Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how the industrial cluster in the Swiss city of Basel is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how early dye makers were able to continually jump to new capabilities and thrive for generations. He says the story of those companies offers a counter-narrative to the pessimistic view that unless your company is Google or Apple, you can’t stay ahead of the competition for long. Yu is the author of “LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied.”

How Some Companies Beat the Competition… For Centuries

A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.

Business

Investing

Careers

Management & Marketing

Business News

Shopping

Marketing

Management

Entrepreneurship

Managing technology has never been more challenging. HBR IdeaCast’s new special series, Tech at Work, offers research, stories, and advice to make technology work for you and your team.
Listen every other Thursday starting May 2 in the HBR IdeaCast feed, after the regular Tuesday episode.

Special Series: Tech at Work

Worker disengagement is on the rise around the world. Even those of us who generally like our jobs sometimes find it hard to muster energy and focus. So what's the key to regaining motivation? Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and research associate Robin Abrahams share a four part process to help you get your groove back: detachment, empathy, action and reframing. They offer simple tips like thinking in the third person, helping others, and gamification to help get back on track. Groysberg and Abrahams are the authors of the HBR article "Advice for the Unmotivated."

Feeling Unmotivated? Here’s How to Get Out of the Rut

Few leaders have been trained to ask great questions. That might explain why they tend to be good at certain kinds of questions, and less effective at other kinds. Unfortunately, that hurts their ability to pursue strategic priorities. Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School, explains how leaders can break out of that rut and systematically ask five kinds of questions: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive, and subjective. He shares real-life examples of how asking the right sort of question at a key time can unlock value and propel your organization. With his IMD colleagues Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, Chevallier wrote the HBR article "The Art of Asking Smarter Questions."

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Many people aspire to entrepreneurship but we all know it's a high-risk endeavor. Bill Aulet, the Ethernet Inventors Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has for decades studied what it takes for start-ups to succeed and advises the next generation of founders on how to do it. He discusses the key trends and changes he's seen over the past few years, and outlines concrete steps anyone can take to get a new venture -- including those within larger organizations -- off the ground. Aulet is the author of the newly updated book Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.

A Roadmap for Today’s Entrepreneurs

The amount of work we need to get done seems to grow daily. To avoid becoming overwhelmed, we have to become more productive than ever. Laura Mae Martin has advice on what has worked well at one of the biggest organizations in the world. She's the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google and shares the practical ways she helps her colleagues and company executives manage their time, calendars, email inboxes, and more. Martin is the author of the new book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing.

How Some Companies Beat the Competition… For Centuries

Download our free app to listen on your phone