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How Mature is Your Risk Management?

Harvard Business Review

For years, companies have been pouring money into people, processes, and technology that can help them manage risk. But what about the more strategic risk areas, such as those related to emerging market entry or acquisition growth strategies? They clearly generate higher growth in revenue, EBITDA, and EBITDA/EV.

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Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage

Strategy Driven

In The Essential Advantage : How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy , Booz & Company’s Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with a coherence premium – a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique. Let’s go after it.”

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We Can’t Study Short-Termism Without the Right Metrics

Harvard Business Review

What if concentrated market power of a few companies in an industry has made these companies more profitable than usual? For instance, Home Depot, despite a painful housing market–led recession, retained most of its hourly workers and their benefits in 2008–2009. Are all share repurchases myopic?

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Entrepreneurs Need a Better Way to Cash Out

Harvard Business Review

But in technology startups, particularly venture-backed technology startups, the current investment climate does not always support that vision. But analysts are judging EBITDA, P/E ratios, quarterly growth, and cashflows – which don’t always correlate with long-term value creation.

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How to Anticipate a Burning Platform

Harvard Business Review

Nokia is still struggling to find a future beyond going head to head with the Android and iPhone platforms in the fiercely competitive smart phone market. The result: the Nook debuted in 2009 and leapfrogged the Kindle in key features, capturing nearly a third of the e-reader market and probably saving the company's life.

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Publishing Is Not Dying

Harvard Business Review

If marketers want to produce content, they need to think like publishers. After all, content isn’t an extension of marketing, it’s an extension of publishing. were more profitable in the pre-digital age because of the fragmented broadcasting market, but they do make money today. Aren’t publishers failing?” Aren’t they?

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Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

Employees frequently attribute breakdowns to incompetence or bad faith on the part of colleagues in other departments: "Those bozos in headquarters [or finance or marketing] screw everything up." Within three years, ALL's Brazilian rail operations had increased revenues by 50% and tripled EBITDA.