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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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How Passion Can Revolutionize Digital Technology, AND Change The.

Terry Starbucker

And change it did, because the new CEO had a vision that went beyond product, and costs, and overhead, and costs of capital. That’s about as far away from product as anyone could get. It was about passion. And about people who have it. Which brings us back to passion. Cosell note his passing.

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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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What Shareholder Value is Really About

Harvard Business Review

A CEO's job is about resource allocation with a goal of earning a return in excess of the opportunity cost of capital. The challenge is figuring out how to allocate human and financial capital to its best and highest use for the long term. This requires difficult trade-offs.

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The Real Reasons Companies Are So Focused on the Short Term

Harvard Business Review

Investors punish companies with a short-term orientation by applying higher discount rates to them, which increases the cost of capital for those companies. In contrast, companies with a long-term orientation are rewarded with a lower cost of capital, which allows them to afford more innovation—a virtuous cycle.

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Is Your Business Biased Against Innovation?

Strategy Driven

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. You will learn how to identify and prioritize your company’s full portfolio of opportunities – from new product lines to entirely new businesses. Take a doctor’s office.