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Untangling Skill and Luck

Harvard Business Review

The outcomes for many activities in life — including sports, business, and investing — combine skill and luck. When we enjoy a good outcome due to luck, we are naturally inclined to chalk up our success to skill. Similarly, if we suffer an adverse outcome because of poor skill, we blame our bad luck.

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CEOs Don’t Care Enough About Capital Allocation

Harvard Business Review

” A quarter century later, not much seems to have changed: fewer than five out of the 100 CEOs on HBR’s 2014 list of best-performing CEOs even mention “return on capital” on their official biography — and none of those five lead companies listed in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) or in the EuroStoxx50.

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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. They may have effectively run a large division or devised a winning marketing strategy.