HBR On Strategy Harvard Business Review

In 2010, Japan’s largest e-commerce platform Rakuten was rapidly expanding into global markets when CEO Hiroshi Mikitani made a surprising announcement: Rakuten’s internal language would be changing to English.

That meant that all meetings, emails, and other communications would have to be conducted in English. The company’s employees had two years to become proficient in the language or be demoted.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley discusses her case, “Language and Globalization: ‘Englishnization’ at Rakuten,” and explains why Mikitani introduced this new mandate and what results it achieved.

You’ll also learn about the early challenges that accompanied this enormous change, including loss of productivity and employee skepticism, as well as how the shift to English shaped Rakuten’s long-term working culture.

Key episode topics include: strategy, global strategy, globalization, cross-cultural management, language, communication, leadership, transformation, organizational culture.

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: Language and Globalization: The Mandate to Speak English at Rakuten (2017)
· Find more episodes of Cold Call
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
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Managing rapid growth is a huge challenge for young businesses. Even start-ups with glowing reviews and skyrocketing sales can fail . That’s because new ventures and corporate initiatives alike must sustain profitability at scale, according to Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport.

He has researched some of the biggest stumbling blocks to long-lasting success and he explains how to successfully transition out of the start-up phase. Rayport argues that success has a lot to do with an organization’s cash flow and its ability to meet growing demand. But it also involves something he calls “profit market fit,” which is when an enterprise becomes financially sustainable.

Key episode topics include: strategy, start-ups, entrepreneurial business strategy, customer strategy, growth, scaling, demand, cash flow, sustainable business.

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 Some Start-Ups Fail to Scale (2022)
· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
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What do LEGO, GoPro, and CarMax have in common?

Wharton professor David Robertson says they all have a similar strategy for growth that involves building families of complementary innovations around a core product or service. It’s an approach to innovation that’s neither disruptive nor incremental, but rather somewhere in the middle. And Robertson argues it’s a strategy that any company, no matter the industry, should consider.

In this episode, you’ll learn how to use customer feedback to identify a product or service that can anchor a family of complementary innovations as well as how to prepare for common challenges.

Robertson is the author of The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation.

Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, growth strategy.

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: Low-Risk, High-Reward Innovation (2017)
· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
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It’s an idea that’s a non-starter at many organizations: collaborating with a competitor. But Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff says leaders who refuse to consider teaming up with other companies—even when there are clear mutual benefits—may be leaving value on the table.

In this episode, you’ll learn how companies like Apple, Ford, Google, and others have analyzed and capitalized on what Nalebuff calls “co-opetition” opportunities. You’ll also learn how to think strategically about which tasks work well for these collaborations and how to mitigate your organization’s risk through time-tested tools like contracts, performance guarantees, and conditional penalties.

Key episode topics include: strategy, negotiation strategies, competitive strategies, co-opetition, collaboration.

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 IdeaCast episode: When to Team Up with Your Competition (2020)
· Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org
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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
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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
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