How Some Companies Beat the Competition… For Centuries

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 July 2018

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, discusses how the industrial cluster in the Swiss city of Basel is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. He explains how early dye makers were able to continually jump to new capabilities and thrive for generations. He says the story of those companies offers a counter-narrative to the pessimistic view that unless your company is Google or Apple, you can’t stay ahead of the competition for long. Yu is the author of “LEAP: How to Thrive in a World Where Everything Can Be Copied.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Kurt Nick is here from Ideacast. I want to tell you about the Big Take
0:05.1	podcast from Bloomberg News. Each weekday they bring you one important story
0:10.0	from their global newsroom like how AI will upend your life and why China's
0:15.4	targeting the US dollar. Check out the big take from Bloomberg wherever you
0:20.2	listen. Welcome to the H.B.R. Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. I'm Kurt Nickish.
0:43.0	Flot down the Rhine River through the city of Basel in Switzerland and the murky
0:54.3	water will carry you past the Red Sandstone Cathedral up on the hill along old stone embankments and under a medieval bridge. You'll also pass the gleaming Roche Tower jutting diagonally into the sky like an optimistic sales forecast.
1:10.0	And outside the old city you'll drift past the shiny new sculptured glass offices of Novartis.
1:16.0	At the campus looks almost like a modern museum in many ways there are stone gardens, there are major art installation all across the campus.
1:27.0	Speaking there is Howard U. He's a management and innovation professor at IMD Business School in Switzerland, and what
1:35.1	really impresses him is that these enterprises have been on the shore of the Rhine River for
1:39.9	the better part of two centuries.
1:42.4	After all, you grew up in Hong Kong,
1:45.0	where he saw industries rise and fall in short order.
1:48.0	He says this enduring industrial cluster in Basel is unique. And it's this interesting element around
1:56.7	how a city, a cluster of industry, can enjoy so much bountiful prosperity that really trigger me to go explore
2:07.2	this particular city. How these companies have stayed on top for so long is
2:11.9	the subject of his new book. It's called Leap, how businesses
2:15.9	thrive in a world where everything can be copied. I spoke to you recently on a day when my
2:21.2	seasonal allergies were pretty bad. maybe something that those drug companies
2:25.3	in Basel could help.
2:29.7	Howard, thanks so much for talking with the HBO Ideacast. My pleasure. You have this
	...

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