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Five years'worth of management wisdom, all in one place.Get the latest, most significant thinking from the pages of Harvard Business Review in 5 Years of Must Reads from HBR: 2022 Edition. Every year, HBR editors examine the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past twelve months to select the definitive articles that have provoked the most conversation and inspired the most change. From building trust as a leader, to creating a workplace where equity can thrive, to exploring how the work-from-anywhere future is now our present, the articles in this five-book collection will help you manage your daily challenges and meet the changing competitive landscape head-on.Books in HBR's 10 Must Reads series offer essential reading selected from the pages of Harvard Business Review on topics critical to the success of every manager. Each book is packed with advice and inspiration from leading experts such as Michael Porter, Frances X. Frei, Marcus Buckingham, Joan C. Williams, Roger Martin, Robert Livingston, and Katrina Lake. Company examples range from P&G, UPS, and Deloitte to Alibaba, Apple, and Stitch Fix. 5 Years of Must Reads from HBR: 2022 Edition brings the most current and important business conversations to your fingertips.HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

Keep shareholders happy and manage for the long term.Earning a board seat is a rite of passage. But directors must juggle many responsibilities, from steering company strategy, managing risk, and appointing leaders to setting the right incentives, meeting shareholder expectations, and dealing with activist investors. How do you balance it all?If you read nothing else on boards, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you set your board up for success.This book will inspire you to:Ensure you have directors who can meet company goalsEstablish a robust succession-planning processEncourage the risk-taking that will generate breakthrough innovationPrioritize the health of the enterprise without neglecting shareholdersProvide the critical support a new CEO needs to succeedIgnite nonprofit board members by engaging them in work that mattersTake on the world's toughest economic, social, and environmental problemsThis collection of articles includes'What Makes Great Boards Great,'by Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld;'Building Better Boards,'by David A. Nadler;'The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership,'by Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine;'The New Work of the Nonprofit Board,'by Barbara E. Taylor, Richard P. Chait, and Thomas P. Holland;'Dysfunction in the Boardroom,'by Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell;'The Board's New Innovation Imperative,'by Linda A. Hill and George Davis;'Managing Risks: A New Framework,'by Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes;'Ending the CEO Succession Crisis,'by Ram Charan;'Comp Targets That Work,'by Radhakrishnan Gopalan, John Horn, and Todd Milbourn; and'Sustainability in the Boardroom,'by Lynn S. Paine.HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

More than a buzzword, agile is a powerful business tool for all.To the uninitiated, agile is a software development and project management process involving white boards, colored Post-it Notes, and stand-up meetings. It may seem as though agile doesn't and won't ever apply to you. But agile is here to stay, and its benefits can be realized beyond IT and project management into other areas of your business. If you're a leader, it's worth exploring how your group can benefit from the higher productivity and morale agile brings.Agile: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review brings you today's most essential thinking on agile, from exploring the conditions under which agile is most effective and easiest to implement to reducing new-product development risk to bringing the most valuable products and features to market faster and more predictably. The lessons in this book will help you introduce agile into a broader range of activities and accelerate profitable growth for your company.Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.

A new, comprehensive playbook for innovation from the New York Times bestselling author of Reverse Innovation, Vijay GovindarajanIn his seminal book The Three-Box Solution, Vijay Govindarajan offered an amazingly simple and highly effective framework for leading innovation:Execute the present core business at peak efficiency (Box 1)Avoid the inhibiting traps of past success (Box 2)Build a future day by day through breakthrough innovations (Box 3)Since the book's publication, companies across the globe have used the three-box framework to great success. Now, along with Manish Tangri, a corporate dealmaker at Intel, Govindarajan goes deeper into the most crucial box of all: creating the future. Together they provide a repeatable process for companies to create new breakthroughs--from ideation through incubation to scaling.Full of worksheets, exercises, tools, and examples, The Three-Box Solution Playbook is the guide you and your team need to drive innovation and growth--and continually revitalize your company.

This big initiative could make or break this fiscal year--or your career.Managing a successful strategic initiative may be the key to transforming your company--and propelling your career forward. Yet running a cross-functional team on a high-profile project can present a multitude of challenges and risks, causing even the most experienced manager to struggle.The HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives provides practical tips and advice to help you manage all the stages of an initiative's life cycle, from buy-in to launch to scaling up.You'll learn how to:Win--and keep--support for your new initiativeMove rapidly from approval to implementationAssemble transformative, high-performing initiative teamsMaintain the confidence of sponsors and stakeholdersStay on schedule and within budgetAvoid initiative overload by killing projects that aren't meeting business needsKeep multiple initiatives in strategic alignmentArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, from a source you trust. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Five years'worth of management wisdom, all in one place.Get the latest, most significant thinking from the pages of Harvard Business Review in 5 Years of Must Reads: 2020 Edition. Every year, HBR editors examine the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past twelve months to select the definitive articles that have provoked the most conversation, the most inspiration, and the most change. From how you can lead with authenticity by moving past your comfort zone, to engaging customers and employees alike with the help of artificial intelligence, to scaling your agile processes from a handful of teams to hundreds, the articles in this five-book collection will help you manage your daily challenges and meet the changing competitive landscape head-on.Books in the HBR 10 Must Reads series offer essential reading selected from the pages of Harvard Business Review on topics critical to the success of every manager. Each book is packed with advice and inspiration from leading experts such as Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne, Herminia Ibarra, Marcus Buckingham, Roger Martin, Adam Grant, Thomas Davenport, and Katrina Lake. Company examples range from P&G, DHL, and Deloitte to Alibaba, Google, and Stitch Fix. 5 Years of Must Reads: 2020 Edition brings the most current and important business conversations to your fingertips.

