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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 2026 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Optimism Is Now an Essential Leadership Skill

    Optimism Is Now an Essential Leadership Skill
    Oct 6 2026
    Optimism isn’t about ignoring problems or pretending everything will work out. It’s about acknowledging challenges while believing that your actions can still make a difference. Psychologist and researcher Michelle Gielan says leaders can cultivate that mindset in themselves and their teams and argues that, when they do, it creates a powerful performance advantage. Drawing on an 11-year dataset of more than 25,000 business professionals, she shares research linking optimism to higher productivity, sales, engagement, and lower burnout. She explains how leaders can use techniques like “power leads" to help teams focus on progress and possibility without losing sight of difficult realities. Gielan wrote the book Resilient Optimism: The Science of Sustaining a Positive Mindset in Tough Times and the HBR article "How Leaders Counter Pessimism in Trying Times."
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    29 mins
  • How AI Is Changing Strategy: Rethinking What Your Business Is Designed to Do

    How AI Is Changing Strategy: Rethinking What Your Business Is Designed to Do
    Oct 8 2026
    AI is advancing so quickly that companies can’t afford to treat it as simply another productivity tool; it is fundamentally reshaping strategy. In this final episode of our special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, Wharton professor and AI expert Ethan Mollick explains why leaders need to rethink what their organizations are designed to do—and how work gets done. He discusses how AI agents are changing the role of managers, why companies need to experiment rather than wait for proven playbooks, and how leaders can create competitive advantage when everyone has access to the same frontier models. Mollick is author of the forthcoming book Co-Existence: The Next Phase of AI.
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    33 mins
  • How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy

    How AI Is Changing Communication: Weighing Efficiency with Efficacy
    Sep 24 2026
    AI is rapidly changing how top leaders communicate with employees, customers, boards, and each other. In episode 2 of a special four-part series on how AI is changing leadership, we explore how executives can use AI to improve communication without outsourcing the thinking, judgment, and empathy that make it effective. Stanford professor Matt Abrahams and Zapier CEO Wade Foster discuss how leaders are using AI to synthesize information, structure ideas, prepare for difficult conversations, and rehearse for high-stakes moments. They also explain why leaders should be wary of letting AI write everything for them, how overreliance on AI can create a “comprehension gap,” and why preserving a distinctive human voice may become even more important as AI-generated communication becomes ubiquitous. Abrahams is the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter and host of the podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart. Foster is the cofounder and CEO of Zapier, a software automation company.
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    34 mins
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This is such a great episode.I will sure listen to this again and share it with my team.

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