article thumbnail

How Banks Can Compete Against an Army of Fintech Startups

Harvard Business Review

It’s been more than 25 years since Bill Gates dismissed retail banks as “dinosaurs,” but the statement may be as true today as it was then. Banking for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) has been astonishingly unaffected by the rise of the Internet.

Banking 12
article thumbnail

The Rise of FinTech in Supply Chains

Harvard Business Review

(The use of FinTechs allows suppliers to access funding at the multinationals firm’s lower cost of capital.). They include new enterprises such as Orbian , Prime Revenue , C2FO , Taulia , and Ariba as well as new operations launched by traditional financial service firms such as Citi Group, HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Deutsche Bank.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Shutting Down Stores Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for Business

Harvard Business Review

Managing death more effectively can provide numerous benefits: It can boost profits significantly, lower the cost of capital, and reduce complexity in operations, which can improve the performance of concepts that are in the early and midlife stages. Deciding when to close a store.

Retail 8
article thumbnail

What’s Driving Superstar Companies, Industries, and Cities

Harvard Business Review

To analyze the superstar dynamics of firms, our metric was economic profit, a measure of a firm’s profit above and beyond opportunity cost. (To To do this, we take the firm’s returns, deduct the cost of capital, and multiply by the firm’s total invested capital.) and Chinese tech firms.

article thumbnail

Should Companies Retain "Strategic" Cash?

Harvard Business Review

To enhance financial flexibility, companies have been retaining unprecedented amounts of cash on their balance sheets, calling it "strategic" cash to distinguish it from the "operating" cash that is needed to run the business. How Should You Approach Strategic Cash?

Company 13
article thumbnail

Why Data Breaches Don’t Hurt Stock Prices

Harvard Business Review

While consumers are rightfully worried that their personal information may be compromised, shareholders and companies’ management have a wider set of concerns, including loss of intellectual property, operational disruption, decreased customer trust, tarnished brand, and loss of investor commitment. The stock price declined 0.3%

Price 8
article thumbnail

The Case for Investing More in People

Harvard Business Review

In The Good Jobs Strategy , Zeynep Ton, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, demonstrates how the best retail companies align their customer value proposition with their operations strategy and their approach to human capital. This includes more autonomy and agility as well as inspirational leadership.