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Death Knell for the Category Killers?

Harvard Business Review

The focus that made them so powerful in the 1980s and 90s is creating the conditions for their current struggles. During the current recession, overall consumer spending has declined or held flat, sales per square foot have not improved significantly, and retailers' return on invested capital (ROIC) has suffered dramatically.

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How Companies Can Use Investors to Their Advantage

Harvard Business Review

Yet investors can be a powerful strategic resource, providing not only capital but also less-biased insight into the threats and opportunities that a company encounters. It would implement targets linked to shareholder value, including ROE and ROIC.

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Five Common Strategy Mistakes

Harvard Business Review

Moreover, when Porter defines strategy, he is really talking about what constitutes a good strategy — one that will result in a higher ROIC than the industry average. Growth alone says nothing about the power of customers or the availability of substitutes, both of which would dampen profitability. Mistake #5.

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What If Companies Managed People as Carefully as They Manage Money?

Harvard Business Review

A veritable alphabet soup (ROA, RONA, ROIC, ROCE, IRR, MVA, APV, and the like) exists to measure our financial capital. You can measure the amount and value of the time that you put against projects or initiatives, and you can measure the return on that time.