If you aren't working with a strategy, you're wasting your time.Strategy isn't just a set of plans handed down from the C-suite. To grow as a leader, you need to understand your company's strategy and align your thinking, projects, and team with organizational goals and vision. Master these abilities with the HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection. This three-book set, which includes the HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically, the HBR Guide to Managing Strategic Initiatives, and the HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy, will help you change the way you think about your work, manage your most important priorities, and craft a strategy for long-term growth.You'll learn how to:Understand what strategy is--and what it isn'tDefine a clear strategy, whether you're in a start-up or in an established businessManage a portfolio of strategic projectsEmbed strategic thinking into your daily tasks and decision makingAlign your team around key objectivesLet go of work that doesn't add valueCommunicate strategy throughout your organizationArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Do you have the right strategy to lead your company into the future?Get more of the management ideas you want, from the authors you trust, with HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy (Vol. 2). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you combat new competitors and define the best strategy for your company.With insights from leading experts including Michael E. Porter, A.G. Lafley, and Clayton M. Christensen, this book will inspire you to:Choose a strategy that meets the demands of your competitive environmentIdentify the signals of disruption and take steps to avoid itUnderstand lean methodology and how it is changing businessTransform your products and services into platformsInstill your strategy with creativity and purposeGenerate value for your company, while also contributing to societyThis collection of articles includes'Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,'by Martin Reeves, Claire Love, and Philipp Tillmanns;'Transient Advantage,'by Rita Gunther McGrath;'Bringing Science to the Art of Strategy,'by A.G. Lafley, Roger L. Martin, Jan W. Rivkin, and Nicolaj Siggelkow;'Managing Risks: A New Framework,'by Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes;'Surviving Disruption,'by Maxwell Wessel and Clayton M. Christensen;'The Great Repeatable Business Model,'by Chris Zook and James Allen;'Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,'by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary;'Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything,'by Steve Blank;'Strategy Needs Creativity,'by Adam Brandenburger;'Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy,'by Thomas W. Malnight, Ivy Buche, and Charles Dhanaraj;'Creating Shared Value,'by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer.

Set your company up for long-term success.Every company needs a strategy. A focused strategy aligns decision making throughout the organization and helps establish a competitive edge in the marketplace. But with so many options to consider, how do you define a unique strategy that will ensure growth?Whether you're starting a business from scratch or leading an existing company facing new threats, this book offers the direction you need. The HBR Guide to Setting Your Strategy provides practical tips and advice that break down the process of crafting strategy so you can identify the areas your company should build on to help it thrive long into the future.You'll learn to:Understand what strategy is&#8212and what it isn'tDefine where you'll play and how you'll winConduct more-effective strategic discussions with your teamTest your strategy before you implement itCommunicate your strategy to key stakeholdersEnsure your strategy is flexible and adaptableArm yourself with the advice you need to succeed on the job, with the most trusted brand in business. Packed with how-to essentials from leading experts, the HBR Guides provide smart answers to your most pressing work challenges.

Rethink how your organization creates, delivers, and captures value--or risk becoming irrelevant.If you read nothing else on business model innovation, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you reach new customers and stay ahead of your competitors by reinventing your business model.This book will inspire you to:Assess whether your core business model is going strong or running out of gasFend off free and discount entrants to your marketReinvigorate growth by adding a second business modelAdopt the practices of lean startupsDevelop a platform around your key productsMake business model innovation an ongoing discipline within your organizationThis collection of articles includes'Why Business Models Matter,'by Joan Magretta;'Reinventing Your Business Model,'by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann;'When Your Business Model Is in Trouble,'an interview with Rita Gunther McGrath by Sarah Cliffe;'Four Paths to Business Model Innovation,'by Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine;'The Transformative Business Model,'by Stelios Kavadias, Kostas Ladas, and Christoph Loch;'Competing Against Free,'by David J. Bryce, Jeffrey H. Dyer, and Nile W. Hatch;'Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything,'by Steve Blank;'Finding the Platform in Your Product,'by Andrei Hagiu and Elizabeth J. Altman;'Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy,'by Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Sangeet Paul Choudary;'When One Business Model Isn't Enough,'by Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Jorge Tarzijan; and'Reaching the Rich World's Poorest Consumers,'by Muhammad Yunus, Frederic Dalsace, David Menasce, and Benedicte Faivre-Tavignot.HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further.HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an ever‐changing business environment.

As CEO, you set the vision, the strategy, and the tone of your organization.You establish priorities, anticipate and address challenges, champion and lead change efforts, set people up for success, and manage risk. Though you may have a great senior executive team and a top-flight board, the success of your organization depends on your leadership.If you read nothing else on being an effective chief executive, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the best ones to help you toggle between long- and short-term views, manage risk and innovation, and cultivate productive relationships with your staff and your board. This book will inspire you to:Navigate the changing global business environmentCustomize your company's strategy to the environment you're working inAttract, engage, and retain the best talentAnticipate and address legislative and regulatory issuesSharpen your awareness of the tactical and soft skills you need to leadAdopt a founder's mindset and build new offerings, move into new markets, and create next-generation solutionsManage and build relationships with your board--and your shareholdersThis collection of articles includes'Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,'by Martin Reeves, Claire Love, and Philipp Tillmanns;'Managing Your Innovation Portfolio,'by Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff;'Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,'by John P. Kotter;'Reinventing Your Business Model,'by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann;'Leadership Is a Conversation,'by Boris Groysberg and Michael Slind;'Strategic Intent,'by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad;'When Growth Stalls,'by Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever, and Seth Verry;'The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution,'by Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin, and Elizabeth Powers;'The Focused Leader,'by Daniel Goleman;'Managing Risks: A New Framework,'by Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes;'21st-Century Talent Spotting,'by Claudio Fernandez-Araoz; and'How CEOs Can Work with an Active Board,'by Ken Banta and Stephen D. Garrow.

