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The Global Innovation 1000 (2011): Why Culture is Key

First Friday Book Synopsis

Bob's blog entries 3M Apple Booz & Company Buddy Media EBITDA Fscebook Google Harvard Business Review Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations The Global Innovation 1000 (2011): Why Culture is Key Tom Stewart Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century OrganizationTom Stewart is Booz & Company’s Chief Marketing & Knowledge Officer.

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Overcoming supply chain complexities for advantage

Lead Change Blog

Real-world insights into how to drive measurable cost, cash, and growth improvements across the end-to-end supply chain to enhance your EBITDA.

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How To Help Your Team Think Like an Entrepreneur

Let's Grow Leaders

Be sure your town hall meetings talk more than EBITDA, with a clear message of “What I need from ya.” How to Develop Entrepreneurial Thinking on Your Team.

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Preview Thursday: Total Value Optimization

Lead Change Blog

Bowen is the Chairman and CEO of Maine Pointe , a firm specializing in driving EBITDA and cash improvements across the areas of procurement, operations, and logistics to enable growth. The following excerpt is from the Introduction of Total Value Optimization: Transforming Your Global Supply Chain Into a Competitive Weapon by Steven J. Bowen. . Your supply chain is the backbone of your company.

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The Beliefs that Built a Global Brewer

Harvard Business Review

Now the largest beer company in the world, AB InBev reported a double digit EBITDA growth rate and almost 30% growth in earnings per share. But what's most interesting is their meteoric increase in profits: Between 2000 and 2010, earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) at the companies that now make up AB InBev rose at a compound annual rate of 38%. Anheuser's EBITDA in 2007, prior to its acquisition, was 23%. Strategy EBITDA

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Salary Negotiation Tips for Executives

N2Growth Blog

Look for linkages between EBITDA and your take-home pay. If you’re reading this article, you’re either curious or at the winning end of a long, competitive hiring process. Either way, congratulations! Below, I distill thoughts for people navigating executive compensation negotiations. I encourage you to read my notes on why compensation before jumping to how to negotiate. Why compensation?

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The ROLE of Emotional Intelligence in Effective Leadership Today

The Center For Leadership Studies

EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) still matters as does the P&L (profit and loss statement) and the deadline for 2021 projections (who can imagine?!) Zig Ziglar is known for saying, “You must manage yourself before you can lead someone else.”

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Close to 2,500 Carvana Employees Get Laid Off Over Zoom

HR Digest

Even on an EBITDA basis, the company continued to post losses. . Carvana employees were in for an unpleasant surprise last Tuesday. Over a Zoom call, the company announced that it will be reducing its workforce by no less than 12%.

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Close to 2,500 Carvana Employees Get Laid Off Over Zoom

HR Digest

Even on an EBITDA basis, the company continued to post losses. . Carvana employees were in for an unpleasant surprise last Tuesday. Over a Zoom call, the company announced that it will be reducing its workforce by no less than 12%.

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A Leadership Checklist: 10 Things To Do Right Now To Make It A.

Terry Starbucker

They believe that a base salary pays the bills, whereas variable compensation, including earnings before interest, taxes, dividends and amortization (EBITDA)-based bonuses, motivates employees to challenge themselves and increase their contribution to the ?rm

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The INs and OUTs of Business Literacy

HR Digest

Joe has also written toolkits for Harvard Business Press including the ROI Toolkit, Understanding EBITDA, and the Business Valuation Toolkit. Financial ignorance carries massive costs. Without an understanding of basic financial concepts, executives are not well-equipped to make decisions related to financial management. Study after study, as well as experts across the economical spectrum, agree that U.S.

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Communication Strategy in 13 Steps – Communicating Strategic Plan To Employees

CO2

For example if you discuss EBITDA (Earnings before interest tax and depreciation) don’t assume that all your employees will understand what you mean. What do you need to do to share your strategic plan? Creating a strategic plan is quite an undertaking for a business.

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How Mature is Your Risk Management?

Harvard Business Review

They clearly generate higher growth in revenue, EBITDA, and EBITDA/EV. Companies in the top 20% of risk maturity generated three times the level of EBITDA as those in the bottom 20%. For years, companies have been pouring money into people, processes, and technology that can help them manage risk. Most have done a great job of containing their financial reporting and compliance risks. They may have streamlined or automated their internal controls.

