A SWOT analysis is a tool used to assess an organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The purpose of using the SWOT tool is to uncover or reveal the organization's competitive advantages, and what opportunities (sales, profitability) to capitalize upon. It's also used to articulate the challenges an organization has, enabling contingency plans. Products and Services (price, quality, Finances (stability, profitability, debt to equity ratio). MORE

You are thrilled to be in this new role and faced with new responsibilities outside of the functional job you once excelled in. The informal chit-chat quickly changes to talking about the health of the organization and financial reports start circulating. MORE

In fact, determining price is one of the toughest things a marketer has to do, in large part because it has such a big impact on the company’s bottom line. To better understand this concept and how it impacts marketing, I talked with Jill Avery, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and an author of HBR’s Go To Market Tools. Say that a clothing company raised the price of one of its coats from $100 to $120. MORE

That's not to say it's likely, but it is certainly possible and a threat that social investors of all stripes should be thinking about how to defuse. Although the situation in AP remains fluid, one thing hasn't changed over the last few months: repayment rates have fallen to about 10%. A large exposure to AP with its abysmal repayment rates is an existential crisis for MFIs in India. Losses in AP will overwhelm many institutions' equity cushion. MORE

To know whether a company is truly on the cusp of hitting a $0 balance in their accounts, you can’t simply look at the income statement. You need to run a simple calculation using a few figures. That’s where the current ratio comes in. I talked with Joe Knight, author of the HBR TOOLS: Return on Investment and co-founder and owner of www.business-literacy.com , to learn more about this financial term. What is the current ratio? Give it back to us.” MORE

Return-on-equity hurdles threaten them all. We think there's more to business success — and that something as straightforward as a simple equation could put capitalism on a better path. To an extent not widely recognized, it was an equation in the first place that gave ROE the power to dominate not just investment decisions, but an entire business culture. A hundred years ago, the focus on squeezing every drop of return out of equity capital made great sense. MORE

According to our research , the answer is “not necessarily.” These stereotypical notions, which cast men as having traits better suited to starting successful companies, don’t hold up when compared with venture performance data from annual reports. This percentage is remarkable because Swedish government venture capitalists must adhere to national and European equality regulations when granting financing to entrepreneurs. That shows some guts to grow.” MORE

When people hear “debt” they usually think of something to avoid — credit card bills and high interests rates, maybe even bankruptcy. But when you’re running a business, debt isn’t all bad. In fact, analysts and investors want companies to use debt smartly to fund their businesses. That’s where the debt-to-equity ratio comes in. What is the debt-to-equity ratio? MORE

There are basically four ways to create that value: (1) invest in projects that earn more than their cost of capital; (2) increase profits from existing capital investments; (3) reduce the assets devoted to activities that earn less than their cost of capital; and (4) reduce the cost of capital itself. In effect, the C-suite is saying to salespeople: “go forth and multiply!” Isn’t that a function of risk parameters and the debt-to-equity ratio? MORE

A SWOT analysis is a tool used to assess an organization''s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The purpose of using the SWOT tool is to uncover or reveal the organization''s competitive advantages, and what opportunities (sales, profitability) to capitalize upon. It''s also used to articulate the challenges an organization has, enabling contingency plans. Products and Services (price, quality, Finances (stability, profitability, debt to equity ratio). MORE

I S IT POSSIBLE to have your cake and eat it too? If there was a way to find your ideal job and build your dream business, would you consider both? Most people see this dichotomy and feel that they need to choose one dream over the other. Having worked with more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, hobbyists and side hustlers, they often struggle with when it is appropriate to leap from the job environment into the entrepreneurship maze. MORE