lynn Good is leading Duke Energy’s aggressive transition to renewables and net zero emissions. It’s a complex undertaking that involves short-term planning and long-term advances in technology as well as managing a wide range of stakeholders. In this episode, HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius sits down with Good to discuss her strategy for Duke’s clean energy transition. They discuss how to make incremental adjustments to stra...
May 29, 2024•32 min
When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved. But Anne Morriss offers a different framework. In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem and explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership. As she says, “ Let’s get in...
May 22, 2024•30 min
In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into choosing a production location? In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih draws on his case study about China-based automotive glass maker Fuyao to discuss this core strategic question. The company must decide between two options to fulfill its upcoming contracts: its new Ohio factory or its factory based out of Tianjin, China. Unlike the Ohio factory, the Chinese factory produces below the cost target, but it also ...
May 15, 2024•26 min
The secret to success for many Silicon Valley tech companies isn’t necessarily that they’re ultra-nimble startups, or that they’re led by tech-savvy geniuses. Andy McAfee says their success often has more to do with a specific type of corporate culture that focuses on finding unconventional solutions to hard business problems. McAfee is a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and he’s the author of The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results ...
May 08, 2024•33 min
In the 1990s and 2000s, video game developer Epic Games had a string of mid-size successes. But the release of Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017 changed the company’s path forever. The game was a blockbuster. By 2019, Fortnite had registered more than 250 million users, with 10 million concurrent users. But Fortnite’s phenomenal success raised a new question for Epic: How could they turn this singular hit into a series of growth opportunities? In this episode, Harvard Business School associate prof...
May 01, 2024•20 min
So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos. In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus. He argues that some of Amazo...
Apr 22, 2024•29 min
In 1995, the late and legendary Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen introduced his theory of “disruptive innovation” right here in the pages of the Harvard Business Review. The idea inspired a generation of entrepreneurs and businesses, ranging from small start-ups to global corporations. Three decades later, debates have emerged around how the theory should be applied — especially within technology start-ups that have driven so much economic growth since 2000. In this episode,...
Apr 17, 2024•48 min
In February 2013, U.S. Airways announced that it would merge with American Airlines to create the world’s largest airline. During the acquisition, then-CEO Doug Parker and his board had transformative decisions to make. How should two large corporations merge their operations? Which members of each company’s C-suites should stay? How fast should they move on these changes? Parker knew that these strategic decisions would send important signals to employees, customers, and competitors. In this ep...
Apr 10, 2024•28 min
Is your growth strategy working consistently? Strategy expert Ken Favaro says creating and sustaining growth isn’t rocket science. However, you do have to understand the difference between “organic” growth and “inorganic” alternatives, which come through a merger or acquisition. Favaro is the chief strategy officer at BERA Brand Management. Formerly he was a senior partner at Booz & Company—now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In this episode, he argues that it’s important to focus on c...
Apr 03, 2024•16 min
For more than a century, the pharmaceutical company Roche has been headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. It’s one of more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies that have long been based there. Howard Yu , Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how this industrial cluster is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how these companies offer a counter-narrative to the pessimistic view that you can’t stay ahead of the compe...
Mar 27, 2024•26 min
So, you’ve successfully scaled your start-up and you’re growing into a mature company. What, if anything, should you retain from those early days? Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati says the most successful organizations have one thing in common: a soul. “Soul” goes beyond culture, purpose, or even the founder. It’s about having three things: strategic business intent, a strong connection to customers, and a stellar employee experience. Gulati argues that if you don’t preserve these...
Mar 20, 2024•27 min
We all know Silicon Valley’s mantra: fail fast, fail often. But when is it OK to fail in the real world? Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson says it depends on how and why you fail. She’s an expert on psychological safety and the author of the book, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well . In this episode, she explains the difference between good and bad types of failures. One has to do with experimentation, while the other is rooted in inattention or lack of training. Edmo...
Mar 13, 2024•37 min
Think of CEOs who have made strong rates of return for investors and built durable businesses. What strategies do you associate with their success? Investor and author William Thorndike studied eight CEOs who outperformed the market and their peers. The group included big names, like Warren Buffet and Katharine Graham, but also other leaders who are virtually unknown today. One example is Henry Singleton, an MIT-educated electrical engineer who led Teledyne Technologies from 1960 to 1986. Thornd...
Mar 06, 2024•14 min
In 2020, Kwame Spearman left his consulting job in New York City to take over an iconic independent bookstore, the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado—his hometown. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a community space after the pandemic. But to keep the store successful, he had figure out how to compete with online retailers and big box stores, amid technological change and shifting business models. In this episode, Harvard Business School associate pro...
Feb 28, 2024•30 min