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How to Improve Your Finance Skills (Even If You Hate Numbers)

Harvard Business Review

But having a grasp of terms like EBITDA and net present value are important no matter where you sit on the org chart. The most important concepts to grasp are “how to measure profitability, EBITDA, operating income, revenue, and operating expenses,” he says. “Suddenly I needed to know things like EBITDA and how enterprise value was determined,” he says. If you’re not a numbers person, finance is daunting.

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Strategies for Succeeding in Today’s Brazil

Harvard Business Review

times their earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). By 2014, target price to EBITDA ratios had already fallen to 6.9 times EBITDA. In the early 2000s, Brazil became the darling of corporate investment. It boasted rapid economic growth, abundant natural resources, and a large (and increasingly wealthy) market of 200 million consumers.

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We Can’t Study Short-Termism Without the Right Metrics

Harvard Business Review

For example, the pervasive use of EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) to reflect a company’s performance assumes that the company can operate without having to pay for these costs (I, T, and DA). As Warren Buffett warns , companies that rely on EBITDA are likely spending every dime that comes in and leaving no resources to replace existing capacity to counter competitive threats.

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Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage

Strategy Driven

times EBITDA (compared to average multiples of 15 at the time). The Essential Advantage : How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy. by Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi. The conventional wisdom about strategy may be leading your company astray.

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Don't Anesthetize Your Colleagues with Bad Writing

Harvard Business Review

But if you also throw in acronyms such as ABC ("activity-based costing"), EBITDA ("earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization"), and VBM ("value-based management"), only the accountants in your audience will follow you — you'll lose everyone else. It seems obvious that you shouldn't put your audience to sleep, doesn't it?

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Category Creation Is the Ultimate Growth Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Corporate development groups may have to accept that EBITDA multiple valuations may not be appropriate when buying a category creator. This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. Laird Hamilton is my hero. He's not only one of the world's best big-wave surfers but he also created an entirely new category within the sport called tow-in surfing.

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Morning Advantage: A Supply Chain Solution to an Age-Old Problem

Harvard Business Review

Both the primary and secondary buyers added value in the same way — increasing EBITDA through operational improvements (an average of 14% in the first round, 13% the next) and growing revenue by increasing compound annual sales (both by 10%).

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How to Anticipate a Burning Platform

Harvard Business Review

EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) is the equivalent of corporate blood pressure. Barnes & Noble had weak blood pressure in 2009, but recently its EBITDA has shown signs of recovery, increasing more than 15% to $65 million in its most recent quarter. It's been nearly a year since Nokia CEO Stephen Elop shot off his burning platform memo as a way of shaking up the phone company's leadership.

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Divest With Care

Harvard Business Review

Pfizer divested its consumer health care business in 2006, selling it to J&J for more than 20x EBITDA. The ability to divest strategically is as important as the ability to acquire strategically. Consider the case of the health-services giant, which had quintupled its revenues in just 10 years largely through acquisitions. The company was masterful at the buy side of M&A.

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Scaling Is Hard. Here's How Akamai Did It.

Harvard Business Review

billion in revenue, over $1 billion in gross profit and $500 million in EBITDA. I have been thinking lately about how hard it is to scale start-ups. The Lean Start-Up movement, as exemplified in Eric Ries' book The Lean Start-Up , has appropriately focused a great deal of attention on the hard decisions and techniques required to create a company from nothing.

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Whole Foods Market Needs More than Price-Tinkering

Harvard Business Review

To be clear, Whole Foods’s financials are still healthy: in FY 2013, its revenue was $12.9B, EBITDA $1.2B, and earnings per share increased by 19%. Whole Foods has a bad taste in its mouth – it recently had to revise both its sales growth and earnings for the third time in six months. As a result, its stock dropped by 19% in one day. And yet investors are jittery over whether the company will be able to deliver the growth necessary to justify its still-hefty valuation.

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Publishing Is Not Dying

Harvard Business Review

Last year, News Corp’s newspaper division reported EBITDA of $795 million on $6.7 If marketers want to produce content, they need to think like publishers. After all, content isn’t an extension of marketing, it’s an extension of publishing. I am hardly the only one to make that case , but skeptics are still vocal in their disagreement. Aren’t publishers failing?” they say. How can I hold up a struggling industry as a model?

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Can We Quantify the Value of Connected Devices?

Harvard Business Review

And this addresses the commercial value creation question – P&G’s mindset was to create operational efficiencies that would contribute to healthy EBITDA margins. In the 1990s, Procter & Gamble’s Product Supply Organization kicked off a major Reliability Engineering program, much like the efficiency initiatives of companies such as Toyota.

