Executive Education

Breakthrough Insights

A Program Exclusively for HBS Alumni

The most successful business leaders are distinguished by their quest for knowledge and new ideas. Reflecting the School’s commitment to foster lifelong learning and to strengthen individual leadership capabilities, HBS once again is offering Breakthrough Insights, a unique program that connects alumni with the latest faculty research and thinking.

What You Can Expect

Through interactive lectures, transformational ideas, and dynamic discussions with accomplished peers, this leadership development program empowers you to address your organization's business challenges with a fresh perspective. You will examine new research on topics related to the global financial system. Breakthrough Insights offers a rich three-day learning experience that ranges across the globe, across industries, and into the future. Whatever your role or function, you will strengthen your ability to lead and manage while gaining new insights into the issues that are changing the world of business.

Focused on helping you navigate the current business environment and achieve strategic advantage for your firm, the program's curriculum emphasizes the critical challenges on the minds of business leaders today.

Since Breakthrough Insights quickly reaches capacity, we encourage you to submit your registration form as soon as possible—at least four weeks before the program start date.

Who Is Right for the Program

This unique program is limited to alumni of Harvard Business School. Participants represent a diverse group of executives from companies that span a wide range of industries, countries, cultures, and business types. The group's diversity will create a highly stimulating exchange of ideas.

Your Course of Study

Through interactive lectures, transformational ideas, and dynamic discussions with accomplished peers, this leadership development program empowers you to address your organization's business challenges with a fresh perspective. You will examine new research on topics related to the global financial system. Topics include:

Driving U.S. Competitiveness

In his 2011 State of the Union address, U.S. President Barak Obama highlighted the need to improve U.S. competitiveness. What is competitiveness? Does the U.S. have a competitiveness problem, and if so, why? What are the roles and responsibilities of business leaders in promoting U.S. competitiveness? Professor Jan W. Rivkin will tackle these questions based on the ongoing work of a multidisciplinary team of HBS faculty.

Charting Europe's Financial Future

During the past year, global financial attention has shifted to Europe as Greece and other countries seek to overcome financial challenges. In a session that emphasizes Europe's impact on the global economy, HBS associate professor Gunnar Trumbull discusses the emergence and makeup of the European Union, challenges posed by the Euro and the structure of the central bank, and potential solutions to the debt crisis in Greece and similar scenarios.

Understanding How Nations Compete in a Globalized Economy

Drawing on the financial crisis and responses to it, HBS professor Richard H. K. Vietor will explain how national governments are fostering economic development and competing in a globalized economy. Looking at countries like the U.S. and China, he will also explore the connection between a national economy's current account balance and its government budget balance as well as the effect of domestic and international pressure on economic growth. China's performance in this area has been impressive while the U.S.'s appears ineffectual...will this situation continue?

The Commodity Trade and Trade Finance

Trade in commodities is the lifeblood of the international economy. A large fraction of this trade is now conducted by massive trading houses that perform numerous steps through the value chain. In a session featuring one of these supply-chain managers, Professor C. Fritz Foley will discuss how these intermediaries finance their activities, make decisions about which payment terms to offer to suppliers and customers, and manage risk.

Are Safe Investments Safe? The Precarious Role of Short-Term Debt in the Global Financial System

The risks in the financial system are sometimes where you least expect them. In this session, HBS Kenneth A. Froot will examine the relationship between risk, capital, securities, and financial markets during stress points and discuss the implications for corporations, investors, and policy makers.

Regulating Modern Finance

The financial crisis resulted in part from inadequate regulation of the modern financial system. Tracing how the system has evolved over the past three decades from a bank-based model to a market-based model, Professor David S. Scharfstein will lead a discussion of several ways regulators have attempted to keep pace with innovations in the financial system, including the Dodd-Frank act, Basel III, and housing finance reform.

Issues in Entrepreneurial Finance: Energy and Clean-tech Venture Capital Investing

Global need for lower-cost, lower-impact sources and uses of energy has never been more important. Many innovations believed promising have proved to be remarkably costly to develop, politically contentious, and of little impact when brought to market. In a session exploring the nature of venture capital investing in "energy and clean-tech", Professor Joseph B. Lassiter will discuss the progress that policymakers and venture investors are making—and not making—in bringing new alternatives to life.

Meet the Program Faculty

Like all Harvard Business School Executive Education programs, Breakthrough Insights is developed and taught by a core faculty of HBS professors. Our faculty are widely recognized for being skilled educators, groundbreaking researchers, and award-winning authors.

Through publishing, consulting, and teaching, they leverage their business expertise and field-based research to create new knowledge and enduring concepts that shape the practice of management. The result is a teaching team that exposes participants to multiple perspectives, challenging their thinking and encouraging new practices that result in superior business leadership.

For more detailed biographies, click on each faculty name.