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How Marketers Can Avoid Big Data Blind Spots

Harvard Business Review

Overcoming “short-term-ism”. One major blind spot for marketers to be aware of is “short-term-ism” that most analytics engender. The reality is that the majority of marketing activities have both a short- and long-term impact on sales. One consumer food brand almost fell into this short-term trap.

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Why Some Digital Companies Should Delay Profitability for as Long as They Can

Harvard Business Review

How can you continuously defer short term profitability to grow your network effect? But as long as there is stickiness to be created, it’s a sensible strategy. Today, AWS is a much more valuable business for the company’s long-termism. The Refresher: Net Present Value. Risk losing short-term.

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Will You Be Writing Off Your Investment in Egypt?

Harvard Business Review

In both places, we know the instability will worsen macroeconomic performance in the short term. If that is the case, and the faster growth generates higher profits for them over the long term, that might well compensate for any short-term losses from the disruption. Tunisia and Egypt are cases in point.

NPV 13
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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 Refresher: Net Present Value. Next time you're deciding about a big investment, NPV can help you make a more informed decision. How can you boost your financial acumen?

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Stop Focusing on Profitability and Go for Growth

Harvard Business Review

Today, the average cost of equity capital sits at close to half that: just 8% for the roughly 1600 companies comprising the Value Line Index. So, in real terms, debt financing is essentially free. In these circumstances, strategies that generate faster growth create more value for most companies than those that improve profit margins.

ROE 14
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What If Investors Who Held Their Shares Longer Got More Voting Power?

Harvard Business Review

” Laying out their data, they find that long-term oriented companies create more financial value and more jobs. I agree with their vision of a future in which more companies focus on the long term and become more productive for the world (their findings accord with my own work on the dangers of short-termism ).

Hedge 9
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Is Your Business Biased Against Innovation?

Strategy Driven

Many conventional metrics we use to estimate value are based on faulty assumptions. Net present value [NPV] is a case in point. The logic of NPV is to project cash flows into the future and then discount those flows back into today’s dollars at a given cost of capital. But they do it very consciously.