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CEOs Don’t Care Enough About Capital Allocation

Harvard Business Review

Unless your company’s return on capital exceeds its cost of capital, no amount of revenue growth can create value. For the many firms whose cost of capital and return on capital are roughly equal, in fact, the only path to value creation is to increase return on capital.

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Get the Strategy You Need — Now

Harvard Business Review

Though both statements may sound extreme, they are the clear implication of new McKinsey research on how companies create value and allocate resources. A second new McKinsey study delves into the question of what executives are doing about their strategic shortfall, and concludes that most are not doing enough. Execute decisively.

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What’s Driving Superstar Companies, Industries, and Cities

Harvard Business Review

In our recent research at the McKinsey Global Institute, we examined the superstar phenomenon across firms, as well as sectors and cities. 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 Wider dynamics may be at play.

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4 Ways Leaders Can Get More from Their Company’s Innovation Efforts

Harvard Business Review

A recent McKinsey report found that while 84% of corporate executives think innovation is key to achieving growth objectives, only 6% are satisfied with the innovation performance of their firm. For any business to succeed over the long term, it must earn a return that exceeds its cost of capital. That’s quite a mismatch.

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The Comprehensive Business Case for Sustainability

Harvard Business Review

These require sophisticated, sustainability-based management. Yet executives are often reluctant to place sustainability core to their company’s business strategy in the mistaken belief that the costs outweigh the benefits. ” Improving risk management. billion in mining projects since 2010. Fostering innovation.

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Finally, Proof That Managing for the Long Term Pays Off

Harvard Business Review

Companies deliver superior results when executives manage for long-term value creation and resist pressure from analysts and investors to focus excessively on meeting Wall Street’s quarterly earnings expectations. It started with developing a proprietary Corporate Horizon Index. This has long seemed intuitively true to us.