HBR On Strategy

As the chair and CEO of Sodexo, the France-based food services and facilities management company, Sophie Bellon leads one of the largest employers in the world, with front-line workers in nearly 50 countries. Managing that workforce—and the supply chains that enable them to do their jobs—is a complex undertaking that involves balancing both global strategy with local execution. In this episode, Harvard Business Review executive editor Alison Beard sits down with Bellon to discuss her approaches to talent management, environmental sustainability, and supply chain resilience—all while driving future growth. Key episode topics include: strategy, growth strategy, talent management, operations and supply chain management, supply chain management, environmental sustainability, food and beverage sector. 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

In early 2015, Microsoft’s senior leaders were facing a set of difficult decisions. The firm had been struggling to innovate and grow as fast as its competitors. Now they were considering new opportunities that would yield higher growth but lower margins — like shifting away from perpetual licensing to focus on subscription sales. Harvard Business School professor Fritz Foley studied this period of transformative change at Microsoft for a business case study he wrote. In this episode, he shares how Microsoft’s leaders analyzed different options and worked to get both investors and employees on board with new ideas about growth. He also explains how the company’s risk-averse culture evolved in order to execute such a huge transformation.Key episode topics include: strategy, growth strategy, business models, corporate governance. 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: The Transformation of Microsoft (2018)· Find more episodes of Cold Call· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

It’s a dilemma facing more and more brands: Should your business sell on Amazon?It’s the most visited e-commerce platform in the U.S. and the dominant retailer in 28 other countries. But that reach comes at a price. Harvard Business School associate professor Ayelet Israeli says there are downsides for many Amazon sellers, like costs, competition, and the lack of data.In this episode, Israeli offers a scorecard that can help you decide, step by step, whether or not the Amazon marketplace is right for your business. Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, leadership, scaling, Jeff Bezos, long-term thinking, customer focus. 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: Why Companies Decide to Sell on Amazon—or Not (2022)· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

Companies of every size across the world are basing more of their work around projects than at any time in the past. But research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, who has studied projects and project management for decades, argues that at least some of the blame for these failures lies with executives who misunderstand the fundamentals of projects and fail to dedicate enough of their time to those they sponsor. In this episode, Nieto-Rodriguez explains how to get better outcomes from project-based work. He also discusses how to frame projects, structure organizations around them, and avoid common pitfalls.Key episode topics include: strategy, project management, operations strategy, organizational change. 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: The Future of Work Is Projects—So You’ve Got to Get Them Right (2021)· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

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

In the 1990s and 2000s, video game developer Epic Games had a string of mid-size successes. But the release of Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017 changed the company’s path forever. The game was a blockbuster. By 2019, Fortnite had registered more than 250 million users, with 10 million concurrent users. But Fortnite’s phenomenal success raised a new question for Epic: How could they turn this singular hit into a series of growth opportunities? In this episode, Harvard Business School associate professor Andy Wu explains why Epic monetized Fortnite through micro-transactions within the game, rather than charging a fee for the game itself. He also discusses how Epic’s creation of a platform, the Epic store, and a premium subscription service built on Fortnite’s success and helped to distinguish their brand from other free-play games.Key episode topics include: strategy, growth strategy, R&D, strategy execution, video games, fortnite, epic games. 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: Fortnite Was a Blockbuster for Epic Games, What’s the Encore? (2020)· 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 Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. Gupta has spent years studying Amazon’s strategy and its founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos.In this episode, Gupta shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus.He argues that some of Amazon’s simplest business strategies — like their obsession with customers and insistence on long-term thinking — are approaches that companies, big and small, can emulate. Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, leadership, scaling, Jeff Bezos, long-term thinking, customer focus. 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 Jeff Bezos Built One of the World’s Most Valuable Companies (2020)· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org