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Entrepreneurs Need a Better Way to Cash Out

Harvard Business Review

But analysts are judging EBITDA, P/E ratios, quarterly growth, and cashflows – which don’t always correlate with long-term value creation. The most successful, visionary entrepreneurs dream not of millions of dollars, but of a world where their products change culture. But in technology startups, particularly venture-backed technology startups, the current investment climate does not always support that vision.

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Hiring Veterans Is Good Business. So Why Don't We Do It More Often?

Harvard Business Review

But consider this equally inscrutable language: The value is multiples of EBITDA, assuming the back-office cost synergy targets are achievable. Ten years after the start of the Iraq War, we're all familiar with the case for hiring veterans: they're mature, responsible, have significant managerial experience, and are used to chaotic, ambiguous environments. Many possess skills that are highly transferable. So why is the gap between veteran and nonveteran unemployment rates 9.4% and 7.9%

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The Secrets to TripAdvisor's Impressive Scale

Harvard Business Review

and EBITDA margins are 47%. The chart below shows their financial performance over the last few years, with forecasted 2012 revenue of $767M and EBITDA of $339M. market cap is 6x revenue and 13x EBITDA, so not insane multiples on a comparable basis. Scaling is hard. Really hard.

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How Do You Rank the World’s Best CEOs?

Harvard Business Review

On average, we have found that high-reputation companies have higher returns (both Return on Assets and Return on Equity), deliver higher earnings multiples , have higher market/book ratios , and have a higher Enterprise Value/EBITDA ratio – the key measures on which investors assess corporate performance. How do you measure a CEO’s impact?

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Every Fast-Growing Company Has to Combat Overload

Harvard Business Review

From 2008 through 2013, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) margins increased for 20 consecutive quarters, from 5% to 25%. It feels horrible: You’re scaling up aggressively and working harder than ever, but with each passing day you feel more overwhelmed. Your business is a success, but you feel like a failure.

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Don’t Turn Your Sales Team Loose Without a Strategy

Harvard Business Review

Business results were outstanding: EBITDA more than doubled in the first year and ROIC increased almost 300%, with fewer sales people. When formulating a strategy, markets and segments are important categories to consider. But a market never buys anything. Only customers buy. To borrow a telecom industry metaphor, a deal with a customer is the “last mile” in connecting any strategy with business development efforts and marketplace results.

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Improve Your Ability to Learn

Harvard Business Review

In a 2010 study with Cornell University, we showed that our assessment grades predict performance, as measured not only by revenue and EBITDA but also by boss ratings (often issued by the Board). On the surface, John looked like the perfect up-and-coming executive to lead BFC’s Asia expansion plans. He went to an Ivy League B-school. His track record was flawless. Every goal or objective the organization had ever put in front of him, he’d crushed without breaking a sweat.

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Which MBAs Make More: Consultants or Small-Business Owners?

Harvard Business Review

million EBITDA company for 4x paying $6 million and using 50% debt financing. HBR STAFF. Compensation is, of course, more than money. It includes other aspects such as: how much you enjoy your career, whether it provides fulfillment, how much flexibility you get and how much influence you have over what you do and when you do it.

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The $300 House: The Urban Challenge

Harvard Business Review

The economics work: Trading the $25 per square foot upfront cost (plus a cost for the land and the infrastructure) for the annuitization of the "margin" gained (in many cases this is an EBITDA of about 40%) from daily consumption (which may well be $300/year and per capita), is an easily fundable proposition, especially if it can be harnessed from a 40- to 100-year tenured residency.

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What to Do If a Conversation Is Turning Loud and Aggressive

Harvard Business Review

If even 10% of those executives leave in the first year of this transaction, we will fall far short of our EBITDA target.” HBR STAFF. “Come on, folks — act like investors. What questions do you have?” ” chided Mel, the CEO of a financial services firm, in a meeting with 50 of his fellow senior managers.

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Women, Finance the World You Want

Harvard Business Review

Financial services professionals may sidetrack us by slinging around financial terms like market cap, P/E, or EV/EBITDA, but investing is ultimately about achieving two goals at once — financing our personal dreams and making a down payment on the world we want. Women are gaining financial independence to an unprecedented degree — they now make up the majority of college graduates, are nearly half of the labor force and are becoming the primary earners in many households.

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Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

Within three years, ALL's Brazilian rail operations had increased revenues by 50% and tripled EBITDA. Successful companies shape their high-level strategies by relying not on complicated frameworks but on simple rules of thumb. Managers in these organizations translate corporate objectives into a few straightforward guidelines that help employees make on-the-spot decisions and adapt to constantly shifting environments, while keeping the big picture in mind.

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