In 2023, the auto industry went through huge changes in pursuit of lower carbon emission. Some automakers, like Ford, Mercedes, and General Motors, announced their plans to stop selling vehicles with internal combustion engines. The reaction from investment analysts was overwhelmingly positive, despite the fact that the production of electric vehicles (EVs) actually increases emissions in the supply chain. In contrast, BMW decided to pursue a more flexible decarbonization strategy. Their plans i...
Dec 13, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast ChatGPT dominated news headlines in 2023. But generative AI isn’t just a hack to boost productivity. Many businesses are exploring its potential to create new products and services, which requires entirely new strategic work. In this episode, HBR’s editor in chief, Adi Ignatius , speaks to Microsoft’s head of strategy Chris Young and Harvard Business School professor Andy Wu , an expert in growth and innovation strategy. They lay out Gen-AI’s emerging value chains and break down the competitive ...
Dec 06, 2023•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Pencil-maker Faber-Castell has been in business since 1761, but it is still innovating and adopting new technology. In this episode, Harvard Business School associate professor Ryan Raffaelli discusses his case, “Faber-Castell.” He explains how the company balances stewardship of its brand with innovation and evolution, and how leaders decide when—and when not to—adopt new technologies. Plus, he breaks down Faber-Castell’s “generational” approach to formulating strategy to sustain their business...
Nov 29, 2023•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast When companies cut costs, they tend to trim spending across the board. But Cesare Mainardi , former CEO of global management consultancy Booz & Company, says that cost cutting should be a careful, strategic process. In this episode you’ll learn how to ensure that your company’s strategic capabilities aren’t negatively affected by necessary cuts. You’ll also learn how top leadership can work with teams to understand the trade-offs involved in reducing costs. Mainardi is now a business strateg...
Nov 22, 2023•16 min•Transcript available on Metacast Are you considering a refresh of your brand? Roger Martin says you should probably rethink that. “When you rebrand, the [consumer’s] subconscious is saying ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where's that thing we were comfortable with?’ And in some sense, it puts you back to square one. You're now competing to establish a new habit,” he explains. Martin is the former dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto — and one of the world’s leading thinkers on strategy. In this ep...
Nov 15, 2023•11 min•Transcript available on Metacast Jorge Quintanilla Nielsen started the private asset management firm Capital SAFI in 2007 — and planned to expand from Bolivia across South America. As a private firm, Capital SAFI isn’t required to have a board, but he knew that governance would be one of the main aspects potential partners would evaluate. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor V. G. Narayanan discusses his case, “Building the Governance to Take Capital SAFI to the Next Level.” He explains how Nielsen selects board m...
Nov 08, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Do you have good AI? That’s “aesthetic intelligence” — not artificial intelligence. Pauline Brown , former chairman of North America for the luxury goods company LVMH, argues that great leaders need to develop “aesthetic intelligence” to stand out among competitors. They need to understand how their products or services can “elicit true delight.” “When you look at the research, the vast majority of reasons that anyone will buy one product over another is based on how that product or service make...
Nov 01, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Many founders try to emulate startups that have already become successful. But Thales Teixeira says that approach, which often involves trying to do too much, too quickly, can lead to failure. In this episode, you’ll learn how to find customers who aren’t being served by existing businesses and how to work with early adopters to improve your product and service. You’ll also learn when to focus on developing your technology and when to make key hires — with real-world examples from Uber, Airbnb, ...
Oct 25, 2023•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast As the former CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi played an important role in shaping the company’s global strategy. She shifted PepsiCo’s focus to healthier products, worked to improve sustainability, and perhaps most notably: introduced design thinking into the company’s innovation process. “It’s a fine line between innovation and design. Hopefully design leads to innovation, and innovation demands design,” Nooyi tells Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius . In this episode, you’ll lear...
Oct 18, 2023•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast Direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses play an outsize role in disrupting industries. Think of eyeglasses and Warby Parker or mattresses and Casper. But after that initial disruption, industry competitors often adapt. Harvard Business School professor Len Schlesinger and Matt Higgins , the co-founder and CEO of private investment firm RSE Ventures, studied the teledentistry company SmileDirectClub and wrote a case study about its challenges as it scaled. In this episode, they break down how SmileDi...
Oct 11, 2023•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Who are your primary customers? Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons says that’s the most important question of your strategy –— and the hardest to answer. Simons says that many firms make the mistake of defining their customers too broadly. To succeed, you have to target your resources at the people who really drive the most value. “Resources are limited…and the more people we call customers, the more we’re diffusing resources and attention over all kinds of different entities and co...
Oct 04, 2023•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast What can we learn from fast-moving companies—like Amazon, Google, and Alibaba—about how to organize to promote strategic growth? University of Michigan business professor Dave Ulrich went inside these companies to study how their internal structure keeps them nimble, innovative, and market-oriented. “That mental model of what an organization is, it’s about power, it’s about control, it’s about clarifying decision rights,” he tells IdeaCast host Curt Nickisch . “I think that mental model of an or...
Sep 27, 2023•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast Wolters Kluwer started in the 1830s as a publishing house. But the Dutch multinational corporation has grown into a global, information services company and now earns more than 90 percent of its revenue from digital products. “We had to move quickly and we had to do a certain set of strategic things, or the company might not survive,” chair and CEO Nancy McKinstry tells IdeaCast host Curt Nickisch . In this episode, McKinstry discusses how she successfully shifted the company’s strategy to focus...
