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Will You Be Writing Off Your Investment in Egypt?

Harvard Business Review

Foreign subsidiaries can expect local sales to fall and distribution channels to come to a halt, with depressing consequences for the bottom line. Anyone who has had to make the argument for an investment knows the basic tool involved: a Net Present Value (NPV) calculation.

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Case Study: Should a Hotelier Invest in a New Kind of Online Travel Agency?

Harvard Business Review

Lotta, who’d joined Ervaring from Marriott two years before, was the first to admit that her new company, with 12 brands operating 5,000 hotels, mainly in Europe, needed help. Although this wasn’t out of the ordinary for European hoteliers, Ervaring needed to reduce its cost per booking to improve its bottom line.

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How to Improve Your Finance Skills (Even If You Hate Numbers)

Harvard Business Review

The most important concepts to grasp are “how to measure profitability, EBITDA, operating income, revenue, and operating expenses,” he says. Next time you're deciding about a big investment, NPV can help you make a more informed decision. What if costs go down or up? Related Video. ” scenarios.

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Stop Focusing on Profitability and Go for Growth

Harvard Business Review

Next time you're deciding about a big investment, NPV can help you make a more informed decision. But many companies struggle to come up with enough promising growth options. Some focus their best people on finding ways to squeeze out more profitability from existing operations, rather than creating new businesses.

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Reflecting on David Garvin’s Imprint on Management

Harvard Business Review

David Garvin, who died earlier this month, was by all accounts one of the great Harvard Business School teachers, lighting up the classroom and the minds of his students over the past 38 years. One of the many articles circling back to this topic of late revisited the still-common use of NPV hurdles in investment decisions.)