2019's best reads, all in one place.Get five years of the latest, most significant thinking from the pages of Harvard Business Review in one library set. Every year, HBR editors examine the ideas, insights, and best practices from the past twelve months to select the articles that have provoked the most conversation, the most inspiration, and the most change. From how companies can proactively evolve their business models to stay ahead of the digital revolution to understanding why your strategy execution isn't working--and how to fix it--the articles in these volumes will help you manage your daily challenges and meet the changing competitive landscape head-on.Books in the HBR 10 Must Reads series offer essential reading from Harvard Business Review on topics critical to the success of every manager. Each book is packed with advice and inspiration from leading experts such as Clayton Christensen, Michael Porter, Herminia Ibarra, Daniel Goleman, Marcus Buckingham, Roger Martin, Adam Grant, Thomas Davenport, and Patty McCord. Company examples range from Unilever, Deloitte, and DHL to Facebook, Netflix, Google, and Uber. 5 Years of Must Reads: 2019 Edition brings the most current and important business conversations of the past few years to your fingertips.

Your next professional move can make or break your career. Are you ready?In business, especially today, you are only as successful as your next career transition. Do well, and you'll be on the fast track to even more challenging roles. Fail, and you could irreparably harm your career--and your organization.In his international bestseller The First 90 Days, transition guru Michael D. Watkins outlined a set of basic principles for getting up to speed quickly in new professional roles. Since that book was published Watkins has worked with thousands of leaders, helping them to accelerate their transitions. These leaders posed challenging questions on how to apply the basic principles in real-life situations. The truth that emerged: the First 90 Days framework can be applied in every transition, but the way you apply it is entirely different when you have been promoted to a higher level than it is when you are joining a new organization or taking a role in a different country.Master Your Next Move answers a distinct need, focusing on the most common types of transitions leaders face and the unique challenges posed by each. Based on years of research, and now with a new introduction, this indispensable book explores eight crucial transitions virtually everyone encounters during their career, including promotion, leading former peers, onboarding into a new company, making an international move, and turning around a business in crisis.With real-world examples and many practical models and tools, Master Your Next Move is your guide to surviving and thriving as you make your next move... and every one after that.

Bring strategy into your daily work.It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work--and the work of your team--aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands?The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list.You'll learn how to:Understand your organization's strategyAlign your team around key objectivesFocus on the priorities that matter mostSpot trends in your company and in your industryConsider future outcomes when making decisionsManage trade-offsEmbrace a leadership mindset

Most executives have a big, hairy, audacious goal. But they install layers of stultifying bureaucracy that prevent them from realizing it. In this article, Jim Collins introduces the catalytic mechanism, a simple yet powerful managerial tool that helps turn lofty aspirations into reality. The crucial link between objectives and results, this tool is a galvanizing, nonbureaucratic way to turn one into the other. But the same catalytic mechanism that works in one organization won't necessarily work in another. So, to help readers get started, Collins offers some general principles that support the process of building one effectively.Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Game-changing disruptions will likely unfold on your watch. Be ready.In Dual Transformation, Scott Anthony, Clark Gilbert, and Mark Johnson propose a practical and sustainable approach to one of the greatest challenges facing leaders today: transforming your business in the face of imminent disruption. Dual Transformation shows you how your company can come out of a market shift stronger and more profitable, because the threat of disruption is also the greatest opportunity a leadership team will ever face. Disruptive change opens a window of opportunity to create massive new markets. It is the moment when a market also-ran can become a market leader. It is the moment when business legacies are created.That moment starts with the core dual transformation framework:Transformation A: Repositioning today's business to maximize its resilience, such as how Adobe boldly shifted from selling packaged software to providing software as a service.Transformation B: Creating a new growth engine, such as how Amazon became the world's largest provider of cloud computing services.Capabilities link: Fighting unfairly by taking advantage of difficult-to-replicate assets without succumbing to the “sucking sound of the core.”Anthony, Gilbert, and Johnson also address the characteristics leaders must embrace: courage, clarity, curiosity, and conviction. Without them, dual transformation efforts can founder.Building on lessons from diverse companies, such as Adobe, Manila Water, and Netflix, and a case study from Gilbert's firsthand experience transforming his own media and publishing company, Dual Transformation will guide executives through the journey of creating the next version of themselves, allowing them to own the future rather than be disrupted by it.

Are you missing opportunities for growth that are right in front of you?In today's volatile economic environment, filled with uncertainty and sudden change, the forces pushing you to stay focused on the core business are extremely powerful. Profiting from the core is crucial, but the danger is that overfocus on the core can blind companies. Scanning the horizon for new markets and new products can also be tempting, but risky. Fixating too much on either strategy can cause you to miss the substantial opportunities for growth that are often hidden in plain sight, at the edge of the core business.In this insightful yet practical book, strategy experts Alan Lewis and Dan McKone articulate a mindset that helps leaders recognize and capitalize on these opportunities.The Edge Strategy framework challenges how the boundaries of your existing products and services map to your customers'views of the world and then provides three different lenses through which you can see and leverage value:• Product edge. How to capture incremental profits and other benefits by slightly altering the elements and composition of a core offering• Journey edge. How to create and capture extra value by adjusting your role in supporting the customer's journey to and through your offering• Enterprise edge. How to unlock additional value from resources and capabilities that support your core offering by applying them in a different context, for a different offering or different set of customersWith engaging examples across many industries, Lewis and McKone coach you on how to identify and assess each of the different “edges” and then provide concrete insights and advice on applying edge strategy and tactics to use in specific business contexts. The book concludes with a ten-step process to help executives and managers find and leverage the edges in their own companies.Edge Strategy is the concise, hands-on guide for growing your business by getting more yield from assets already in place, relationships already established, and investments already made.

A Washington Post BestsellerThree Principles for Managing—and Avoiding—the Problems of GrowthWhy is profitable growth so hard to achieve and sustain? Most executives manage their companies as if the solution to that problem lies in the external environment: find an attractive market, formulate the right strategy, win new customers. But when Bain & Company's Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external—increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What's more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further—and can actively lead to decline.The key insight from Zook and Allen's research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder's mentality”—behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder—to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers:• An insurgent's clear mission and purpose• An unambiguous owner mindset• A relentless obsession with the front lineBased on the authors'decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder's Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds—not just start-ups—and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader—not only a founder—can instill and leverage a founder's mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.

