HBR On Strategy

“Community” is a buzzword that gets thrown around a lot in the business world. But what does it really mean to build one—and what does it take to make it last? More importantly, how can businesses create communities that drive long-term success? Matt Mullenweg, the cofounder of WordPress and the founder and CEO of Automattic, tackles these questions in this episode. He shares insights on fostering community within a firm—like hiring the right people through auditions instead of resumes—and within a customer base by encouraging engagement and feedback.

Key episode topics include: customer strategy, customer experience, customer feedback, hiring and recruitment, brand management, 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.

Stefan Thomke, professor at Harvard Business School, says running experiments can give companies tremendous value, but too often business leaders make decisions based on intuition.

While A/B testing on large transaction volumes is common practice at Google, Booking.com, and Netflix, Thomke says even small firms can get a competitive advantage from experiments. He explains how to introduce, run, and learn from them, as well as how to cultivate an experimental mindset at your organization. Thomke is the author of the book Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments and the HBR article “Building a Culture of Experimentation.”

Key episode topics include: experimentation, data and analytics, risk management, decision-making, 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.

Founded in 2014, Thinx, Inc. makes absorbent underwear that can be worn during menstruation. But the feminine care market had seen virtually no innovation in half a century because of the taboo against discussing the topic of menstruation. As a result, the startup was competing against large incumbents like Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson.

Harvard Business School Associate Professor Rembrand Koning examines these strategic marketing challenges and discusses the importance of removing taboos and biases in order to bring innovation to the feminine care market in his case, “Thinx, Inc.—Breaking Barriers in Feminine Care.”

Key episode topics include: disruptive innovation, startups, marketing, gender, health and wellness

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.

Venture capital firms notoriously embrace risk and take big swings, hoping that one startup will become a monster hit that pays for many other failed investments. This VC approach scares established companies, but it shouldn’t. Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Ilya Strebulaev says that VC firms have proven best practices that all leaders should apply in their own companies. He explains exactly how VC’s operationalize risk, embrace disagreement over consensus, and stay agile in their decision-making—all valuable lessons that apply outside of Silicon Valley. With author Alex Dang, Strebulaev cowrote the new book The Venture Mindset: How to Make Smarter Bets and Achieve Extraordinary Growth and the HBR article “Make Decisions with a VC Mindset.”

Key episode topics include:

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.

When a company, division, or product line has been struggling for some time, it can feel nearly impossible to get things back on track. But big turnarounds are possible, provided you have a team willing to work hard, be creative, and embrace change. When he was president and CEO of Marvel, Peter Cuneo oversaw the resurgence and sale of the media company, but even before that he had a long track record for turning around many types of consumer-facing businesses. He shares the strategies that work best for shaking up organizations and teams and boosting their performance. Cuneo is also the managing principal of Cuneo and Company.

Key episode topics include: strategy execution, strategic planning, strategy, turnarounds, decision-making, problem solving, entertainment industry

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

The use of artificial intelligence—specifically generative AI—is growing rapidly, and tech giants like Google have an important role to play in how that technology gets adopted and developed. Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google as well as its parent company Alphabet, which he’s led as an AI-first company for several years. He speaks with HBR Editor at Large Adi Ignatius about shaping Google’s AI strategy, putting safeguards in place, and how work and leadership will change as AI advances.

Key episode topics include: artificial intelligence, generative AI, innovation, technology, strategy

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

Getting a big, bureaucratic organization to innovate or adopt new technologies is hard. That’s why Harvard Business School professor Maria Roche wrote a case study about U.S. Air Force Major Victor “SALSA” Lopez. He helped launch a program that uncovers ways to use AI to strengthen U.S. defense efforts. Professor Roche and Major Lopez talked about the challenges of fostering innovation within a large bureaucracy in a conversation with host Brian Kenny on Cold Call back in 2023.

Key episode topics include: innovation, change management, artificial intelligence, defense sector, technology, analytics

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

Fueled by the promise of concrete insights, organizations are increasingly prioritizing data in their decision-making processes. But that process can easily go wrong. Many leaders don’t understand that their decisions are only as good as how they interpret the data.

In this episode, Professor Michael Luca of Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School share a framework for making better decisions by interpreting data more effectively.

Luca and Edmondson are coauthors of the HBR article “Where Data-Driven Decision-Making Can Go Wrong.”

Key episode topics include: Analytics and data, data management, data strategy, data analysis, organizational decision making, 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.

Many companies, especially in the tech world, have come to embrace the idea of growth at all costs. But according to research from Gary Pisano, professor at Harvard Business School, most firms fail to consistently increase revenues and profits over the long term, adjusting for inflation.

In this episode, Pisano explains why it’s important for leaders to think more strategically about not just the rate of growth they want to achieve but the direction they want to grow in and their method for doing so. Trying to grow too fast can be the downfall of many organizations. He shares examples of companies that have fallen into this trap, as well as those getting the balance right.

Pisano wrote the HBR article “How Fast Should Your Company Really Grow?“

Key episode topics include: Growth strategy, strategy, competitive advantage, profitability, sustainable business practices

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.

Imagine a company that, in a matter of weeks, can develop, prototype, build, and deliver innovative products. That’s exactly what Haier, one of the world’s largest home appliance manufacturers, achieved in 2019. When the city of Wuhan urgently needed mobile isolation wards to curb the spread of Covid-19, Haier leveraged their open digital supply chain platform to deliver in record time.

In this episode, Kasra Ferdows, an operations management professor at Georgetown University, explains how open digital platforms facilitate innovation and problem solving by making the entire supply chain more transparent to suppliers.

Key episode topics include: Supply chain management, strategy, innovation, competitive advantage, operations

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.