In the start-up world, when is it possible to grow too fast? Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann and entrepreneur Lindsey Hyde discuss what led to the failure of Hyde’s pet care start-up, Baroo.

What role does timing play in strategic thinking — for an organization's growth, but also for you and your career? New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink says it can play a big part in how successful your strategy will be. “I think people underestimate timing,” he tells Dear HBR hosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn. “We’re very intentional in our lives about what we do. But when it comes to when we do things, we don’t take it seriously enough. We’re not intentional. And it has a material effect at very many levels of peoples’ work lives.” In this episode, taped live in Washington, D.C., Pink discusses what to do when your company is slow to seize a market opportunity or the right career opportunity arrives at the wrong time. Whether an opportunity is for your company, your team, or your own career, timing really is everything. Key episode topics include: career planning, decision making and problem solving, psychology, timing, merger, enterprise software, start-ups, when to quit. HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week. · Listen to the original Dear HBR episode: Perfect Timing (Live) (Nov 2019)· Find more episodes of Dear HBR· Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org

To plan for the future, businesses usually look to their past. But what if your company is in uncharted territory? Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath has a different idea: Design experiments to test your assumptions using “discovery-driven growth.”

Since its founding in 1994, Amazon has expanded into streaming, cloud computing, content creation, and even groceries. But if traditional business strategy tells us that the key to success is focus, why does Amazon work?

Imagine you’re trying to solve a problem, but none of your options are all that great. You could walk away. Or you could try to take the best from two inadequate options to reach a smarter, strategic solution.

Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay studied Uber’s strategies as it entered new markets around the world. He wanted to understand how global businesses can scale fast and survive for the long run. MacKay tells Cold Call host Brian Kenny that Uber adjusted its strategies to meet the specific challenges posed by competitors and regulators in six global markets: New York, Bogota, Delhi, Shanghai, Accra, and London.

The theory of disruptive innovation endures as a way to make a complicated and expensive product simpler and more affordable. But the originator of disruptive innovation argued that disruptive innovation isn’t just about simplifying technology — it also requires a new business model.

Quitting is often associated with failure -- whether it’s a project, job, career, or company. But Annie Duke, an author, consultant, and former professional poker champion, argues that quitting can sometimes be a strategic success.

Blue ocean strategy is a landmark business idea, but its co-creator, Renée Mauborgne, says it’s not a guaranteed win. She discusses what specifically can go wrong when you try to implement blue ocean strategy, including the common traps managers fall into.

In an era driven by network effects, smaller players struggle to compete against bigger platforms. The trick to gaining ground on a much larger rival, says Harvard Business School professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee, is choosing a strategy that can’t easily be imitated. A good example is TaoBao’s strategy for displacing eBay in China, back in 2007.