Business Strategy

If you read (or listen to) nothing else on strategy, listen to these ten articles (featuring "What Is Strategy?" by Michael E. Porter). We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you catalyze your organization's strategy development and execution.

Start making choices now that serve your desired future. Today’s fast-paced and radically shifting business world means that many leaders, even those considered successful, are simply navigating urgent tasks with little to no strategy. In Strategy to Action, award-winning educator and coach Keita Demming of The Covenant Group presents an innovative and deceptively simple tool to help business professionals unite their short-term tactics with their long-term goals.

This passionate expertise manifesto is intended to elevate the impact of advisors who sell insight as entrepreneurs. Three foundational chapters form the basis of the entire audiobook: Experts develop insight by isolating patterns in data; they convert those insights to wealth by crafting a unique positioning for which few available substitutes exist; and their confidence grows as the marketplace embraces their application of expertise. The next 15 chapters - building on that foundation - each answer a single question.

Are you ready to enter the ring and fight for your business's success? In "Business Is War", Elliott Forman reveals the key battles every business owner must conquer to survive and thrive in today's competitive landscape. With a no-nonsense approach and drawing from his extensive experience as a boxer, military veteran, and successful entrepreneur, Forman breaks down the 12 crucial Battles of Business™ that can make or break your venture.

Ever felt the thrill of a brilliant business idea only to slam into the brick wall of risk and uncertainty? You're not alone. Even giants like Elon Musk and Warren Buffett faced the same daunting question at some point: "Is it worth the risk?" The old business model would have you jump through hoops of fire, risk losing money and time, often only to hit a dead end. But those days are gone. Today, the smartest business owners on the planet know that financial growth doesn't have to be a roll of the dice. Are you ready to step into this new paradigm?

In an effort to get Charlie out of her system once and for all, Nova offers a proposition: one night, no strings. They’ll kick their uncomfortable attraction to the curb and return to their respective responsibilities. But their explosive night together scatters their expectations like fallen leaves. And with Charlie in town as the temporary head of Lovelight Farms, Nova can’t quite avoid him.

Written by Lauri-Ann Ainsworth, CEO of the Richard Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship Caribbean, the region's foremost business accelerator, The Self-Love Mindset: Why Personal Wellbeing is the Ultimate Business Strategy shares a deeply personal journey, revealing how true success—both personal and professional—begins with self-love. Ainsworth believes that people are at the heart of every business. When individuals are empowered to love and care for themselves, that love naturally extends to the organization and even the community they serve.

Still in his early 30s, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already visited more than 175 nations - and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck. Rather, he has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he uses what he earns both to support his life of adventure and to give back. In The $100 Startup, he tells you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose - and earn a good living.

From two leaders in executive education at Harvard Business School, here are the mental habits and proven strategies you need to achieve outstanding results in any negotiation.

Burnout. Many women in America have experienced it. What’s expected of women and what it’s really like to be a woman in today’s world are two very different things - and women exhaust themselves trying to close the gap between them. Sisters Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, are here to help end the cycle of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Instead of asking us to ignore the very real obstacles and societal pressures that stand between women and well-being, they explain with compassion and optimism what we’re up against - and teach us how to fight back.

Expert franchise consultant Mark Siebert delivers the ultimate how-to guide to employing the greatest growth strategy ever-franchising. Siebert tells you what to expect, how to move forward, and avoid costly mistakes as he imparts decades of experience, insights, and practical advice to help grow your business exponentially through franchising.

50 Business Classics presents the key ideas from classic texts such as My Years with General Motors and Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited to contemporary business lessons from the rise of tech giants like Google, Apple, and Amazon. It contains revealing biographies of luminaries like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett, as well as lesser-known stories including creation of publishing giant Penguin and Chinese behemoth Alibaba.

Bruce Greenwald, one of the nation's leading business professors, presents a new and simplified approach to strategy that cuts through much of the fog that has surrounded the subject. Based on his hugely popular course at Columbia Business School, Greenwald and his co-author, Judd Kahn, offer an easy-to-follow method for understanding the competitive structure of your industry and developing an appropriate strategy for your specific position.

Due to its raw storytelling style, compelling content, and fast pace, Explosive Growth is a one-of-a-kind business book that transcends the narrow entrepreneurial audience to also appeal to listeners and business students looking to learn about startup life and entrepreneurship. It holds nothing back while detailing the highest highs and lowest lows of what it's really like to run a startup.

Remaining relevant as a creative professional takes more than creativity—you need to understand the language of business. The problem is that design school doesn't teach the strategic language that is now essential to getting your job done. Creative Strategy and the Business of Design fills that void and teaches left-brain business skills to right-brain creative thinkers.

Each year, Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of "sell it—do it, sell it—do it" that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try. Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconven­tional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field.

Explore the universe of potential buyers. Learn how to assemble a team of expert advisors to prepare your business for sale. Walk step by step through a typical investment-banker-led midmarket sale process from start to finish. Adam Coffey has spent the last 20 years as CEO of three private-equity-backed national service companies. Through his experience executing a buy-and-build strategy, he has bought and sold more than 100 companies ranging in size from $1 million to $1 billion. Selling your business is an art.

Chock-full of real-world examples of mistakes, heartbreak, and redemption that makes it sound more like a juicy exposé than a business book, Love as a Business Strategy offers a new, people-first framework for achieving any business outcome. Written by authors who aren't fans of run-of-the-mill, nap-inducing business or leadership books, this book clearly shows that a better way of doing business is possible, helping listeners ditch the status quo, embrace humanity, and achieve lasting success.

Few businesses can afford to shut down for an extended period of time, regardless of the cause. If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that disaster can strike in any shape, at any time. Be prepared with the time-tested strategies in Business Continuity Management: Building an Effective Incident Management Plan and protect your employees while ensuring your company survives the unimaginable.

In Project Zero Trust: A Story About a Strategy for Aligning Security and the Business, George Finney, chief security officer at Southern Methodist University, delivers an insightful and practical discussion of Zero Trust implementation. Presented in the form of a fictional narrative involving a breach at a company, the book tracks the actions of the company's new IT security director. Listeners will learn John Kindervag's 5-Step methodology for implementing Zero Trust, the four Zero Trust design principles, and how to limit the impact of a breach.