Sep 20, 2023•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast OXXO was the dominant convenience store chain in Mexico—until its chief rival doubled in size almost overnight. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tatiana Sandino explains how OXXO CEO Eduardo Padilla responded to this strategic challenge. Instead of opening more stores as quickly as possible, he focused on improving the company’s culture and operations. The company implemented management systems across its locations and then used those systems to gain new economies of scale. Key...
Sep 13, 2023•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast To many people, strategy is a total mystery. But Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee says strategy doesn’t have to be complicated if you focus on creating value. “Strategy’s simple. It’s a plan to create value,” he explains. “The way a company plans to create that value, that's the strategy of the company.” In this episode, you’ll learn how to focus on two key value drivers: customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. You’ll also learn where profits come in and how to vis...
Sep 06, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Major strategy shifts need time to play out. Customers have their habits, employees are used to doing things a certain way, and fine-tuning a plan takes time in the market. But what if you don’t have the luxury of waiting years to know if your strategy really is working? “The question…is whether the strategy is flawed or whether we just haven’t given it enough time to take hold with customers,” says Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jill Avery , who wrote the fictionalized case study discu...
Aug 30, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast As technology changes everything, how can existing businesses create innovation and change from within? Harvard Business School fellow Karen Mills studied how one 200-year-old regional bank in the U.S. used intrapreneurship to develop a completely automated small business lending product to compete with online lenders. Mills breaks down the case study of Eastern Bank’s strategy for innovation — from its early partnership with a fintech entrepreneur to its eventual spinoff of Numerated, the onlin...
Aug 23, 2023•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast When was the last time you practiced your critical thinking skills? Helen Lee Bouygues , an expert in business transformation, says many business problems are really about simple errors in critical thinking. “People believe that critical thinking is something that we do every day and it comes very natural,” she tells IdeaCast host Curt Nickisch . “But in reality, critical thinking is not only extremely important for success in life, but it’s also something that needs to be learned and practiced....
Aug 16, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Innovation is a challenge for large incumbent companies. Their long-term success depends on exploring new innovations that stretch the organization beyond its core businesses. But these new opportunities must draw on the company’s existing strengths and leadership position. Harvard Business School senior lecturer Derek van Bever and former lecturer Stephen P. Kaufman studied global brewing company Molson Coors, as it prepared to enter the cannabis beverages business in 2019. “The unknowns were u...
Aug 09, 2023•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Free products and services are everywhere – from buy-one-get-one-free offers to free office software like Canva and Google docs, and, yes, this very podcast. If your revenue strategy does not include give aways, these free goods and services can put extra pressure on your business. How can you compete? Brigham Young University professor of strategy David Bryce studied give-away strategies across 26 different product markets. He says that companies make two key mistakes when they try to compete w...
Aug 02, 2023•17 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the start-up world, when is it possible to grow too fast? Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann and entrepreneur Lindsey Hyde discuss what led to the failure of Hyde’s pet care start-up, Baroo.
Jul 26, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast What role does timing play in strategic thinking — for an organization's growth, but also for you and your career? New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink says it can play a big part in how successful your strategy will be. “I think people underestimate timing,” he tells Dear HBR hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn . “We’re very intentional in our lives about what we do. But when it comes to when we do things, we don’t take it seriously enough. We’re not intentional. And it has a material e...
Jul 19, 2023•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast To plan for the future, businesses usually look to their past. But what if your company is in uncharted territory? Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath has a different idea: Design experiments to test your assumptions using “discovery-driven growth.”
Jul 12, 2023•12 min•Transcript available on Metacast Since its founding in 1994, Amazon has expanded into streaming, cloud computing, content creation, and even groceries. But if traditional business strategy tells us that the key to success is focus, why does Amazon work?
Jul 05, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast Imagine you’re trying to solve a problem, but none of your options are all that great. You could walk away. Or you could try to take the best from two inadequate options to reach a smarter, strategic solution.
Jun 28, 2023•21 min•Transcript available on Metacast Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay studied Uber’s strategies as it entered new markets around the world. He wanted to understand how global businesses can scale fast and survive for the long run. MacKay tells Cold Call host Brian Kenny that Uber adjusted its strategies to meet the specific challenges posed by competitors and regulators in six global markets: New York, Bogota, Delhi, Shanghai, Accra, and London.
Jun 21, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast The theory of disruptive innovation endures as a way to make a complicated and expensive product simpler and more affordable. But the originator of disruptive innovation argued that disruptive innovation isn’t just about simplifying technology — it also requires a new business model.
Jun 14, 2023•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Quitting is often associated with failure -- whether it’s a project, job, career, or company. But Annie Duke, an author, consultant, and former professional poker champion, argues that quitting can sometimes be a strategic success.
Jun 07, 2023•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Blue ocean strategy is a landmark business idea, but its co-creator, Renée Mauborgne, says it’s not a guaranteed win. She discusses what specifically can go wrong when you try to implement blue ocean strategy, including the common traps managers fall into.
May 31, 2023•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast In an era driven by network effects, smaller players struggle to compete against bigger platforms. The trick to gaining ground on a much larger rival, says Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, is choosing a strategy that can’t easily be imitated. A good example is TaoBao’s strategy for displacing eBay in China, back in 2007.
May 24, 2023•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
