Harvard Business School To Host Program On Sustaining A Successful Enterprise

Leadership development program discusses disruptive innovation; course will offer unique digital opportunity through HBX

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Harvard Business School

Aug 24, 2015, 08:00 ET

BOSTON, Aug. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- From November 30 to December 5, 2015, Harvard Business School (HBS) Executive Education will host Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise (BSSE) on the HBS campus in Boston. This program is designed to help executives adapt and sustain their business models by predicting and understanding new competitive forces and technologies that can affect future growth.

Additionally, through a unique partnership with HBX, Harvard Business School's digital learning initiative, BSSE participants have the option to allow five colleagues to attend a related online course: Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen. This interactive course echoes key principles outlined by BSSE and will help participants and their colleagues build and implement strategic action plans to enhance their company's performance.

Using the theory of disruptive innovation – developed by Clayton Christensen, BSSE faculty chair and the School's Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration – BSSE provides executives with frameworks for identifying threats and opportunities and honing their decision-making skills in order to build an organization with an enduring competitive advantage. By focusing on sustaining core businesses while simultaneously creating new growth, this course will show participants how the world's leading companies maintain their cutting edge despite competitive threats.

"Building a successful company is only the beginning," said Professor Das Narayandas, Senior Associate Dean and Chair of Executive Education and Harvard Business Publishing. "Sustaining that success requires continual growth through innovation. This program will provide executives with frameworks for building businesses for long-term sustainability and success."

The program curriculum will focus on important decisions facing executives as they determine how to build upon their company's success through disruptive business models. Executives will learn to adopt a strategic mindset, ground an organization's thinking in predictive frameworks, align organizations around innovation initiatives, achieve differentiation, better articulate strategic goals, and apply disruptive theories to complex challenges. Professor Christensen will also discuss how executives can tap into innovation strategies in their personal lives.

"In Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise, we don't try to teach you 'what to think,' but rather 'how to think' about pressing issues facing your business," said Derek van Bever, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration. "Our goal is to help executives realize that doing the same things that made you successful won't keep you successful. In order to achieve sustained success, executives need to be able to identify threats and opportunities sooner, deal with them faster, and make strategic decisions that disrupt the market and drive growth."

Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise is designed for senior executives within large established companies, family-owned conglomerates, or companies that operate in emerging markets. Participants range from general management to C-suite executives in a variety of industries, including finance, technology, health care, education, government and law.

As with other HBS Executive Education offerings, Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise will rely on research from leading HBS faculty, discussions with industry peers and learnings from real-world case studies from successful global companies.

Program Details:
Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise will be hosted November 30 to December 5, 2015, on the Harvard Business School campus. Please visit http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/bsse/ for complete curriculum and to apply.

Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise
(November 30 – December 5, 2015, Harvard Business School)

Faculty:

Clayton M. Christensen, Kim B. Clark Professor of Business Administration and faculty chair of Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise.

Chester A. Huber, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration.

Stephen P. Kaufman, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration.

Willy C. Shih, Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Management Practice in Business Administration.

Derek C. M. van Bever, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration.

About Harvard Business School:
Harvard Business School Executive Education, a division of Harvard Business School, is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston, Massachusetts. In fiscal year 2014, HBS faculty developed and delivered 79 open-enrollment Executive Education programs and more than 50 custom clients for leading organizations worldwide. More than 10,000 business executives attended programs held on campus in Boston as well as classrooms in Mumbai, and Shanghai. With global research centers in eight key regions, HBS faculty continue to develop groundbreaking research, forge powerful alliances with global organizations, and fulfill the mission of educating leaders who shape the practice of business and innovation. Learn more at www.exed.hbs.edu.

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SOURCE Harvard Business School