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HBR IdeaCast

HBR IdeaCast

By: Harvard Business Review
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 A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management.Copyright 2025 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Future of Business: Mars CEO on How Business Can Be a Force for Good

    Future of Business: Mars CEO on How Business Can Be a Force for Good
    Dec 11 2025
    What does it look like for a business in 2025 to build a strategy around sustainability? In this Future of Business series, IdeaCast hosts Alison Beard and Adi Ignatius sat down with four leading CEOs to understand where global business is going. In this episode, host Adi Ignatius speaks with Poul Weihrauch, CEO of Mars, about how he manages the family-owned consumer packaged goods company. They discuss balancing short-term performance with long-term goals, resilience, and the business case for sustainability-driven innovation.
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    29 mins
  • Moving Beyond the Slow, Hierarchical Organization

    Moving Beyond the Slow, Hierarchical Organization
    Dec 9 2025
    Most companies say they want to be more innovative, agile, and customer-centric. But in reality, many still operate like 20th-century factories: hierarchical, risk-averse, and slow. Jana Werner, executive in residence of enterprise strategy at Amazon Web Services, argues that organizations should instead think of an octopus: an organism that manages complexity, can work in many different modes with some autonomy, but all moving in concert toward a common goal. Werner says the future belongs to companies that distribute decision-making, empower teams at the edge, and treat innovation as everyone’s job, and explains steps you can take as a leader to make this cultural shift. She's the coauthor along with Phil Le-Brun of the HBR article "Become an Octopus Organization" and the book, The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation.
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    34 mins
  • Future of Business: Moderna’s Founder on Innovation That Breaks Through

    Future of Business: Moderna’s Founder on Innovation That Breaks Through
    Dec 4 2025
    What are CEOs across industries doing to build resilience and strong cultures in an age of uncertainty? In this Future of Business series, IdeaCast hosts Alison Beard and Adi Ignatius sat down with four leading CEOs to understand where global business is going. In this episode, host Alison Beard speaks with Noubar Afeyan, the CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Chairman of Moderna. Afeyan shares the organizational models and practices that work best to produce innovation, the difference between managing risk and managing uncertainty, and what separates true breakthrough innovation from everyday, incremental improvements.
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    29 mins
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