HBR On Strategy Harvard Business Review

Booking.com was founded by a Dutch university student in 1996. It grew slowly for almost a decade. By 2011, the company was generating more than a billion dollars in profits annually — making it the most financially successful digital travel market at the time. The secret to that accelerating growth was the company’s use of large-scale testing and experimentation.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke explains how the company created and sustained a culture of innovation that challenged conventional assumptions about management and process.

Key episode topics include: strategy, experimentation, innovation, travel, digital, platform.

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 Cold Call episode: At Booking.com, Innovation Means Constant Failure (2019)
· Find more episodes of Cold Call
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
]]>

So much has been written about how to future-proof a strategy. But Peter Scoblic says that too many companies still rely on short-sighted strategies that don’t effectively plan for different potential future scenarios.

Scoblic is a co-founder and principal of the consultancy Event Horizon Strategies. In this episode, he explains how thoughtful and ongoing scenario-planning exercises can help organizations decide which investments will allow them to thrive — even in a crisis. He also shares how to balance short-term factors with longer term modeling and why it’s so important to ensure that your planning team is truly diverse. As he says, “This is a case where diversity absolutely matters, in all senses of the word, because what you want is to get people to think outside of the box. It’s very difficult to do that if you don’t recognize the box that you’re in.”

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, crisis management, scenario panning, modeling.

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: Future-Proofing Your Strategy with Scenario Planning (2020)
· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
]]>

As the CEO of one of the largest energy holding companies in the U.S., Lynn Good is leading Duke Energy’s aggressive transition to renewables and net zero emissions. It’s a complex undertaking that involves short-term planning and long-term advances in technology as well as managing a wide range of stakeholders.

In this episode, HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius sits down with Good to discuss her strategy for Duke’s clean energy transition. They discuss how to make incremental adjustments to strategy as new technologies emerge. Good also explains how and how often she tests her assumptions, and why she nurtures collaborations both within the energy industry and beyond it.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, growth strategy, environmental sustainability, energy and natural resources sector, clean energy, transition, Duke Energy, technology, renewable energy, change 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.

· Learn more about HBR’s “Future of Business” virtual conference (November 2023)
· Find more Harvard Business Review live events
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
]]>

When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved.

But Anne Morriss offers a different framework. In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem and explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership. As she says, “Let’s get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.”

Morriss is an entrepreneur and leadership coach. She’s also the coauthor of the book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems.

Key episode topics include: strategy, decision making and problem solving, strategy execution, managing people, collaboration and teams, trustworthiness, organizational culture, change leadership, problem solving, 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: How to Solve Tough Problems Better and Faster (2023)
· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
]]>

In today's global economy, what are the factors that go into choosing a production location?

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih draws on his case study about China-based automotive glass maker Fuyao to discuss this core strategic question. The company must decide between two options to fulfill its upcoming contracts: its new Ohio factory or its factory based out of Tianjin, China. Unlike the Ohio factory, the Chinese factory produces below the cost target, but it also incurs extensive shipping costs and requires a far greater amount of inventory holding.

Shih explains how to account for product life cycles and the length of your inventory pipelines when selecting a manufacturing location. He also discusses how to assess other possible risks that could cause delays or increase production costs—like customs delays and labor strikes.

Key episode topics include: strategy, cross-cultural management, global strategy, operations and supply chain management, China, shipping, production planning, inventory pipeline.

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: China-based Fuyao Glass Considers Manufacturing in the U.S. (2020)
· Find more episodes of Cold Call
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
]]>

The secret to success for many Silicon Valley tech companies isn’t necessarily that they’re ultra-nimble startups, or that they’re led by tech-savvy geniuses. Andy McAfee says their success often has more to do with a specific type of corporate culture that focuses on finding unconventional solutions to hard business problems.

McAfee is a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and he’s the author of The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset That Drives Extraordinary Results.

In this episode, he explains why business leaders need to think more like geeks and explains why it’s important to center your culture on company norms, rather than organizational structure. He also offers tips for finding that delicate balance between human judgement and data-driven insights.

Key episode topics include: strategy, technology, start-ups, innovation, competitive strategy, Silicon Valley.

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.

· Watch the original HBR New World of Work episode: How the Geeks Rewrote the Rules of Management (2023)
· Find more episodes of the New World of Work series on YouTube
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

]]>