Author: Jason Sylva

Conventional wisdom is to innovate via lower-cost, feature-poor technologies that meet the needs of a small group of early adopting, underserved customers, and to decide on one strategic “discipline” or “generic strategy.”

But big-bang disruptions upend the conventional wisdom. Larry Downes and Paul Nunes write in the March 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review, “The classic ‘rules’ of business don’t apply to them [big-bang disruptions].”

In this interactive HBR webinar, Downes and Nunes share insights from their HBR article. They explain what big-bang disruptions are, how they are different, why they are so devastating, and how to survive them.

In today’s media-saturated world, consumers are rejecting aggressive, interruptive advertising. In this environment, the keys to advertising are engaging consumers by focusing on where they are and connecting with them when they will be receptive.

Drawing on a decade of working with advertising and marketing executives, Jeffrey Rayport argues that companies need a new way of thinking about advertising in the digital age.

In this interactive webinar based on his new HBR article “The Future of Advertising,” Rayport shares a new framework for designing advertising strategy and execution. He shares his ideas on how marketers can craft and place their message to offer value in the proper context so consumers trust and welcome them.

In the December 2012 Harvard Business Review, Clayton Christensen and Max Wessel shared new ideas about surviving disruption. This requires identifying which disruptions could affect your business, determining the disrupter’s advantage (their “extendable core”), identifying your own advantage, and figuring out how easily a disrupter might co-opt your advantage.

Christensen and Wessel proposed a systematic way to chart the path and pace of disruption so organizations can fashion a complete strategic response. The key is developing a deep understanding of the “jobs” that customers want to get done, and what jobs disrupters could do better based on their extendable core.

In this interactive HBR webinar, Christensen and Wessel will share the keys to identifying, readying for, and using a disruptive challenge to actually make your company more innovative — and more competitive.

A common refrain is, “We have to do more with less.” A common result is feelings among employees of overload and burnout. With higher demands and fewer resources, what’s the solution?

Tony Schwartz, CEO of the Energy Project and a contributor to HBR’s Blog Network, sees the key as energizing the workplace through “sustainable engagement.” This requires that organizations shift from the traditional focus on getting more out of people to investing instead in meeting people’s core needs so they are freed, fueled, and inspired to deliver sustainable high performance.

Tune in now to hear Schwartz describe what sustainable engagement is, why it matters, and how organizations can create it.

As technology expands the way that marketing is understood, led, and practiced, there are exciting new opportunities for Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Information Officers to drive growth by collaborating and transforming their organizations. For example, in a more interconnected and intelligent world, marketers can use social media technology to deepen their connection with customers, employees, and citizens.

In this HBR webinar, C-level marketing and technology experts from the Cleveland Clinic discuss how leaders are partnering to transform their organizations and take advantage of the immense opportunities in their radically changing markets.

Companies in all industries are trying to capitalize on the Big Data revolution with the belief that the ability to collect and quickly analyze huge streams of data will provide new insights, better decisions, and a better customer experience.

But Donald Marchand and Joe Peppard have found that when Big Data and analytics projects are implemented like other major IT initiatives, they often fail to produce the results desired by executives. Their conclusion: these projects should be implemented differently from other IT projects and should be based on understanding how people create and use information. Ultimately, businesses need to focus on the business problem and choose the technology that best addresses that problem.

Tune in now to learn how you can make your IT projects successful in 2013.