How to Innovate and ExecuteLeaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the existing business—one that is still thriving—while dramatically reinventing it? How do you envision a change in your current business model before a crisis forces you to abandon it?Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader's innovation tool kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization's energy, time, and resources—in balanced measure—across what he calls “the three boxes”:• Box 1: The present—Manage the core business at peak profitability• Box 2: The past—Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could inhibit innovation• Box 3: The future—Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and businessesThe three-box framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring these different sets of behaviors and activities across all levels of the organization. Supported with rich company examples—GE, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, and Tata Consultancy Services—and testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this framework, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of innovation.

A competitive advantage just isn't enough.Your company is turning in regular profits every year, and its market share is only getting bigger. Competitors can't touch you. So why is your stock price so sluggish? The answer is as simple as it is cruel: investors aren't interested in history, and they already know you're profitable and competitive—that knowledge is baked into your stock price.The hard reality is that a competitive advantage just isn't enough. Investors want companies to surprise them with unexpected value, which means that you can outperform market expectations only if you as a leader know how to find, create, and deliver a series of multiple competitive advantages.This is why a corporate theory is so important. A good corporate theory provides a compass for those at the strategic helm, guiding their decisions about what assets and activities to pursue, what investments to make, and what strategies to adopt. Behind every long-term corporate success story lies a basic theory about how that company creates value.In Beyond Competitive Advantage, strategy professor Todd Zenger describes what makes a great corporate theory and helps readers understand the many tensions and trade-offs they'll face as they apply the theory to meet the challenge of market expectations.Based on years of research and analysis, Beyond Competitive Advantage provides managers and executives with a framework for both sustaining value and creating growth.

How to close the gap between strategy and executionTwo-thirds of executives say their organizations don't have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies:• Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities• Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others• Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it• Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board• Shape the future instead of reacting to itPacked with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.

Are you missing opportunities for growth that are right in front of you?In today's volatile economic environment, filled with uncertainty and sudden change, the forces pushing you to stay focused on the core business are extremely powerful. Profiting from the core is crucial, but the danger is that overfocus on the core can blind companies. Scanning the horizon for new markets and new products can also be tempting, but risky. Fixating too much on either strategy can cause you to miss the substantial opportunities for growth that are often hidden in plain sight, at the edge of the core business.In this insightful yet practical book, strategy experts Alan Lewis and Dan McKone articulate a mindset that helps leaders recognize and capitalize on these opportunities.The Edge Strategy framework challenges how the boundaries of your existing products and services map to your customers'views of the world and then provides three different lenses through which you can see and leverage value:• Product edge. How to capture incremental profits and other benefits by slightly altering the elements and composition of a core offering• Journey edge. How to create and capture extra value by adjusting your role in supporting the customer's journey to and through your offering• Enterprise edge. How to unlock additional value from resources and capabilities that support your core offering by applying them in a different context, for a different offering or different set of customersWith engaging examples across many industries, Lewis and McKone coach you on how to identify and assess each of the different “edges” and then provide concrete insights and advice on applying edge strategy and tactics to use in specific business contexts. The book concludes with a ten-step process to help executives and managers find and leverage the edges in their own companies.Edge Strategy is the concise, hands-on guide for growing your business by getting more yield from assets already in place, relationships already established, and investments already made.

Get your idea off the ground.You've got a great idea that will increase revenue or boost productivity—but how do you get the buy-in you need to make it happen? By building a business case that clearly shows your idea's value. That's not always easy: Maybe you're not sure what kind of data your stakeholders will trust. Or perhaps you're intimidated by number crunching.The HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case, written by project management expert Raymond Sheen, gives you the guidance and tools you need to make a strong case. You'll learn how to:Spell out the business need for your ideaAlign your case with strategic goalsBuild the right team to shape and test your ideaCalculate the return on investmentAnalyze risks and opportunitiesPresent your case to stakeholders

Create and capture value, no matter what path you've chosen.How to Create Joint ValueAlliances, partnerships, acquisitions, mergers, and joint ventures are no longer the exception in most businesses—they are part of the core strategy. As managers look to external partners for resources and capabilities, they need a practical roadmap to ensure that these relationships will create value for their firm. They must answer questions like these: Which business combinations do we need? How should we govern them? Will their results justify our investments?Benjamin Gomes-Casseres explains how companies create value by “remixing” resources with other companies. Based on decades of consulting and academic research, Remix Strategy shows how three laws shape the success of any business combination:• First Law: The combination must have the potential to create more value than the parties could create on their own. Which elements from each business need to be combined to create joint value?• Second Law: The combination must be designed and managed to realize the joint value. Which partners best fit our strategic goals? How should we manage the integration?• Third Law: The value earned by the parties must motivate them to contribute to the collaboration. How will we share the joint value created? Will the returns shift over time?Supported by examples from a wide range of industries and companies, and filled with practical tools for applying the three laws, this book helps managers design and lead a coherent strategy for creating joint value with outside partners.

Get your idea off the ground.You've got a great idea that will increase revenue or boost productivity—but how do you get the buy-in you need to make it happen? By building a business case that clearly shows your idea's value. That's not always easy: Maybe you're not sure what kind of data your stakeholders will trust. Or perhaps you're intimidated by number crunching.The HBR Guide to Building Your Business Case, written by project management expert Raymond Sheen, gives you the guidance and tools you need to make a strong case. You'll learn how to:Spell out the business need for your ideaAlign your case with strategic goalsBuild the right team to shape and test your ideaCalculate the return on investmentAnalyze risks and opportunitiesPresent your case to stakeholders

'The best sales book of the year'— strategy+business magazineThat gap between your company's sales efforts and strategy? It's real—and a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm's unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you're a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm's customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.

