The Best Harvard Business Review 2025

1. Smart Rivals : How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can't Win

A fresh, research-based look at how companies can better compete, on their own terms, with tech giants--from a Harvard Business School professor and a former Bloomberg journalist.Companies are fighting the wrong battle. The consensus has been to learn the best practices from tech giants and then imitate them. But new paths for growth aren't created by imitation; they're forged by radical differentiation.In Smart Rivals, Harvard Business School professor Feng Zhu and former Bloomberg journalist Bonnie Yining Cao show business leaders how to create competitive advantages by offering product features and benefits that tech giants and other competitors cannot match in the digital/AI age.Taking readers on a global journey, Zhu and Cao showcase a variety of companies--including Domino's, Nike, and Sephora--and fascinating case studies, such as Belle, the leading women's footwear retailer in China; EbonyLife, Nigeria's top media conglomerate; and Telepass, Italy's popular electronic toll payment service. Through these diverse examples, they illustrate how companies identify their path for growth in the digital age by leveraging their unique capabilities.Drawing on original research and insights gleaned from leaders in a wide range of industries, Smart Rivals is a blueprint for uncovering your company's hidden strengths. It will help you spark innovative solutions and capabilities--including new products, services, strategies, and advantages--that mere imitation could never provide.

Smart Rivals : How Innovative Companies Play Games That Tech Giants Can't Win

2. Succession: Are You Ready?

A leader's greatest challenge can be knowing when it's time to step aside. A great deal has been written for corporate boards on the issue of succession planning. But most executives have few resources to help guide them through the process. How do you start preparing yourself--and your successor--for your inevitable leadership transition? In this concise book, leading executive coach and bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith offers candid advice on succession from the outgoing executive's perspective. From choosing and grooming a successor while sidestepping political minefields, to finally handing over responsibility, Goldsmith walks you through each step in the succession process. Done right, your successor can enter to applause while you gracefully bow out and start the next chapter of your life.

Succession: Are You Ready?

3. Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Organizational Resilience (with Bonus Article Organizational Grit by Thomas H. Lee and Angela L. Duckworth)

A curated collection of 10 HBR magazine articles on resilient organizations and how to become one.We've read everything HBR has ever published on organizational resilience so you don't have to.Curates the best and most influential HBR articles on organizational resilience.Covers topics such as leading your company through crisis, rebounding from recession, building the ability to anticipate challenges, and preparing for climate change.Includes pieces from recognizable names and trusted experts.Audience: All leaders and managers—the Covid-19 crisis has made the need for greater organizational resilience painfully clear.

Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Organizational Resilience (with Bonus Article Organizational Grit by Thomas H. Lee and Angela L. Duckworth)

4. Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life

There's an 80 percent chance you're poor. Time poor, that is.Four out of five adults report feeling that they have too much to do and not enough time to do it. These time-poor people experience less joy each day. They laugh less. They are less healthy, less productive, and more likely to divorce. In one study, time stress produced a stronger negative effect on happiness than unemployment.How can we escape the time traps that make us feel this way and keep us from living our best lives?Time Smart is your playbook for taking back the time you lose to mindless tasks and unfulfilling chores. Author and Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans will give you proven strategies for improving your "time affluence." The techniques Whillans provides will free up seconds, minutes, and hours that, over the long term, become weeks and months that you can reinvest in positive, healthy activities.Time Smart doesn't stop at telling you what to do. It also shows you how to do it, helping you achieve the mindset shift that will make these activities part of your everyday regimen through assessments, checklists, and activities you can use right away. The strategies Whillans presents will help you make the shift to time-smart living and, in the process, build a happier, more fulfilling life.

Time Smart: How to Reclaim Your Time and Live a Happier Life

5. Leading Through : Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership

Generative AI and the remote-work revolution show us every day that we're in a new era. The rules and norms have changed--and so must leadership.And yet, coercive bureaucracy, hierarchy, and control--old ways of thinking and working--are still with us, a deep-seated and powerful legacy. We are living through a profound transition from an old, industrial era to a new one that is digital, transparent, and complex.In this important new book by former dean of Harvard Business School Kim Clark, written with his business school professor son, Jonathan, and management consultant daughter, Erin, the dynamic struggle between two competing paradigms of leadership is compellingly illustrated: an old paradigm that involves control and power over people versus a new one that enables and inspires power through people.With rich examples and stories, the authors show how deeply ingrained the legacy model of leadership remains and how destructive it is, causing waste and loss of human potential, stifling innovation, and ultimately resulting in what the authors call "organizational darkness." They go on to articulate a new, positive model, one that consciously seeks to do good and to make things better; that cares for people, helping them to thrive; and that mobilizes people to solve tough problems. These three elements, they argue, are the soul, heart, and mind of leadership, and activating them requires careful attention to both the personal and the organizational dimensions of leadership.The narrative is interwoven with probing analysis and reflection, and the authors speak clearly and frankly about the moral aspects and impact of leadership. They also provide a concrete frame and approach for scaling the new model and creating a vibrant leadership system.Leading Through is a deep and essential account of the evolution of our leadership thinking and practice that is both timely and timeless.

Leading Through : Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership