Management Lessons from the Sinking of the SS El Faro

Management Lessons from the Sinking of the SS...

Up next

Best of Cold Call: The Bumpy Road to Expanding a Fleet of Electric School Buses

How do you scale innovation in a fragmented system you don’t fully control? That is the challenge Highland Electric Fleets faced as it worked to replace diesel school buses with electric vehicles across the United States. In this episode from 2025, Harvard Business School profess ...  Show more

Can an AI-Powered Scribe Curb Physician Burnout?

In 2024, Mass General Brigham, the largest health system in Massachusetts, piloted an AI-powered, ambient note-taking and transcription program among a subset of clinicians to address increasing rates of staff burnout and turnover -- largely driven by the administrative burden of ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

How to Communicate in a Crisis — and How Not To
HBR On Leadership

When the SS El Faro tragically sank on October 1, 2015, it was the deadliest American shipping disaster in decades. But who was to blame for the tragedy and what can we learn from it? Harvard Business School professor Joe Fuller discusses the culpability of the captain, as well a ...  Show more

Rescues at sea, and how to make a fortune
Planet Money

At around 1 a.m. on the morning of November 15, 1994, Captain Prentice "Skip" Strong III woke to a distress call. Skip was the new captain of an oil tanker called the Cherry Valley. He and his crew had been making their way up the coast of Florida that evening when a tropical sto ...  Show more

Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

In 1923, legendary navigator Captain Dolly Hunter led a squadron of warships into America’s worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The mission was supposed to be a speed trial, a display of the squadron’s skill. But it ended in a maritime pile-up, with some destroyers stranded on roc ...  Show more

Fire at Sea: Cruise Ship Rescue | Dead in the Water | 2
Against The Odds

As crew members aboard Prinsendam work to contain the fire, passengers shiver on the decks in the cold night air. The mood is mostly festive; everyone expects that the fire will be extinguished soon. But when the blaze spreads to the dining room, the ship’s captain realizes he ha ...  Show more