HBR On Strategy

The insurance industry is centuries old and has historically been dominated by a few large incumbents. But the industry is experiencing disruption from smaller tech-driven companies—known as insurtechs—that are changing how insurance is bought and sold.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Lauren Cohen explores how insurtech firm Hippo is challenging traditional insurance models. He explains how Hippo is eliminating the need for insurance agents and using AI to lower prices. And he breaks down Hippo’s unique approach to targeting customers who live in riskier markets and are comfortable with digital platforms.

Key episode topics include: insurance, disruptive innovation, artificial intelligence, growth strategy, long-term growth, competitive advantage, climate change, case studies

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.

It’s a holy grail for many businesses—the search for sustainable competitive advantage. But Chris Zook points out that it’s elusive for most companies. He notes that less than one in 10 companies even achieve a modest level of sustained and profitable growth over a 10-year period on average.

Zook is the former head of Bain’s global strategy practice and coauthor of the book Repeatability: Build Enduring Businesses for a World of Constant Change.

In this episode, he shares three key principles that can help your organization find and maintain an enduring competitive advantage, with real-world examples drawn from IKEA, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Nike.

Key episode topics include: strategy, leadership, growth strategy, long-term growth, competitive advantage, case studies.

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.

For a long time in the restaurant industry, there were two types of dining experiences: fast food or table service. But Ron Shaich, founder and former chairman and CEO of Panera Bread, managed to create an entirely new category in between the two: fast casual. That innovative idea laid the groundwork for companies like Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and beyond.

In this episode, Shaich breaks down his core strategies for successful innovation in the restaurant industry: pinpoint what your customers truly want, differentiate your offering, execute with excellence, and focus on growth. He argues that these strategies aren’t only relevant for the food industry — they can be used to scale any type of organization.

Key episode topics include: strategy, customer service, entrepreneurship, going public, growth strategy, scaling entrepreneurial ventures, strategy execution, restaurants, fast casual, panera, chipotle, sweetgreen, innovation, 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.

Imagine this scenario: Your company’s executive team has just announced their new master plan for growing the business. Now it’s your job, as a mid-level manager, to put it into practice. So where do you start?

In this episode, strategy consultant Andrea Belk Olson explains how to make the most of a plan that you may or may not agree with and that you may or may not have had any input into. She also has advice about the questions you should ask yourself before taking action, how to handle resistance from people you manage, and what to do if the new strategy isn’t working well.

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategy execution, growth strategy, managing people, managing up.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.