Remove Cost of Capital Remove Innovation Remove Leadership Remove Productivity
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The Case for Investing More in People

Harvard Business Review

Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything,” wrote Paul Krugman more than 20 years ago. Productivity in most developed economies has been anemic. During much of this time, it has been shareholders, not workers, who have reaped the benefits of higher productivity.

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When "Creative Destruction" Destroys More than It Creates

Harvard Business Review

My colleagues and I at Bain & Company have been tracking this for forty years, and we have never seen companies losing their leadership positions as quickly as they are today. real revenue and profit growth and earning their cost of capital has steadily declined. A similar pattern hold for airlines. And for telecom.

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The Real Reasons Companies Are So Focused on the Short Term

Harvard Business Review

Some argue that profits are stagnant because of short-termism—that decades of focusing on current profits over long-run innovativeness has resulted, now, in companies that are hollowed out. One trend that has contributed to short-termism and lower innovativeness is the increased prevalence of outside CEOs.

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Is Your Business Biased Against Innovation?

Strategy Driven

Many people do not typically think of metrics and accounting as roadblocks to innovation, yet you call these out as potential problem areas. The logic of NPV is to project cash flows into the future and then discount those flows back into today’s dollars at a given cost of capital. Net present value [NPV] is a case in point.