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Match Your Innovation Process to the Results You Want

Harvard Business Review

Incremental innovations can be managed at the operating levels where the people know the customers/consumers best and decisions can be made in a more consensus-driven way with input and agreement between all stakeholder functions. It tends to be short-term, uses familiar (traditional) metrics and development systems like Stage Gate.

Process 15
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How CMOs Can Get CFOs on Their Side

Harvard Business Review

It doesn’t need to be complicated; in one company, a marketing department saved 20 percent after simply benchmarking the money they were spending on external agencies. CFOs are more interested in capital investment estimates, net present values, and a clear outline of the trade-offs of any investment.

CFO 8
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What Private Equity Investors Think They Do for the Companies They Buy

Harvard Business Review

” PE firms typically take three types of value increasing actions — financial engineering, governance engineering, and operational engineering. These value-increasing actions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but it is likely that certain firms emphasize some of the actions more than others. (We

CAPM 8
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Warren Buffett's 2010 Shareholder Letter: What to Expect

Harvard Business Review

But why compare apples (book value) to oranges (share price and dividends)? Buffett explains that book value is the best proxy for "intrinsic value," the net present value of all estimated future cash flows. Consider that since 1965, Berkshire's book value grew 434,057% and the S&P index grew only 5,430%.

Letter 14
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Will You Be Writing Off Your Investment in Egypt?

Harvard Business Review

Anyone who has had to make the argument for an investment knows the basic tool involved: a Net Present Value (NPV) calculation. The overall value of a foreign investment is equal to the NPV of the expected stream of profits for the life of the investment. Vinod K.

NPV 12