article thumbnail

Hospital Budget Systems Are Holding Back Innovation

Harvard Business Review

health care system. Explanations include their IT departments already have their hands full installing, maintaining, and upgrading electronic health record (EHR) systems. But much of the blame can be attributed to hospitals’ misaligned budgeting and incentive systems. Gillian Blease/Getty Images.

article thumbnail

A Refresher on Internal Rate of Return

Harvard Business Review

You’ve got a great idea for a new product that will increase revenue or a new system that will cut the company’s costs. According to Knight, it’s commonly used by financial analysts in conjunction with net present value, or NPV. ” The downside is that IRR is much more conceptual than NPV.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

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

article thumbnail

Rethinking Valuation So You Don't Miss a Good Deal

Harvard Business Review

Even Dell, famous for eschewing acquisitions in favor of organic growth, has thrown in the towel with its $5 billion acquisition of Perot Systems. The higher level of uncertainty associated with H2 and H3 necessitates an updated valuation methodology that takes into account more than the net present value (NPV) of the target.

NPV 14
article thumbnail

When It Pays to Think Like a Finance Manager

Harvard Business Review

If you want approval for a new project — purchasing new equipment or computer systems, applying for a patent, building a new store — chances are you need your company’s finance department on board. Do you think they’re going to do a net present value (NPV) analysis that shows they don’t need that computer?

article thumbnail

The Worst Failure of All Is Wasting a Failure

Harvard Business Review

The CEO and CFO responded with, "A failure to hit ROI and NPV targets." Create a knowledge management system. Clearly the company was painfully aware of these two failed projects. The problem came with the follow-up question, "Why did example A fail?". The head of R&D remembered it as a failure to properly market the innovation.

NPV 16
article thumbnail

Old Buildings Are U.S. Cities’ Biggest Sustainability Challenge

Harvard Business Review

Today large commercial buildings address only two percent per year of the NPV-positive investments in efficiency that are available to them. This approach has been made possible by the advent of low-cost sensing technology and the ability to acquire data from building systems and energy-consuming equipment.

NPV 8
article thumbnail

Can We Quantify the Value of Connected Devices?

Harvard Business Review

They institutionalized the use of data collection systems in their manufacturing facilities to understand how products and machines would “behave” and could be optimized. Combining these creates a P&L and a projection, which through a discounted cash flow analysis yields an NPV, which can be used to assess valuation.