HBR On Strategy

For the last two years, HBR On Strategy has been a collection of the best conversations and case studies with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. But the time has come for HBR On Strategy to hit pause on new episodes. We think that you deserve the highest-possible quality HBR content. And to do that, we’re going to focus our efforts for now on our sister feed, HBR On Leadership. But don’t worry—you can still enjoy the archive of episodes. Plus you can find brand new episodes of HBR IdeaCast, HBR’s Women at Work, Cold Call, and Coaching Real Leaders wherever you listen to podcasts. In the meantime, we hope you’ll subscribe to our sister podcast, HBR On Leadership, which will continue dropping new episodes every week. Thank you for joining us each week. See you next time.

The rapid pace of technological change is making a big impact on hiring. Some organizations are dynamically securing freelance workers through platform apps like Upwork and Freelancer. Other companies are investing heavily in work enabled by artificial intelligence. John Winsor and Jin Paik say these structural changes call for a reimagining of your talent strategy—one that is open to flexible, project-based work for talent inside or outside your organization—and they explain how to go about it. Winsor is the founder and chair of Open Assembly and an executive-in-residence at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard. Paik is a cofounder and managing partner at the AI consultancy Altruistic and a visiting research scientist at Harvard Business School. Together, they wrote the book Open Talent: Leveraging the Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges and the HBR article “Do You Need an External Talent Cloud?“

Most businesses are built on a linear model: take, make, and discard. But that norm is reaching its limits, and leaders are under pressure to find smarter, more sustainable ways to operate. Weslynne Ashton is a systems scientist and professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. In her masterclass at HBR’s 2024 Leaders Who Make a Difference conference, she explains how companies can shift to a circular economic strategy. One that reduces waste, reinvests in communities, and creates long-term value. She shares how businesses around the world are rethinking products, partnerships, and growth itself to build more resilient, regenerative business models.

When Ferrari, the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer, committed to achieving carbon neutrality and to electrifying a large part of its car fleet, investors and employees applauded the new strategy. But among the company’s suppliers, the reaction was mixed. Many were nervous about how this shift would affect their bottom lines. Harvard Business School professor Raffaella Sadun and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna discuss how Ferrari collaborated with suppliers to work toward achieving the company’s goal. They also explore how sustainability can be a catalyst for innovation in the case, “Ferrari: Shifting to Carbon Neutrality.”

While many teams and organizations engage in scenario planning, most don’t go far enough. Arjan Singh, consultant and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, says a more disciplined approach, borrowed from the military, can help leaders truly test how their strategies, operations, and tactics hold up against competitors, shifting market dynamics, and unexpected events. He’s helped hundreds of companies identify risks and find new ways to innovate by leading them through corporate war games, and he explains his process and results. Singh is the author of the book Competitive Success: Building Winning Strategies with Corporate War Games.

Rafi Mohammed, founder of the consulting firm Culture of Profit, says a crisis or recession is not the time to panic and slash prices. He says leaders should instead reevaluate their pricing strategy—or develop one for the first time—to better respond to customers during the slump and keep them when the economy recovers. Since this conversation took place in 2020, the crisis you'll hear them referring to is—obviously—the Covid-19 pandemic. But these lessons apply well beyond that moment—to any period of economic instability. Mohammed shares examples of companies across a variety of industries that created effective price strategies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mohammed is the author of The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow and the recent HBR article, “Setting a Pricing Strategy Amid Ever-Changing Tariffs.”

HBR editor at large Adi Ignatius speaks with Lisa Su, CEO of leading semiconductor company AMD, about the company’s evolution toward high-performance and adaptive computing, the future of AI use in different sectors, and the importance of responsible risk-taking. She advocates for fast experimentation and implementation while ensuring safety through initiatives like AMD’s Responsible AI Council, active learning within the organization and among industry peers, and the hiring of diverse talent to drive innovation. Time Magazine recently named Su their "CEO of the Year."

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and then-CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, was facing a decision that could determine his company’s future. Should he stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of Chewy.com’s e-commerce fulfillment or take that function in house? Cohen worried that the company’s current 3PL may not be able to scale with Chewy.com’s projected growth or maintain the company’s performance standards for service quality and fulfillment. But neither he nor his cofounders had experience managing logistics, and the company’s board members were pressuring him to leave order fulfillment to the 3PL. What should Cohen do? Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport discusses the options in his case, “Chewy.com (A).”

Unfortunately, you can’t set up your organization’s artificial intelligence projects like just any other IT project. By their nature, AI endeavors are quite different and suffer high failure rates. But there are proven approaches you can take to increase your odds of success. Iavor Bojinov, assistant professor at Harvard Business School and former LinkedIn data scientist, breaks down five critical steps for an AI project to turn into an effective product: selection, development, evaluation, adoption, and management. He’s the author of the HBR article “Keep Your AI Projects on Track.”

What can failures like Harley-Davidson Cologne or Cheetos Lip Balm teach us about success? Sean Jacobsohn, partner at Norwest Venture Partners and founder of the Failure Museum, takes us on a tour of notable product failures, sharing insights into why they failed and the lessons we can learn from them. Discover the six forces of failure and learn how companies can avoid making the same mistakes.

”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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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, John Hopkins Carey School Professor Michael Luca and Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson explain their framework for making better decisions by interpreting data more effectively.

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.

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. 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.

The insurance industry is centuries old and has historically been dominated by a few large incumbents. To buy insurance, customers usually go through a broker or an agent. 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. He also shares Hippo’s unique approach to targeting customers who live in riskier markets and are comfortable with digital platforms.

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 ten achieve profitable growth over a decade, 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.

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: figure out what your customers truly want, create a differentiated 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.

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, strategist 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.

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.