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CEOs Don’t Care Enough About Capital Allocation

Harvard Business Review

It’s been more than 50 years since Nobel prizewinners Franco Modigliani and Merton Miller identified return on investments as a major component of value creation (and value destruction). Unless your company’s return on capital exceeds its cost of capital, no amount of revenue growth can create value.

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What an Economist Brings to a Business Strategy

Harvard Business Review

In the 1900s, French mathematician-economist Leon Walras envisioned prices in a market economy being set by an auctioneer (since known as the “Walrasian auctioneer”) conducting continuous auctions for all kinds of commodities. Economists and market design. Economics and logistics. But there are some very important exceptions.

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The Irish Banking Crisis: A Parable

Harvard Business Review

In slightly more formal terms, Id suggest that they were able to take on, at least in tiny part, five of Robert Merton and Zvi Bodies six standard functions of a financial system: settling payments, providing information, setting incentives, pooling resources, and transferring resources. But perhaps the costs have risen, too.

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Three Times You Have to Speak Up

Harvard Business Review

I was thinking about that story by Thomas Merton during a recent board meeting. Recent market updates, a technical deconstruction of various trends, then product frameworks — all in quick succession. Or perhaps we have wondered, as others have , if it's worth the cost of speaking up. Because silence does have a cost.

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