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Is Rooftop Solar Finally Good Enough to Disrupt the Grid?

Harvard Business Review

The costly and complex operations of transporting energy have made utilities natural monopolies, while regulatory barriers and the high fixed costs of building and maintaining regional electrical grid infrastructure have also kept much competition at bay. This story of disruption should feel familiar.

Energy 8
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Joint Ventures Reduce the Risk of Major Capital Investments

Harvard Business Review

For instance, the cost of building and equipping a leading-edge semiconductor fab has climbed to $7 billion, as the technology required to make more advanced chips is getting more complex. Driven by economies of scale, container ship size has been increasing for decades, with the largest ships now costing roughly $200 million.

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How Drucker Thought About Complexity

Harvard Business Review

Almost 80 years ago, Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize in Economics for an essay that suggested that we do this for the sake of scalable efficiency — it costs less to coordinate activity within a firm than across independent entities. The cost and difficulty of coordinating activities across entities, on a global scale, is far lower now.

Drucker 10
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How to Know If a Spin-Off Will Succeed

Harvard Business Review

The diverging fortunes of two recent spin-offs in the energy industry illustrate how financial markets value autonomy from the parent. For example, after its spin-off from International Paper, Arizona Chemical drastically changed its market approach from a drive for volume to margin optimization.

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Get a Better Return on Your Business Intelligence

Harvard Business Review

Further, sales variation can get widened much more when it comes to financial variation because of fixed costs. If there is only one thing a business intelligence initiative can focus on, we would say, put all that energy and focus on more dynamic, forward-looking course correction.

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You Bought It. Does That Make it Yours to Sell?

Harvard Business Review

for an energy bar at the airport, which would have cost about $2.00 My willingness to pay the higher price reflects both the convenience to me of getting the bar at the last minute, as well as the fact that the retailer's costs at the airport are likely higher. For example, I just paid $3.00 at my local grocery store.

Price 16
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You Bought It. Does That Make it Yours to Sell?

Harvard Business Review

for an energy bar at the airport, which would have cost about $2.00 My willingness to pay the higher price reflects both the convenience to me of getting the bar at the last minute, as well as the fact that the retailer's costs at the airport are likely higher. For example, I just paid $3.00 at my local grocery store.

Price 9