HBR On Strategy

While many teams and organizations engage in scenario planning, most don’t go far enough. Arjan Singh, consultant and adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University, says a more disciplined approach, borrowed from the military, can help leaders truly test how their strategies, operations, and tactics hold up against competitors, shifting market dynamics, and unexpected events. He’s helped hundreds of companies identify risks and find new ways to innovate by leading them through corporate war games, and he explains his process and results. Singh is the author of the book "Competitive Success: Building Winning Strategies with Corporate War Games."

Rafi Mohammed, founder of the consulting firm Culture of Profit, says a crisis or recession is not the time to panic and slash prices. He says leaders should instead reevaluate their pricing strategy—or develop one for the first time—to better respond to customers during the slump and keep them when the economy recovers. Since this conversation took place in 2020, the crisis you'll hear them referring to is—obviously—the Covid-19 pandemic. But these lessons apply well beyond that moment—to any period of economic instability. Mohammed shares examples of companies across a variety of industries that created effective price strategies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Mohammed is the author of "The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use Price to Profit and Grow" and the recent HBR article, “Setting a Pricing Strategy Amid Ever-Changing Tariffs."

In a conversation with HBR editor-at-large Adi Ignatius, Lisa Su, CEO of leading semiconductor company AMD, discusses the company’s evolution toward high-performance and adaptive computing, the future of AI use in different sectors, and the importance of responsible risk-taking. She advocates for fast experimentation and implementation while ensuring safety through initiatives like AMD’s Responsible AI Council, active learning within the organization and among industry peers, and the hiring of diverse talent to drive innovation. Time Magazine recently named Su their "CEO of the Year." Key episode topics include: artificial intelligence, computing, machine learning, technology, decision-making, implementation, experimentation, ChatGPT, OpenAI, strategy HBR On Strategy curates the best conversations and case studies with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. * Watch the full YouTube video: How AMD’s Lisa Su is Thinking About AI [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyrqGurGQfo] * Watch more videos on HBR’s YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyrqGurGQfo] * Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org [https://hbr.org/]

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and then-CEO of online pet products retailer Chewy.com, was facing a decision that could determine his company’s future. Should he stay with a third-party logistics provider (3PL) for all of Chewy.com’s e-commerce fulfillment or take that function in house? Cohen worried that the company’s current 3PL may not be able to scale with Chewy.com’s projected growth or maintain the company’s performance standards for service quality and fulfillment. But neither he nor his cofounders had experience managing logistics, and the company’s board members were pressuring him to leave order fulfillment to the 3PL. What should Cohen do? Harvard Business School senior lecturer Jeffrey Rayport discusses the options in his case, “Chewy.com (A) [https://store.hbr.org/product/chewy-com-a/818079?sku=818079-PDF-ENG].” Key episode topics include: strategy, supply chain management, operations management, growth strategy, operations strategy HBR On Strategy curates the best conversations and case studies 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: Chewy.com’s Make-or-Break Logistics Dilemma [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chewy-coms-make-or-break-logistics-dilemma/id1156646189?i=1000583026758] * Find more episodes of Cold Call [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cold-call/id1156646189] * Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org [https://hbr.org/]

Unfortunately, you can’t set up your organization’s artificial intelligence projects like just any other IT project. By their nature, AI endeavors are quite different and suffer high failure rates. But there are proven approaches you can take to increase your odds of success. Iavor Bojinov, assistant professor at Harvard Business School and former LinkedIn data scientist, breaks down five critical steps for an AI project to turn into an effective product: selection, development, evaluation, adoption, and management. He’s the author of the HBR article “Keep Your AI Projects on Track [https://hbr.org/2023/11/keep-your-ai-projects-on-track].” Key episode topics include: artificial intelligence, project management, product management, product launches, trust, employee engagement, technology and analytics, competitive strategy, strategy, HBR On Strategy curates the best conversations and case studies 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: Setting AI Projects Up for Success [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hbr-ideacast/id152022135?i=1000637558796] * Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hbr-ideacast/id152022135] * Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org [https://hbr.org/]