article thumbnail

Does Your Startup Have a Spending Strategy?

Harvard Business Review

So not only were the current fees too weak to support his fixed costs, but future clients were turned off by his apparently excessive tastes. To address those cost overruns, Colin subleased some space, cancelled a redundant and very expensive trading service, and let one person go. What is your business’ core competence?

article thumbnail

Telecom's Competitive Solution: Outsourcing?

Harvard Business Review

The company's core competency is branding and identifying customer pain points. Bharti's innovative business model converted fixed costs in capital expenditure to a variable cost based on usage of capacity. Bharti is the largest telecommunications services provider in India. In the U.S.,