Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 21, 2011

Adding legitimacy to this skepticism are new technologies that enable automation of routine transactions, offshoring and shared service organizations that specialize in managing many tactical elements of HR. Within the first year of our effort net sales increased 27 percent while fixed costs were reduced by 40 percent.

Offshoring 14

Offshoring Fixed Costs Outsourcing Construction 14

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2011

Most companies focus on minimizing costs rather than maximizing flexibility, which would entail making large investments in supply chains. For instance, many companies feel they don't need to develop alternatives to Japanese suppliers because they buy so little from them nowadays. One way of doing that is to outsource production.

Supply Chain 15

Supply Chain Fixed Costs Price Crisis 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 27, 2016

A full-time job provided the steady income needed to support our traditional version of the American Dream: the highly leveraged, high-fixed-cost house; the cars; the latest consumer goods. If you had a full-time job, you won. These skilled and entrepreneurial workers win in the gig economy by moving from good jobs to great work.

Disaggregation 8

Disaggregation Insurance Retail Fixed Costs 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. And the fixed cost from “touchpoint-to-pilot” are immense. In essence, the venture client, instead of equity, buys the technology of a startup when it is still a venture to do so.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Many hospitals system executives underestimate the cost of both pursuing an acquisition and managing the post-merger integration.). The advantages that hospital systems can derive from scale fall into four groups: Classic economies of scale focus on lowering the cost per unit of care delivered (e.g., Affiliation models.

Health Care 8

Health Care System Cost Price 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. As the technology develops, GE could revamp this and other plants into general printer farms supplying all of its manufacturing divisions. But there’s little attention to synergies.

Engineering 8

Engineering Learning Curve Fixed Costs Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

To the extent that the technology Amazon developed for Amazon Go can be turned to services beyond grocery shopping, health care may be one of the early beneficiaries. If so, Amazon could find itself as an outsourced supplier of IT services to the delivery systems that are currently trying to do this integration on their own.

Health Care 9

Health Care Retail Operations Insurance 9