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Performance Measurement

Strategy Driven

Supplementing profits with ROIC and revenue growth is a step in the right direction to ensure that the profits a business earns are actually creating value, not simply over-consuming capital that another company could better deploy. However, profits, ROIC, and revenue growth are backward looking.

ROIC 62
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Even for Companies, the U.S. Is Split Between Haves and Have-Nots

Harvard Business Review

companies’ return on invested capital (ROIC), and compare it with economy-wide ROIC estimates constructed by Deloitte. Economywide ROIC has trended downward since the 1980s, falling from above 6% in the mid-1960s to 5% in 1980, then to 3% in 1990, and to only a bit more than 1% by 2010. An increasing number of U.S.

ROIC 8
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CEOs Don’t Care Enough About Capital Allocation

Harvard Business Review

The results can be impressive: if your firm’s return on invested capital is 8% and you have an 8% cost of capital, a 1% improvement in ROIC will increase firm value by 19%. There are just two ways to increase ROIC: improve operating profit (by increasing revenues or cutting costs) or invest capital more wisely.

CEO 8
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Death Knell for the Category Killers?

Harvard Business Review

During the current recession, overall consumer spending has declined or held flat, sales per square foot have not improved significantly, and retailers' return on invested capital (ROIC) has suffered dramatically. The most obvious victims of this shift so far are music, video, and book sellers.

ROIC 12
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Untangling Skill and Luck

Harvard Business Review

Take, for instance, a group of companies that currently have high returns on invested capital (ROIC). If you follow that group over time, you would see their ROICs revert back toward the cost of capital. This means that an extreme outcome, good or bad, will be followed by an outcome that has an expected value closer to the mean.

Skills 16
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I'm Afraid Bankers Really Do Earn Their Bonuses

Harvard Business Review

Like Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), which reflects what a company earns, how much capital it needs to earn it and the ratio between the two, ROIT reveals what the company earns, how much it has to spend on its talent to earn it, and what the ratio is between the two.

ROIC 9
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How Companies Can Use Investors to Their Advantage

Harvard Business Review

It would implement targets linked to shareholder value, including ROE and ROIC. Simultaneously, Nikon would shift to portfolio-based management, redefining the role of each business in its portfolio to optimize resource allocation.

Company 10