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

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

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. Corporate culture.

EPS 8

EPS Metrics Depreciation Short-term 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

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

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. The venture client approach also gives them real-world feedback on their products and services.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 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

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

Drucker didn''t quite frame it in these terms, but perhaps we need to expand our focus on innovation beyond the narrow frame of technology and product innovation. If we are to successfully adapt to the escalating complexity of our environment, we need to invest more time and energy in exploring institutional innovation.

Drucker 9

Drucker Disruptive Innovation Uncertainty Globalization 9

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

In 1980, the national expenditure on health care in the United States was just over 9% of Gross Domestic Product. Working under a fixed-cost ceiling was, of course, difficult. Today it accounts for nearly twice that — close to 18%. This increase has come at a high price, hitting home most obviously in workers’ pay.

Health Care 8

Health Care Constraint Budgeting Quality 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

Having the right price for a product or service can boost profit much faster than increasing volume. 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. Pricing matters.

Analysis 15

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

Having the right price for a product or service can boost profit much faster than increasing volume. 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. Pricing matters.

Analysis 8

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

The discipline they brought to these often loosely-run businesses drove much of the post-war productivity boom. 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.

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.” At its root, health care is a service that needs to be delivered to a customer.

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 103

Creativity Innovation Trends Information Technology 103

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for companies operating in the same space to continually compete. Activists look to see if opponents could be combined to form a more productive single entity, one that can capitalize on economies of scale and monopolize a given sector. The Investor Who Combines Closely Tied Competitors.

How To 8

How To Due Diligence Strategy Proposal 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2013

Taking the campaign further, V&S has turned Smartwool''s fans into field-testers who not only star in the advertising but also help the brand in its product innovation process. Typically, outdoor companies use professional athletes as field testers to help them not only test their products but also help innovate.

Advertising 9

Advertising Brand Innovation Creativity 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. Flexible access to computing resources allows small firms to scale-up (or down) rapidly and to experiment with new products and features.

Technology 10

Technology Agility Fixed Costs Software 10

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

JANUARY 5, 2017

Political campaigns are marketing campaigns, messages aimed at selling a product. The implications are threefold: The best product doesn’t always win. Even if you have the best product or candidate, if you run a hub-and-spokes campaign, you’ll attract followers one by one. Yet by 2004 its market share was down to 3%.

Media 11

Media Advertising Fixed Costs Content 11