Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Historically, larger scale has offered hospital systems a number of advantages, including increased referral volumes, better access to capital, stronger pricing power, and classic cost economies. For instance, larger scale has enabled many hospital systems to lower their per-patient operating costs significantly.

Health Care 8

Health Care System Cost Price 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

Google and Intel rely on experts in social science and biomechanics to develop transformative products by better understanding how people think about and use technology. Too often, purchasing departments manage the selection while operating managers—not involved in selection by fiat—are expected to make the relationship work.

Agility 8

Agility Organization Resources Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

The essence of the phenomenon is the fact that each stage in the supply chain plans its capital projects and operations, including inventory levels, based on its future expectations. Macroeconomic data during the 2008 financial crisis show the bullwhip effect operating on a much broader scale. For example , U.S.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Retail Crisis Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

To fill the void and build such a new BMW startup unit, Gimmy partnered with an experienced innovation manager from BMW, Matthias Meyer. Third, corporate VCs and accelerators are costly and complex to operate, turning them into a slow and expensive innovation tool. And the fixed cost from “touchpoint-to-pilot” are immense.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 1, 2017

These spending choices require tradeoffs, so entrepreneurs must first develop a strategy for allocating limited resources across a wide range of available options. After managing a sleeve of a successful hedge fund in London for five years, and building ample savings, Colin was ready for his own shop. The first is Colin.

Strategy 8

Strategy Budgeting Cost Price 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

The first category is exogenous factors over which the business has little control: the growth of the markets into which it sells; the competitive intensity and thus the average profitability of the industry in which it operates; or the fragmentation of its industry and thus the scope for a growth-by-acquisition approach.

Chemicals 8

Chemicals How To Kahneman Reputation 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 6, 2014

If round after round of profit warnings was not enough – group operating profits fell 20% between 2011 and 2013 and are likely to fall another 30% in 2014 — the company recently announced it had overstated its first-half profit by about $400 million. UK retail, like the rest of the developed world, is witnessing a few big long-term trends.

Retail 11

Retail Merchandising Discount Price 11

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2013

A fascinating business dynamic will unfold as health care providers in the United States shift from a reimbursement system that has historically paid for procedures performed to one that rewards population health — providing the total care of a community at a fixed cost and improving its members overall health.

Health Care 8

Health Care Committee Cost Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Working under a fixed-cost ceiling was, of course, difficult. The constraints we operated within also required creativity, the formation of new partnerships, and an open-minded, outward-facing search for the best, most innovative models of care.

Health Care 8

Health Care Constraint Budgeting Quality 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

Managers typically use breakeven analysis to set a price to understand the economic impact of various price- and sales-volume scenario. It’s a simple calculation to determine how many units must be sold at a given price to cover one’s fixed costs. Assume she must incur a fixed cost of $25,500 to produce and sell a kite.

Analysis 15

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

Managers typically use breakeven analysis to set a price to understand the economic impact of various price- and sales-volume scenario. It’s a simple calculation to determine how many units must be sold at a given price to cover one’s fixed costs. Assume she must incur a fixed cost of $25,500 to produce and sell a kite.

Analysis 8

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Hailed in the 1960s as bastions of sophisticated management, they used cheap financing to acquire, then rationalize, many family-owned firms. Wall Street began charging a “conglomerate discount,” saying that diverse operations were hard to analyze with confidence. But there’s little attention to synergies.

Engineering 8

Engineering Learning Curve Fixed Costs Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

For existing health care companies, the operative words in that mandate have been “health care”; for Amazon, the operative words likely are “service that needs to be delivered to a customer.” The absence of fixed costs for customers attracted small and innovative web developers.

Health Care 10

Health Care Retail Operations Insurance 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2013

Harley helped V&S launch Fan Machine by enlisting its fans to develop a new campaign. In every part of the industry, the open innovation model is changing the economics of advertising by switching significant fixed costs to variable costs and sourcing creative from more relevant and, many times, lower cost sources.

Advertising 9

Advertising Brand Innovation Creativity 9

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2017

Like marketers, politicians obsess over messaging (what journalists would call “content”) and a few key metrics that historically have determined success: amount of television advertising, number of “foot soldiers,” intensity of get-out-the-vote operations, and voter demographics. Two developments bear noting.

Media 11

Media Advertising Fixed Costs Content 11