HBR On Strategy

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.

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.

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.

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.

In 1992, Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. signed NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the global business landscape began transforming.

Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, studies how companies have adjusted their strategies to that disruptive change — from rethinking their supply chains to learning to navigate unpredictable trade policy environments. He discusses how companies can plan for an evolving world of multi-country international supply chains and cross-border information flows.

Key episode topics include: strategy, competitive strategy, business history, globalization, technology and analytics.

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.

Disruptive innovation has proven to be such a powerful idea that the word “innovation” is often equated with the broader idea of market disruption. But that’s not always the case.

INSEAD strategy professor Renée Mauborgne says there is a way to create new markets without destroying jobs, companies, and communities. She calls this idea: “nondisruptive creation.”

Mauborgne explains how some entrepreneurs and companies have been able to grow billion-dollar businesses by creating new markets rather than displacing existing ones. She points to Square, which enables credit card transactions with a mobile phone or tablet, as one prime example.

Mauborgne also breaks down the key operational advantages that come with nondisruptive creation and explains how to spot a nondisruptive market opportunity and evaluate its potential.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, disruptive innovation, growth strategy, entrepreneurs and founders.

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.

Enel, Italy’s state-owned power company founded in 1962, was one of Europe’s largest coal users and polluters. Now it is recognized as a leader in renewable energy services and has integrated sustainability into its business model and operations.

In this episode, former Harvard Business School senior lecturer Mark Kramer explains how Enel made that enormous strategic change — from its long-range planning to how it tackled the dreaded “innovator’s dilemma.”

Kramer studied the company’s transformation into a renewable energy leader in his case, “Enel: The Future of Energy.”

Key episode topics include: strategy, change management, leadership and managing people. 

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.

IMD professor Stefan Michel says that many businesses don’t actually know how. “Many companies spend a lot of time on innovating, in a sense that they create more value for customers,” he argues. “What they often miss is to think about how to capture that value.”

Michel studies marketing and strategy at the Switzerland-based business school. Through his research, he created a framework for defining the value of your innovations.

In this episode, he explains how to apply his framework — whether you’re developing new business ideas or formulating a strategy to compete with a new entrant in your market. He also discusses how value-capture works in the real world — drawing on examples from companies like Nespresso and Google.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, value-based pricing, pricing, value capture, Nespresso, Google, new revenue streams, 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.

Climate change is causing severe weather, dangerously elevated temperatures, and water shortages around the world. Meanwhile, firms are struggling to reduce their carbon emissions while adapting their operations to these new conditions.

To address both challenges at once, Harvard Business School professors Forest Reinhardt and Michael Toffel have proposed an unconventional path forward: learning from the climate change strategies of the U.S. Navy.

They argue that the Navy’s scientific and sober view of the world’s changing climate offers insight that can also apply to the private sector.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to balance mitigation activities in the shorter term with long-term investments that will help your organization adapt to future changes. You’ll also learn how climate change could shift demand in your markets and reshape shipping routes and affect your supply chains.

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, risk management, sustainable business practices, climate change, military.

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.

Do you know the difference between accurate forecasting and effective forecasting?

Technology forecaster Paul Saffo says accurate forecasting is nearly impossible to do. But if you aim for effective forecasting, he notes, then at least you’re considering the full range of reasonable possibilities for the future, rather than jumping to one conclusion and preparing only for that outcome. “If you head straight towards accurate forecasting, you may end up in a much worse situation by overlooking things that eventually come to pass,” Saffo argues.

In this episode, he shares his six rules for effective forecasting—from visualizing future uncertainty to discerning patterns in past data—and explains why it’s important to be your own worst critic of your forecasts.

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, risk management, decision making and problem solving, forecasting, technology. 

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.