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HP's Decade-Long Departure

Harvard Business Review

HP's sudden departure from a business model that has sustained the company since inception is symptomatic of the passing of an era. Companies like HTC, Apple and RIM were embryonic in their device businesses vs. Goliaths like Microsoft, HP and Dell. In 2010 the game was over. But all their efforts were half-hearted.

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The Beliefs that Built a Global Brewer

Harvard Business Review

In 2004, the European beer company Interbrew, itself a product of several mergers, acquired a majority stake in AmBev, creating InBev. By 2010, the EBITDA of the combined company AB InBev had risen to 38%. Telles and his team built the brand, took over the number one slot, and in 1999 combined with their chief competitor to form AmBev.

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Is Your Next Great CEO a Management Consultant?

Harvard Business Review

While former management consultants are not frequently chosen as CEOs — our research noted 28 former management consultants with five-plus years of consulting experience out of a total of 541 CEO transitions between 2004 and 2010 — the evidence we’ve uncovered here would suggest that, as a class, they are fully worthy of consideration.

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The Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability

Harvard Business Review

Traditional business models aim to create value for shareholders, often at the expense of other stakeholders. Sustainable businesses are redefining the corporate ecosystem by designing models that create value for all stakeholders, including employees, shareholders, supply chains, civil society, and the planet.

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An Insider’s Account of the Yahoo-Alibaba Deal

Harvard Business Review

With the ad market under $70 million, many of our local competitors were rapidly experimenting with new types of revenue and business models and were far ahead of us. The idea was simple: Combine the best of both companies into the new Yahoo China, which was projected to generate more than $25 million in revenue in 2004.

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How to Pull Your Company Out of a Tailspin

Harvard Business Review

Free fall is a crisis of obsolescence and decline that can happen at any point in a company’s life cycle, but most often it affects maturing incumbents whose business model has come under competitive attack from insurgents or is no longer viable in a changing market. Since then its stock has more than doubled. billion in revenue.

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Research Shows That Smaller M&A Deals Work Out Better

Harvard Business Review

This is one of the findings from a recently completed study based on publicly available information on the world’s 2,393 largest corporations for the time period 2010–2014. In 2004 PCC was in a poor position. But these transactions need to reach particular thresholds of frequency and cumulative value to make a real impact.

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