In June 2022, the first ever LIV Golf event teed off outside of London. Offering players larger prizes and more flexibility, LIV Golf aimed to disrupt the sport.

In response, the PGA Tour suspended all players who participated in the LIV Golf event, escalating tensions between the two entities. This conflict culminated in LIV Golf filing an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour. Then, in a surprising turn of events, the two tours announced their merger in June 2023.

University of Virginia associate professor Alexander MacKay discusses the competitive and regulatory issues at stake and whether or not the PGA Tour took the right actions in response to LIV Golf’s entry in his case, “LIV Golf.” In this episode, He explores how a dominant organization like the PGA Tour can respond to challenges from innovative competitors. He also shares lessons from the PGA Tour’s response to LIV Golf’s market entrance and explains when it makes more sense to treat a competitor as a partner rather than an adversary.

Key episode topics include: strategy, business management, antitrust laws, disruptive innovation, professional sports industry, media, entertainment, and professional sports, golf, merger.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: The PGA Tour and LIV Golf Merger: Competition Vs. Cooperation (2023)

· Find more episodes of Cold Call

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

In the last half century, relationships between employers and their employees have evolved away from being rooted in long-term loyalty to a new paradigm of short-term alliances driven by uncertainty and competition.

Entrepreneurs and coauthors Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh argue that the new world of work isn’t so different from the typical conditions that many entrepreneurs operate in. And if you’re a manager, you may need a new strategy to hire and retain top talent.

Casnocha and Yeh, coauthors of the book The Startup of You, explain why it’s important for your organization to build internal and external employee networks—and how to get started if you don’t already have those groups in place informally.

Key episode topics include: strategy, entrepreneurship, talent management.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Talent Strategies for the Post-Loyalty World (2013)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

The consulting firm McKinsey has helped its clients navigate disruption in a wide range of industries. But what can we learn from how McKinsey, itself, responded to disruption in the management consulting industry in the early aughts?

In this episode, the originator of disruptive innovation, the late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, joined former McKinsey managing partner Dominic Barton to break down how the firm shifted its internal strategy to prioritize flexibility and efficiency.

Key episode topics include: strategy, professional services, innovation, consulting, disruption.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Clay Christensen and Dominic Barton on Consulting’s Disruption (2013)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast.

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org.

Why did some companies thrive during the Covid-19 pandemic while others struggled?

Keith Ferrazzi, founder of the consulting firm Ferrazzi Greenlight, surveyed more than 2,000 executives to learn how they changed their operations during the pandemic. The results show that some companies had already been cultivating a kind of extreme adaptability before the pandemic. That practice helped them come out on top.

In this episode, Ferrazzi outlines the concrete steps organizations can take to cultivate the resilience and agility to stay competitive in the post-Covid-19 world.

Key episode topics include: strategy, adaptive leadership, organizational transformation, collaboration and teams.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: Why Some Companies Thrived During the Pandemic (2022)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

Glossier launched in 2014 as an e-commerce, direct-to-consumer makeup and skincare brand aimed at millennial women. From the start, Glossier’s founder Emily Weiss built a strong digital community around the brand. But after the company received its first major round of funding, Glossier was ready to scale up its marketing spending. The challenge: How to do that while also preserving the brand’s all-important authenticity?

In this episode, Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jill Avery explains how to think about marketing when scaling a business. Drawing from her business case on Glossier, Avery breaks down how their management team incorporated paid micro-influencers to grow their brand value without undermining their credibility. She also explores how Glossier leveraged their existing community to engage new customers.

Key episode topics include: strategy, growth strategy, marketing, social media, beauty care, startup, scaling, DTC, digital marketing.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Glossier Built a Cult Brand and a Digital Community, but What’s Next? (2020)

· Find more episodes of Cold Call

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

What does it take to succeed as a business while doing well by your employees?

Harvard Business School professor emeritus Michael Beer has studied companies who invest in building long-term social value, and he says they offer some key lessons for other firms.

In this episode, he breaks down how these companies set their strategies for new products and services. As he explains: “One of the key disciplines they have is what we called forging a strategic identity. So what does that mean? It means that they, first of all, start the process of deciding what they’re going to do, what services or products they’re going to offer…what markets they will go into…by first asking themselves, ‘Who are we?’ They start from the inside out…rather than from the outside in.”

Michael Beer is also the coauthor of Higher Ambition: How Great Leaders Create Economic and Social Value.

Key episode topics include: strategy, leadership.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: Higher Ambition Leadership (2011)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

Looking at business news over the past decade (including a few HBR articles), you might assume that just about every traditional company has fallen — or will soon fall — to competitors from the tech industry.

But London Business School professor Julian Birkinshaw says that story of disruption and destruction is overblown. His research into Fortune 500 and Global 500 organizations shows that many industries haven’t been radically remade, despite the rise of a few tech giants like Amazon and Google.

Birkinshaw outlines the strategies that many incumbents, like J.P. Morgan, Disney, and Proctor & Gamble, are using to survive and thrive. He breaks down the benefits and drawbacks of four key strategies that incumbents typically use to compete with insurgents. And he explains how you can decide which strategy best fits your organization.

Key episode topics include: strategy, disruptive innovation, digital transformation.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: No, Tech Start-ups Aren’t Taking Over the World (2022)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

If you’re a fast-growing company in an emerging economy, you need a strategy for competing in your home market in the short term. But you also need a longer-term strategy that will help you grow beyond that initial market.

John Jullens says the challenge is building both strategies simultaneously. Jullens is a longtime management consultant who specializes in corporate and business unit strategy.

He explains why so many companies in emerging markets make the mistake of focusing on execution and first mover advantage. Instead, he argues that companies need to lay the strategic foundations for long-term success early on or risk flaming out.

Key episode topics include: strategy, international business, asia, growth strategy.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Why So Many Emerging Giants Flame Out (2014)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

Khan Academy, the online global education nonprofit, launched in 2006 when founder Sal Khan created a few videos to help his cousin with her math homework. After a decade of growth brought Khan Academy’s user base to more than 15 million monthly visitors, Khan knew he needed expert help to formulate and lead a strategy for the organization’s future growth.

He hired Ginny Lee from Intuit to serve as Khan Academy’s COO and president. Her mandate was to redefine the organization’s priorities, create a focused strategy for growth, and continue scaling the company.

Harvard Business School professor Bill Sahlman studied the company’s growth strategy, and wrote a business case study about it. He explains why it’s so important to build a well-balanced leadership team as part of your growth strategy. He also breaks down how to create processes for everything from budgeting to giving feedback. .

Key episode topics include: strategy, leadership and managing people, operations and supply chain management, digital learning, growth strategy.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: Can Khan Academy Scale to Educate Anyone, Anywhere? (2019)

· Find more episodes of Cold Call

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

Leadership transitions are challenging for both organizations and the leaders who must directly navigate them. But Michael Watkins says they’re also a time of incredible opportunity — especially for those leaders who understand how to handle this crucial period.

Watkins is a professor of leadership and organizational change at IMD Business School. He shares a framework for selecting a transition strategy that best matches the situation you’re facing — whether you’re building a new operation from scratch or trying to turnaround a business in crisis. Watkins also explains why it’s so important to effectively assess your new leadership context and not to rely only on transition strategies that have worked for you in the past.

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, leadership transitions.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

· Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: Picking the Right Transition Strategy (2008)

· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast

· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org