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The Best Companies Know How to Balance Strategy and Purpose

Harvard Business Review

In 2006 alone, Nokia introduced 39 new mobile-device models. Seeking to extend its technological edge (particularly in miniaturization), it acquired more than 100 startup companies while pursuing a vast portfolio of research and product development projects.

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Creating Shared Value vs. Leveraged Social Programs

Harvard Business Review

Michael Porter and Mark Kramer, writing in HBR ( December, 2006 and January-February, 2011 ), advance the idea of creating shared value by developing strategies and policies that enhance the competitiveness of the company while advancing social and economic conditions of the community.

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HBR’s Guide to Obama’s 2014 State of the Union

Harvard Business Review

That view is shared by University of Colorado’s Wayne Cascio, who in 2006 wrote about the high cost of low wages for business. On the latter topic, check out Michael Porter and Thomas Lee, who lay out a strategy for improving the health care industry.

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The Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability

Harvard Business Review

Michel Porter and Mark Kramer pioneered the idea of “creating shared value,” arguing that businesses can generate economic value by identifying and addressing social problems that intersect with their business. Since 1994, Dow has invested nearly $2 billion in improving resource efficiency and has saved $9.8

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Strategy Lessons From Jean Tirole

Harvard Business Review

The academic study of strategy took a big leap forward in the 1970s when Michael Porter of HBS looked at earlier economic research on industry structure and noticed that market power — which economists wanted to minimize — was the same thing as sustained profitability, which corporate executives wanted to maximize. Corporate finance?