article thumbnail

How to Quantify Sustainability’s Impact on Your Bottom Line

Harvard Business Review

We found that sustainable and deforestation-free practices created significant financial benefits for all players in the industry’s value chain. Specifically, our analysis found that the net benefits to ranchers ranged from $18 million to $34 million (12% to 23% of revenues) in net present value projected over 10 years.

article thumbnail

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

Harvard Business Review

As long as there are strong increasing returns to create , it’s possible that the net present value of my profit harvesting is indefinitely larger if deferred to the future. The Refresher: Net Present Value. Today, AWS is a much more valuable business for the company’s long-termism. So is Google.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Match Your Innovation Process to the Results You Want

Harvard Business Review

When forced to present familiar metrics for truly out-of-the-box "beginning" ideas, work teams develop what our friend Jay Paap calls "Imaginary Numbers." They must interact with their work teams frequently throughout all of innovation's phases, from the beginning. They must also be willing to see value in absurdity.

article thumbnail

Why We Need to Update Financial Reporting for the Digital Era

Harvard Business Review

Business students have traditionally considered net present value, payback period, and hurdle rates as necessary tools to determine which project to select. Some of these ideas contradict traditional financial thinking whereas others seem highly controversial or pessimistic.

Report 8
article thumbnail

The Secrets to Building a Lucky Network

Harvard Business Review

Hsieh and his team highlight the importance of "serendipitous connections" in enabling this effort to succeed, and are working hard to facilitate such encounters. I was just in Las Vegas spending time at the Downtown Project backed by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (who self-professes that Luck serves as a core factor in his success).

article thumbnail

4 Assumptions About Risk You Shouldn’t Be Making

Harvard Business Review

Most executives know that the present value of an investment comes from projecting its cash flows and discounting those numbers into today’s dollars. The general rule is projects with positive net present values should get funded, and those with negative ones shouldn’t.

article thumbnail

Shape Strategy With Simple Rules, Not Complex Frameworks

Harvard Business Review

Its new management team took over an organization that was bureaucratic, overstaffed, and bleeding cash. The team decided to adopt a simple-rules approach to the work ahead. Accordingly, the management team identified capital budgeting as a critical bottleneck keeping the company from achieving its objectives.