Become a Digital Master—No Matter What Business You're In If you think the phrase “going digital” is only relevant for industries like tech, media, and entertainment—think again. In fact, mobile, analytics, social media, sensors, and cloud computing have already fundamentally changed the entire business landscape as we know it—including your industry. The problem is that most accounts of digital in business focus on Silicon Valley stars and tech start-ups. But what about the other 90-plus percent of the economy? In Leading Digital, authors George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, and Andrew McAfee highlight how large companies in traditional industries—from finance to manufacturing to pharmaceuticals—are using digital to gain strategic advantage. They illuminate the principles and practices that lead to successful digital transformation. Based on a study of more than four hundred global firms, including Asian Paints, Burberry, Caesars Entertainment, Codelco, Lloyds Banking Group, Nike, and Pernod Ricard, the book shows what it takes to become a Digital Master. It explains successful transformation in a clear, two-part framework: where to invest in digital capabilities, and how to lead the transformation. Within these parts, you'll learn: •How to engage better with your customers•How to digitally enhance operations•How to create a digital vision•How to govern your digital activitiesThe book also includes an extensive step-by-step transformation playbook for leaders to follow.Leading Digital is the must-have guide to help your organization survive and thrive in the new, digitally powered, global economy.

How to outsmart riskRisk has been defined as the potential for losing something of value. In business, that value could be your original investment or your expected future returns.The Risk-Driven Business Model will help you manage risk better by showing how the key choices you make in designing your business models either increase or reduce two characteristic types of risk—information risk, when you make decisions without enough information, and incentive-alignment risk, when decision makers'incentives are at odds with the broader goals of the company. Leaders who understand how the structure of their business model affects risk have the power to create wealth, revolutionize industries, and shape a better world.INSEAD's Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine, noted operations and innovation professors who have consulted with dozens of companies, walk you through a business model audit to determine what key decisions get made in a business, when they get made, who makes them, and why we make the decisions we do.By changing your company's key decisions within this framework, you can fundamentally alter the risks that will impact your business. This book is for entrepreneurs and executives in companies involved in dynamic industries where the locus of risk is shifting, and includes lessons from Zipcar, Blockbuster, Apple, Benetton, Kickstarter, Walmart, and dozens of other global companies.The Risk-Driven Business Model demystifies business model risk, with clear directives aimed at improving decision making and driving your business forward.

Become a Digital Master—No Matter What Business You're InIf you think the phrase “going digital” is only relevant for industries like tech, media, and entertainment—think again. In fact, mobile, analytics, social media, sensors, and cloud computing have already fundamentally changed the entire business landscape as we know it—including your industry. The problem is that most accounts of digital in business focus on Silicon Valley stars and tech start-ups. But what about the other 90-plus percent of the economy?In Leading Digital, authors George Westerman, Didier Bonnet, and Andrew McAfee highlight how large companies in traditional industries—from finance to manufacturing to pharmaceuticals—are using digital to gain strategic advantage. They illuminate the principles and practices that lead to successful digital transformation. Based on a study of more than four hundred global firms, including Asian Paints, Burberry, Caesars Entertainment, Codelco, Lloyds Banking Group, Nike, and Pernod Ricard, the book shows what it takes to become a Digital Master. It explains successful transformation in a clear, two-part framework: where to invest in digital capabilities, and how to lead the transformation. Within these parts, you'll learn:• How to engage better with your customers• How to digitally enhance operations• How to create a digital vision• How to govern your digital activitiesThe book also includes an extensive step-by-step transformation playbook for leaders to follow.Leading Digital is the must-have guide to help your organization survive and thrive in the new, digitally powered, global economy.

'The best sales book of the year'— strategy+business magazineThat gap between your company's sales efforts and strategy? It's real—and a huge vulnerability. Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm's unique goals, not a generic selling formula. Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you're a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm's customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.

How to outsmart riskRisk has been defined as the potential for losing something of value. In business, that value could be your original investment or your expected future returns.The Risk-Driven Business Model will help you manage risk better by showing how the key choices you make in designing your business models either increase or reduce two characteristic types of risk—information risk, when you make decisions without enough information, and incentive-alignment risk, when decision makers'incentives are at odds with the broader goals of the company. Leaders who understand how the structure of their business model affects risk have the power to create wealth, revolutionize industries, and shape a better world.INSEAD's Karan Girotra and Serguei Netessine, noted operations and innovation professors who have consulted with dozens of companies, walk you through a business model audit to determine what key decisions get made in a business, when they get made, who makes them, and why we make the decisions we do.By changing your company's key decisions within this framework, you can fundamentally alter the risks that will impact your business. This book is for entrepreneurs and executives in companies involved in dynamic industries where the locus of risk is shifting, and includes lessons from Zipcar, Blockbuster, Apple, Benetton, Kickstarter, Walmart, and dozens of other global companies.The Risk-Driven Business Model demystifies business model risk, with clear directives aimed at improving decision making and driving your business forward.

Shift your strategy downstream.Why do your customers buy from you rather than from your competitors? If you think the answer is your superior products, think again. Products are important, of course. For decades, businesses sought competitive advantage almost exclusively in activities related to new product creation. They won by building bigger factories, by finding cheaper raw materials or labor, or by coming up with more efficient ways to move and store inventory—and by inventing exciting new products that competitors could not replicate.But these sources of competitive advantage are being irreversibly leveled by globalization and technology. Today, competitors can rapidly decipher and deploy the recipe for your product's secret sauce and use it against you. “Upstream,” product-related advantages are rapidly eroding. This does not mean that competitive advantage is a thing of the past. Rather, its center has shifted. As marketing professor Niraj Dawar compellingly argues, advantage is now found “downstream,” where companies interact with customers in the marketplace. Tilt will help you grasp the global nature of this downstream shift and its profound implications for your strategy and your organization. With vivid examples from around the world, ranging across industries and sectors, Dawar shows how companies are reorienting their strategies around customer interactions to create and capture unique value. And he demonstrates how, unlike product-related advantage, this value is cumulative, continuously building over time.In an increasingly customer-centered world marketplace, let Tilt serve as your guide to shifting your strategy downstream—and achieving enduring competitive advantage.

