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Why We Need to Update Financial Reporting for the Digital Era

Harvard Business Review

The market caps of just four companies, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft, now exceed $3 trillion. Their combined assets of $944 billion are an order of magnitude lower than the combined assets of $7,700 billion of the largest 3,177 companies in 1986, when the aggregate market capitalization reached $3 trillion for the first time.

Report 8
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A Blueprint for Digital Companies’ Financial Reporting

Harvard Business Review

On June 25, 2018, Facebook lost market capitalization of more than $100 billion in just two hours of trading after it announced its quarterly performance, despite exceeding analysts’ earnings forecasts. This example illustrates that investors consider information beyond just earnings as value-relevant. What caused this slump?

Report 8
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Don’t Let Your Company Get Trapped by Success

Harvard Business Review

This can be quantified by analyzing the extent to which the share prices of S&P 500 firms are driven by a firm’s present value of future growth options (PVGO) rather than cash flow from current operations. Eventually the company is likely to be out of touch with changing market requirements.

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Why Is an App Worth as Much as a Small Oil Field?

Harvard Business Review

While on the surface, the dirty business of fossil fuels is nothing like Silicon Valley, many in the oil business have moved beyond the standard net present value (NPV) model for assessing the merit of investments. Consider the rapid progress Facebook has made on mobile, not only domestically, but in emerging markets.

NPV 8
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Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

Employees frequently attribute breakdowns to incompetence or bad faith on the part of colleagues in other departments: "Those bozos in headquarters [or finance or marketing] screw everything up." Within three years, ALL's Brazilian rail operations had increased revenues by 50% and tripled EBITDA.

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How to Choose the Ideas Your Company Should Invest In

Harvard Business Review

Can we get to the market without any technological miracles? Importantly, that decision-making team shouldn't be the same team that is making day-to-day operational decisions for the core business, because they are quite likely to implicitly default back to core disciplines where different ones are required.

Company 15