Strategy

What you measure is what you get. Senior executives understand that their organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees. Executives also understand that traditional financial accounting measures like return-on-investment and earnings-per-share can give misleading signals for continuous improvement and innovation—activities today’s competitive environment demands. The traditional financial performance measures worked well […]

For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which...

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, in 1997, it had a conventional structure for a company of its size and scope. It was divided into business units, each...

In the past few years, a new methodology for launching companies, called "the lean start-up," has begun to replace the old regimen. Traditionally, a venture's...

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors,...

Asking the question, "What makes a great COO?" is akin to asking "What makes a great candidate for U.S. vice-president?" It all depends on the first name...

The U.S.-China trade war and the supply and demand shocks brought on by the Covid-19 crisis are forcing manufacturers everywhere to reassess their supply...

A history, from Drucker to Christensen.

Awareness of these forces can help a company stake out a position in its industry that is less vulnerable to attack

It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to […]

The key is to balance offense and defense.

What consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down and psychologically complicated. But universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities...

Harvard Business School's Christensen teaches aspiring MBAs how to apply management and innovation theories to build stronger companies. But he also believes...

An interview with the former head of British Cycling.

Over the past decade, I have watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors. They have included large organizations (Ford) and small ones (Landmark Communications), companies based in the United States (General Motors) and elsewhere (British Airways), corporations that were on their knees (Eastern Airlines), and companies that were earning […]

It has rapidly caught up with the U.S. — but there is no guarantee it’ll pull ahead.

What are my goals? Do I have the right strategy? Can I execute the strategy?

They have to tightly align their practices and clients.

Over the past 25 to 30 years, agile innovation methods have greatly increased success rates in software development, improved quality and speed to market,...

Risk management is too often treated as a compliance issue that can be solved by drawing up lots of rules and making sure that all employees follow them....

On a mission to give "hope, chance and choice" to underprivileged students, Erwin Huang started the social enterprise WebOrganic to sell quality computers...

Ghurka was a 38-year-old luxury leather goods brand that specialized in leather and twill luggage, handbags, and accessories. Brightwork Brand Holdings...

The introduction of digital imaging in the late 1980s had a disruptive effect on Kodak's traditional business model. Examines Kodak's strategic efforts...

Agility is a global logistics provider, based in Kuwait. In 2006, it reorganized and joined the ranks of the top ten global logistics providers worldwide....

This "mini-case" summarizes the beloved Chicago Cubs' many years of futility and remarkable turnaround in the early teens of the twenty-first century....

Supplements the (A) case.

This case follows Nate Jamison as he determines which business entity to form for his growing City Moving Company (City Moving) in Washington, DC. From...

This case describes the entrepreneurial process of an Argentinean Canadian who created a new international venture based on the demand of Vancouver firms...

Four managers at Jones Schilling, an Asia-based retailer, are preparing to coach their Gen Y employees on how they can better contribute to the firm's...

DHAN Foundation, based in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, was a non-government organization with a difference. It was neither a philanthropic...

Focused on injury prediction and prevention in elite sport, the Melbourne, Australia-based KangaTech prepared to launch a new model of their core product,...

Supplements Block 16: Conoco's Green Oil Strategy (A). Provides the indigenous people's perspective on Conoco's Ecuadorian strategy. Designed to be distributed...

After successful litigation against tobacco companies, a handful of lawyers turned their attention to the fast food industry and its possible connection...

In less than two years, the founders' innovative model for addressing last-mile challenges in an online grocery retailing operation was working. Although...

Cumberland Entertainment, a niche music producer, was looking for capital to finance its planned expansion. CEO, Tom Smith, entered into negotiations...

Supplements the (A) case.

Atlassian: Sales examines the company's unique, no-touch sales model for enterprise products that help teams track projects, collaborate, and build products....

In 2016, the Japanese company Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC) acquired the remaining shares of the French trading company Compagnie Française de l'Afrique...

Describes how 3M Corp. introduces and learns a new and innovative methodology called Lead User research to understand future customer and market needs....

Max Ventilla and his team launches in 2013 AltSchool, a new network of tech-savvy independent K-8 "micro-schools." AltSchool is born out of Ventilla's...

What you measure is what you get. Senior executives understand that their organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees. Executives also understand that traditional financial accounting measures like return-on-investment and earnings-per-share can give misleading signals for continuous improvement and innovation—activities today’s competitive environment demands. The traditional financial performance measures worked well […]

For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which...

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, in 1997, it had a conventional structure for a company of its size and scope. It was divided into business units, each...

In the past few years, a new methodology for launching companies, called "the lean start-up," has begun to replace the old regimen. Traditionally, a venture's...

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors,...

Asking the question, "What makes a great COO?" is akin to asking "What makes a great candidate for U.S. vice-president?" It all depends on the first name...

The U.S.-China trade war and the supply and demand shocks brought on by the Covid-19 crisis are forcing manufacturers everywhere to reassess their supply...

A history, from Drucker to Christensen.

Awareness of these forces can help a company stake out a position in its industry that is less vulnerable to attack

It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to […]