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business?Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now. In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant.Now, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath argues that it's time to go beyond the very concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations need to forge a new path to winning: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they are exhausted. She shows how to do this with a new set of practices based on the notion of transient competitive advantage. This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world's most successful companies use this method to compete and win today. Filled with compelling examples from “growth outlier” firms such as Fujifilm, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys, Yahoo! Japan, and Atmos Energy, The End of Competitive Advantage is your guide to renewed success and profitable growth in an economy increasingly defined by transient advantage.

Are you at risk of being trapped in an uncompetitive business?Chances are the strategies that worked well for you even a few years ago no longer deliver the results you need. Dramatic changes in business have unearthed a major gap between traditional approaches to strategy and the way the real world works now.In short, strategy is stuck. Most leaders are using frameworks that were designed for a different era of business and based on a single dominant idea—that the purpose of strategy is to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. Once the premise on which all strategies were built, this idea is increasingly irrelevant.Now, Columbia Business School professor and globally recognized strategy expert Rita Gunther McGrath argues that it's time to go beyond the very concept of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, organizations need to forge a new path to winning: capturing opportunities fast, exploiting them decisively, and moving on even before they are exhausted. She shows how to do this with a new set of practices based on the notion of transient competitive advantage.This book serves as a new playbook for strategy, one based on updated assumptions about how the world works, and shows how some of the world's most successful companies use this method to compete and win today.Filled with compelling examples from “growth outlier” firms such as Fujifilm, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Infosys, Yahoo! Japan, and Atmos Energy, The End of Competitive Advantage is your guide to renewed success and profitable growth in an economy increasingly defined by transient advantage.

The world's most trusted guide for leaders in transitionTransitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success. In this updated and expanded version of the international bestseller The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins offers proven strategies for conquering the challenges of transitions—no matter where you are in your career. Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions and adviser to senior leaders in all types of organizations, also addresses today's increasingly demanding professional landscape, where managers face not only more frequent transitions but also steeper expectations once they step into their new jobs. By walking you through every aspect of the transition scenario, Watkins identifies the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter and provides the tools and strategies you need to avoid them. You'll learn how to secure critical early wins, an important first step in establishing yourself in your new role. Each chapter also includes checklists, practical tools, and self-assessments to help you assimilate key lessons and apply them to your own situation. Whether you're starting a new job, being promoted from within, embarking on an overseas assignment, or being tapped as CEO, how you manage your transition will determine whether you succeed or fail. Use this book as your trusted guide.

Are you just playing—or playing to win?Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It's hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn't happen in most companies.Now two of today's best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it's for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G's sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

Named one of 100 Leadership & Success Books to Read in a Lifetime by Amazon EditorsThe world's most trusted guide for leaders in transitionTransitions are a critical time for leaders. In fact, most agree that moving into a new role is the biggest challenge a manager will face. While transitions offer a chance to start fresh and make needed changes in an organization, they also place leaders in a position of acute vulnerability. Missteps made during the crucial first three months in a new role can jeopardize or even derail your success.In this updated and expanded version of the international bestseller The First 90 Days, Michael D. Watkins offers proven strategies for conquering the challenges of transitions—no matter where you are in your career. Watkins, a noted expert on leadership transitions and adviser to senior leaders in all types of organizations, also addresses today's increasingly demanding professional landscape, where managers face not only more frequent transitions but also steeper expectations once they step into their new jobs.By walking you through every aspect of the transition scenario, Watkins identifies the most common pitfalls new leaders encounter and provides the tools and strategies you need to avoid them. You'll learn how to secure critical early wins, an important first step in establishing yourself in your new role. Each chapter also includes checklists, practical tools, and self-assessments to help you assimilate key lessons and apply them to your own situation.Whether you're starting a new job, being promoted from within, embarking on an overseas assignment, or being tapped as CEO, how you manage your transition will determine whether you succeed or fail. Use this book as your trusted guide.

A Wall Street Journal and Washington Post BestsellerA playbook for creating your company's winning strategy.Strategy is not complex. But it is hard. It's hard because it forces people and organizations to make specific choices about their future—something that doesn't happen in most companies.Now two of today's best-known business thinkers get to the heart of strategy—explaining what it's for, how to think about it, why you need it, and how to get it done. And they use one of the most successful corporate turnarounds of the past century, which they achieved together, to prove their point.A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G's sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success—where to play and how to win.The result is a playbook for winning. Lafley and Martin have created a set of five essential strategic choices that, when addressed in an integrated way, will move you ahead of your competitors. They are:• What is our winning aspiration?• Where will we play?• How will we win?• What capabilities must we have in place to win?• What management systems are required to support our choices?The stories of how P&G repeatedly won by applying this method to iconic brands such as Olay, Bounty, Gillette, Swiffer, and Febreze clearly illustrate how deciding on a strategic approach—and then making the right choices to support it—makes the difference between just playing the game and actually winning.

