June 18, 2018
The June Edition

Decoding Digital Strategy

Everyone wants to be a winner in the digital economy, but how exactly do you get there? To play to win, firms must understand more than ever their context in an increasingly cutthroat, competitive landscape. This month we take a look at the digital strategist’s toolkit – the tactics both technological and cultural that can help your company get (and stay) ahead in the digital era.

Next Edition | June 29, 2018

Sports and Technology

In This Edition

Each edition explores a facet of the digital economy and investigates the forces transforming it.

  • 01

    Driving Digital Strategy

    In the digital landscape, the rules of strategy are changing. In this flash talk, Professor Sunil Gupta shares how to focus on the possibilities of technology – without missing the big picture.

  • 02

    Play: An Organizing Schema for Digital Commercial Culture

    The Internet is anything but boring; as a place it has become edgy, often rude, and infinitely fascinating. Businesses who aim to succeed in the digital economy need to understand this. Here, Professor John Deighton offers a primer on how to play — or else be played — in the Internet era.

  • culture-strategy-featured
    03

    Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

    Technology itself is not enough. In order for organizations to really capture the true value of technology, they must be willing to embrace change. In this article, Jason Preston of Dent the Future makes the case for culture-based competition and argues it is the way for companies to get ahead in the digital economy.

  • 04

    Making Sense of the Modern Startup

    When then relative HBS newcomer Professor Bill Sahlman introduced the idea of an Entrepreneurial Finance course, he received little to no encouragement. Fast forward 30 years, and not only was Sahlman’s course hugely successful and popular among the students, but he succeeded in developing an entirely new framework to think about finance in entrepreneurial ventures that still rings true today.

  • 05

    Disappearing Interfaces

    Quartz’s Zach Seward takes a look at the interfaces we use to consume information and communicate with technology and remarks that as our familiarity with technology changes over time, so too does the form that technology takes. What shapes will digital (and physical) interfaces take in the future? That is the question.

  • 06

    Beyond Chicken & Egg

    In the beginning, every marketplace faces a chicken and egg problem in relation to establishing supply and demand. This talk goes beyond the classic chicken and egg problem to uncover some of the more nuanced and interesting strategic issues platforms face when establishing marketplaces at scale.

  • 07

    ‘Candy Crush’ Was a Blockbuster: Can King Digital Capitalize?

    What does it take to capture the devotion of a fickle fan base in a fiercely competitive industry? How can you capitalize on the viral popularity of a game within the ‘freemium’ model? How should a company strategically scale following one massive blockbuster hit? Professor Jeffrey Rayport looks to Candy Crush for the answers to these questions in this Cold Call podcast.

Events

Jun 12 2018

Books@Baker with Francesca Gino

Books@Baker with Francesca Gino
In "Rebel Talent," Professor Francesca Gino argues that the future belongs to the rebel and that there's a rebel in each of us.

Whether you want to inspire others to action, build a business, or build more meaningful relationships, Rebel Talent will show you how to succeed — by breaking all the rules.

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Sep 13 2018

Disruptive Strategy Summit San Francisco 2018

Disruptive Strategy Summit San Francisco 2018
“A crash course in radically disrupting your market."

The Disruptive Strategy Summit is a crash course in how to radically transform your business, giving you to tools to drive organizational change and outpace competitors.

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Influencers

  1. Sunil Gupta

    Sunil Gupta

    Sunil is the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Administration and Chair of the General Management Program at Harvard Business School.

  2. John Deighton

    John Deighton

    John is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

  3. Zach Seward

    Zach Seward

    Zach Seward is the chief product officer and executive editor of Quartz, where he oversees product development, editorial strategy, and audience growth.

  4. Kris Ferreira

    Kris Ferreira

    Kris is an assistant professor of business administration in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School.

  5. Bharat Anand

    Bharat Anand

    Bharat is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School, is the faculty chair of the HBX initiative, and serves on the HarvardX Faculty Committee.

  6. John Winsor

    John Winsor

    John is the world’s leading authority on open innovation, co-creation and crowdsourcing in marketing.

  7. Hong Luo

    Hong Luo

    Hong is the James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit. Her research explores how innovators develop and commercialize their ideas, with an emphasis on how far an entrepreneur should develop an idea before selling it.

  8. Jason Preston

    Jason Preston

    Jason is co-Founder of Dent the Future and was an Affiliate at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

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