Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 13, 2017

Think about how company income statements usually work: You start with revenue, subtract cost of goods sold (COGS) to get gross profit , subtract operating expenses to get operating profit , and then subtract taxes, interest, and everything else to get net profit. In fact, COGS includes both variable and fixed costs.

Fixed Costs 14

Fixed Costs How To Cost Price 14

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Capital-intensive factories have a high-fixed-cost, low-variable-cost operating model. If you greatly reduce the production volume, the cars that do come out have to absorb more of the fixed costs, and that eventually sends the product into a profitability death spiral. That is what GM is trying to do.

Restructuring 11

Restructuring Fixed Costs Consensus Operations 11

CO2

JANUARY 2, 2011

(It is useful to to distinguish between two broad classes of business models Cost Structures: cost cost-driven and value-driven from the following categories Cost-driven, Value-driven. His book Just Ask Leadership - Why Great Managers Always Ask The Right Questions (McGraw Hill 2009).

Business Model 141

Business Model Executive Coaching Execution Blog 141

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 15, 2018

hospitals and health systems experienced an average 39% reduction in their operating margins from 2015 to 2017. This was because their expenses grew faster than their revenues, despite cost-cutting initiatives. Here are some examples of what will be required to change the operating culture: Contract rationalization. As the U.S.

Cost 10

Cost System Management Franchising 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2011

This is the essence of Groupon's declaration last week that it will remove the controversial accounting metric called Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income (ACSOI) from its financial statements. ACSOI essentially measures Groupon's profits before subtracting its subscriber-acquisition costs and stock option-based compensation.

Christensen 19

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Venture Funding 19

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 6, 2016

Driven by economies of scale, container ship size has been increasing for decades, with the largest ships now costing roughly $200 million. The latest nuclear reactor designs, promising higher safety, longer operating life, and lower operating costs, cost up to $25 billion after factoring in the huge budget overruns.

Co-Opetition 8

Co-Opetition Operations Cost Technology 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

For example, a decade ago, it''s unlikely that small-business owners would have told you that they needed a flexible way to host data and applications, one that preferably turned the fixed cost of computer hardware into a variable cost of renting capacity. When the company rides an enabling trend.

Industry 8

Industry Fixed Costs Trends Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 5, 2017

While a laudable effort in principle, measuring a company’s tendency to make myopic operating and investing decisions is fiendishly complex. But the other indicators probably pick up legitimate differences in how companies in the sample operate, as opposed to whether they are myopic.

EPS 8

EPS Metrics Depreciation Short-term 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

MAY 13, 2016

It doesn’t have one center of organization and imagination looking out at the far horizon to inspire and guide all of the component parts to get to a place together that none operating independently could ever get to on its own. Imagine eliminating all of the redundancies in fixed costs.

Budgeting 8

Budgeting NGO Diversity Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2014

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s “platform” reference has elicited many comparisons of Oculus to Google’s purchase of Android , the company that would provide Google with its own smartphone operating system. While Virtual Reality may one day be pervasive, the disruption of VR is nothing like disruption of mobility.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Automotive Software Fixed Costs 8

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

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. billion in 2013, and operating profits increased 65% to $422 million. billion to $8.6

Retail 11

Retail Merchandising Discount Price 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 21, 2015

The costly and complex operations of transporting energy have made utilities natural monopolies, while regulatory barriers and the high fixed costs of building and maintaining regional electrical grid infrastructure have also kept much competition at bay. This story of disruption should feel familiar.

Energy 8

Energy Transportation Software Price 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 1, 2017

So not only were the current fees too weak to support his fixed costs, but future clients were turned off by his apparently excessive tastes. To address those cost overruns, Colin subleased some space, cancelled a redundant and very expensive trading service, and let one person go.

Strategy 9

Strategy Budgeting Cost Price 9

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

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. 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 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

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

JUNE 25, 2013

The need to decentralize organizations around employees — viewing them as assets capable of expanding growth rather than as fixed costs to be eliminated — and to move away from standardized and tightly-specified process flows.

Drucker 9

Drucker Disruptive Innovation Uncertainty Globalization 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 11, 2016

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

DECEMBER 25, 2013

Just like the pilot makes a calm assessment and operates the right levers, leaders need to create a climate and culture where people can make a calm assessment and fine-tune the right set of drivers. Further, sales variation can get widened much more when it comes to financial variation because of fixed costs.

Business Intelligence 8

Business Intelligence Information Technology Uncertainty Fixed Costs 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

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. What if we want to make an investment and increase the fixed costs?

Analysis 15

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

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. What if we want to make an investment and increase the fixed costs?

Analysis 8

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 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

The Horizons Tracker

MARCH 23, 2023

” The Matthew Effect Indeed, far from technology being found to disrupt incumbent operators, the data suggests that investments in digital technology are largely ensuring that dominant incumbents can entrench their strong market position and fight off any upstarts. These datasets cover all of the businesses operating in the economy.

Creativity 115

Creativity Innovation Trends Information Technology 115

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Wall Street began charging a “conglomerate discount,” saying that diverse operations were hard to analyze with confidence. True synergies across the diverse operations were often hard to see. Before, a big conglomerate like GE diversified its risks by mixing pro-cyclical and counter-cyclical businesses.

Engineering 8

Engineering Learning Curve Fixed Costs Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

Bharti's innovative business model converted fixed costs in capital expenditure to a variable cost based on usage of capacity. Through the outsourcing arrangements, Bharti dramatically lowered its costs while ensuring high quality for customers, since vendors had world-class competencies in their domains.

Outsourcing 10

Outsourcing Wireless Telecommunications Core Competence 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for companies operating in the same space to continually compete. operate in an extremely competitive (borderline oligopolistic) industry. However, free cash flow per share remained impressive at both companies, and fixed cost ratios remained somewhat intact. Example: MineMe Inc.

How To 8

How To Due Diligence Strategy Proposal 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

As each of these companies expands its fixed-cost infrastructure, profits grow geometrically because the additional variable cost of adding each new user is near zero. Adding a profile on Facebook has little to no impact on Facebook's operating costs. Greater scale bestows greater competitive advantage.

CPA 15

CPA CPM Advertising Disintermediation 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

These businesses have powerful disruptive potential because they can provide consulting at a fraction of the cost of traditional models, largely because they do not need to carry expensive fixed costs like recruiting, training, consultant “beach” time, and expensive real estate.

McCallum 9

McCallum Consultative Disruptive Innovation Real Estate 9

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 31, 2018

By cutting the fixed costs of computing — avoiding the need to hire IT staff, servers, and hardware — even the smallest firm can satisfy large and unexpected computing needs. This operational agility can be particularly valuable when facing uncertain demand or a fast-evolving competitive environment.

Technology 10

Technology Agility Fixed Costs Software 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2013

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 Innovation Marketing'

Advertising 10

Advertising Brand Innovation Creativity 10

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 22, 2013

Congestion, rather than raw usage, is the key driver of this phenomenon; given that the Internet Service Provider network is largely a fixed-cost asset. Like any fixed-cost asset, such as the Interstate highway system in the U.S., it is cheap to operate and expensive to upgrade.

Fixed Costs 15

Fixed Costs Technology Efficiency Innovation 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 22, 2013

Congestion, rather than raw usage, is the key driver of this phenomenon; given that the Internet Service Provider network is largely a fixed-cost asset. Like any fixed-cost asset, such as the Interstate highway system in the U.S., it is cheap to operate and expensive to upgrade.

Fixed Costs 8

Fixed Costs Technology Efficiency Innovation 8

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. An advertising-based model.

Media 11

Media Advertising Fixed Costs Content 11