Shift your strategy downstream.Why do your customers buy from you rather than from your competitors? If you think the answer is your superior products, think again. Products are important, of course. For decades, businesses sought competitive advantage almost exclusively in activities related to new product creation. They won by building bigger factories, by finding cheaper raw materials or labor, or by coming up with more efficient ways to move and store inventory—and by inventing exciting new products that competitors could not replicate.But these sources of competitive advantage are being irreversibly leveled by globalization and technology. Today, competitors can rapidly decipher and deploy the recipe for your product's secret sauce and use it against you. “Upstream,” product-related advantages are rapidly eroding. This does not mean that competitive advantage is a thing of the past. Rather, its center has shifted. As marketing professor Niraj Dawar compellingly argues, advantage is now found “downstream,” where companies interact with customers in the marketplace. Tilt will help you grasp the global nature of this downstream shift and its profound implications for your strategy and your organization. With vivid examples from around the world, ranging across industries and sectors, Dawar shows how companies are reorienting their strategies around customer interactions to create and capture unique value. And he demonstrates how, unlike product-related advantage, this value is cumulative, continuously building over time.In an increasingly customer-centered world marketplace, let Tilt serve as your guide to shifting your strategy downstream—and achieving enduring competitive advantage.

An argument for simplicity from the bestselling authors of Profit from the CoreIs radical reinvention the key to winning in today's fast-paced world? Not judging by the results of some of the world's best-performing companies.In Repeatability, Chris Zook and James Allen—leaders of Bain & Company's influential Strategy practice—warn that complexity is a silent killer of profitable growth. Successful companies endure by maintaining simplicity at their core. They don't stray from, or regularly discard, their business model in pursuit of radical renovation. Instead, they build a “repeatable business model” that produces continuous improvement and allows them to rapidly adapt to change without succumbing to complexity.Based on a multiyear study of more than two hundred companies, the book stresses the value of repeatability in business, showing how the “big idea” today is really made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model. Zook and Allen show how some of the world's best-known firms combine a core differentiation model with speed, adaptability, and simplicity to land them at the top for long periods of time. These firms include: Apple, Danaher, DaVita, IKEA, Nike, Olam, Tetra Pak, Vanguard, and others.CEOs, senior executives, managers, and investors all need to read this book. It's the new blueprint for reaching the top—and staying there.

How should you grow your organization?It's one of the most challenging questions an executive team faces—and the wrong answer can break your firm.The problem is most firms'growth strategies emphasize just one type of growth—some focus on organic growth, others on M&A. When these strategies falter, the common response is simply to try harder—but firms falling into this “implementation trap” usually end up losing out to a competitor whose approach is more inclusive.So where do you start? By asking the right questions, argue INSEAD's Laurence Capron and coauthor Will Mitchell, of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Capron and Mitchell find that a firm's aptitude for determining the best resource pathways for growth has a defining impact on its success. They've come up with a helpful framework, reflecting practices of a variety of successful global organizations, to determine which path is best for yours.The resource pathways framework is built around three strategic questions:• BUILD: Are your existing internal resources relevant for developing the new resources that you have targeted for growth?• BORROW: Could you obtain the targeted resources via an effective relationship with a resource partner?• BUY: Do you need broad and deep relationships with your resource provider?Written for large multinationals and emerging firms alike, Build, Borrow, or Buy will help solve a perennial question and will guide you through change while priming your organization for optimal growth.

The international bestseller—now with a new preface by author John Kotter.Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter's ideas on change management and leadership.From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession—we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It's the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever.John Kotter's now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every organization must go through to achieve its goals, and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work. Leading Change is widely recognized as his seminal work and is an important precursor to his newer ideas on acceleration published in Harvard Business Review.Needed more today than at any time in the past, this bestselling business book serves as both visionary guide and practical toolkit on how to approach the difficult yet crucial work of leading change in any type of organization. Reading this highly personal book is like spending a day with the world's foremost expert on business leadership. You're sure to walk away inspired—and armed with the tools you need to inspire others. Published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Introducing the Four Components That Make Innovation RepeatableEven the best-performing companies eventually stall. Sustaining momentum—and remaining a great growth company—takes a system.Scott Anthony and David Duncan call this system a “Growth Factory.” They've seen it work in a small set of elite companies that have created environments where innovation is both repeatable and reliable, not relegated to an off-site or isolated division that has no real connection to the organization's future.In this HBR Single, Anthony and Duncan draw on their extensive experience working with these growth factory organizations—most notably Procter & Gamble and Citigroup. They highlight the four main components that make innovation repeatable and reliable, citing real examples of what P&G, Citi, and even their own firm, Innosight, have gone through to stay firmly on a path toward growth despite huge challenges. They offer practical advice on how you can put their system into action in your own company—whether it's a large multinational or a small start-up.HBR Singles provide brief yet potent business ideas for today's thinking professional. They are available digitally at HBR.org and through the Kindle Store, the iBookstore, and other ebooksellers.

This collection offers the full digital editions of two seminal books by global leadership expert John P. Kotter: his international bestseller, Leading Change, and Accelerate, his award-winning framework for enabling companies to compete and win in a world of constant turbulence and disruption.Leading Change—now considered the change bible for leaders and managers worldwide—reveals why change is so difficult and lays out an actionable, eight-step process for implementing successful transformations. Cited by business leaders and influential organizations worldwide as the book to read when starting any type of change initiative, Accelerate (XLR8) vividly illustrates the five core principles underlying a new dual operating system, the eight accelerators that drive it, and how leaders must create a sense of urgency through role modeling. Perhaps most crucial, the book reveals how the best companies focus and align their people's energy around what Kotter calls the big opportunity.If you're a pioneer, a leader who knows that bold change is necessary to survive and thrive in an ever-changing world, these two books will set you on a path to accelerate into a better, more profitable future.Regarded by many as the authority on leadership and change, John P. Kotter is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning business and management thought leader, business entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and Harvard Business School professor. His ideas, books, speeches, and the company he founded in 2008, Kotter International, have helped mobilize people around the world to better lead organizations, and their own lives, in an era of increasingly rapid change. Kotter has authored nineteen books to date—twelve of them bestsellers. His books have reached millions and have been printed in over 150 foreign language editions.

How should you grow your organization?It's one of the most challenging questions an executive team faces—and the wrong answer can break your firm.The problem is most firms'growth strategies emphasize just one type of growth—some focus on organic growth, others on M&A. When these strategies falter, the common response is simply to try harder—but firms falling into this “implementation trap” usually end up losing out to a competitor whose approach is more inclusive.So where do you start? By asking the right questions, argue INSEAD's Laurence Capron and coauthor Will Mitchell, of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Drawing on decades of research and teaching, Capron and Mitchell find that a firm's aptitude for determining the best resource pathways for growth has a defining impact on its success. They've come up with a helpful framework, reflecting practices of a variety of successful global organizations, to determine which path is best for yours.The resource pathways framework is built around three strategic questions:• BUILD: Are your existing internal resources relevant for developing the new resources that you have targeted for growth?• BORROW: Could you obtain the targeted resources via an effective relationship with a resource partner?• BUY: Do you need broad and deep relationships with your resource provider?Written for large multinationals and emerging firms alike, Build, Borrow, or Buy will help solve a perennial question and will guide you through change while priming your organization for optimal growth.

Why Prediction Markets Are Good for BusinessFrom selecting the lead actress in a Broadway musical, to predicting a crucial delay in the delivery of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner months before the CEO knew about it, to accurately forecasting US presidential elections—prediction markets have realized some amazing successes by aggregating the wisdom of crowds.Until now, the potential for this unique approach has remained merely an interesting curiosity. But a handful of innovative organizations—GE, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, Eli Lily, even the CIA—has successfully tapped employee insights to change how business gets done.In Oracles, Don Thompson explains how these and other firms use prediction markets to make better decisions, describing what could be the origins of a social revolution. Thompson shows how prediction markets can:• draw on the hidden knowledge of every employee• tap the “intellectual bandwidth” of retired employees• replace surveys• substitute for endless meetingsBy showing successes and failures of real organizations, and identifying the common roadblocks they've overcome, Oracles offers a guide to begin testing expertise against the collective wisdom of employees and the market—all to the benefit of their bottom line.

Competitive advantage. The value chain. Five forces. Industry structure. Differentiation. Relative cost. If you want to understand how companies achieve and sustain competitive success, Michael Porter's frameworks are the foundation. But while everyone in business may know Porter's name, many managers misunderstand and misuse his concepts.Understanding Michael Porter sets the record straight, providing the first concise, accessible summary of Porter's revolutionary thinking. Written with Porter's full cooperation by Joan Magretta, his former editor at Harvard Business Review, this new book delivers fresh, clear examples to illustrate and update Porter's ideas.Magretta uses her wide business experience to translate Porter's powerful insights into practice and to correct the most common misconceptions about them—for instance, that competition is about being unique, not being the best; that it is a contest over profits, not a battle between rivals; that strategy is about choosing to make some customers unhappy, not being all things to all customers.An added feature is an original Q&A with Porter himself, which includes answers to managers'FAQs.Eminently readable, this book will enable every manager in your organization to grasp Porter's ideas—and swiftly deploy them to drive your company's success.

An argument for simplicity from the bestselling authors of Profit from the CoreIs radical reinvention the key to winning in today's fast-paced world? Not judging by the results of some of the world's best-performing companies.In Repeatability, Chris Zook and James Allen—leaders of Bain & Company's influential Strategy practice—warn that complexity is a silent killer of profitable growth. Successful companies endure by maintaining simplicity at their core. They don't stray from, or regularly discard, their business model in pursuit of radical renovation. Instead, they build a “repeatable business model” that produces continuous improvement and allows them to rapidly adapt to change without succumbing to complexity.Based on a multiyear study of more than two hundred companies, the book stresses the value of repeatability in business, showing how the “big idea” today is really made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model. Zook and Allen show how some of the world's best-known firms combine a core differentiation model with speed, adaptability, and simplicity to land them at the top for long periods of time. These firms include: Apple, Danaher, DaVita, IKEA, Nike, Olam, Tetra Pak, Vanguard, and others.CEOs, senior executives, managers, and investors all need to read this book. It's the new blueprint for reaching the top—and staying there.

Why Prediction Markets Are Good for BusinessFrom selecting the lead actress in a Broadway musical, to predicting a crucial delay in the delivery of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner months before the CEO knew about it, to accurately forecasting US presidential elections—prediction markets have realized some amazing successes by aggregating the wisdom of crowds.Until now, the potential for this unique approach has remained merely an interesting curiosity. But a handful of innovative organizations—GE, Google, Motorola, Microsoft, Eli Lily, even the CIA—has successfully tapped employee insights to change how business gets done.In Oracles, Don Thompson explains how these and other firms use prediction markets to make better decisions, describing what could be the origins of a social revolution. Thompson shows how prediction markets can:• draw on the hidden knowledge of every employee• tap the “intellectual bandwidth” of retired employees• replace surveys• substitute for endless meetingsBy showing successes and failures of real organizations, and identifying the common roadblocks they've overcome, Oracles offers a guide to begin testing expertise against the collective wisdom of employees and the market—all to the benefit of their bottom line.

The international bestseller—now with a new preface by author John Kotter.Millions worldwide have read and embraced John Kotter's ideas on change management and leadership.From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented M&A activity to scandal, greed, and ultimately, recession—we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. It's the rule. Now with a new preface, this refreshed edition of the global bestseller Leading Change is more relevant than ever.John Kotter's now-legendary eight-step process for managing change with positive results has become the foundation for leaders and organizations across the globe. By outlining the process every organization must go through to achieve its goals, and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work. Leading Change is widely recognized as his seminal work and is an important precursor to his newer ideas on acceleration published in Harvard Business Review.Needed more today than at any time in the past, this bestselling business book serves as both visionary guide and practical toolkit on how to approach the difficult yet crucial work of leading change in any type of organization. Reading this highly personal book is like spending a day with the world's foremost expert on business leadership. You're sure to walk away inspired—and armed with the tools you need to inspire others. Published by Harvard Business Review Press.