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Sustainable Investment Funds Can Encourage Worse Behavior

The Horizons Tracker

Subsequently, leveraging historical data, the researchers evaluated the responses of the highest and lowest polluting groups to fluctuations in their capital costs, an impact similar to the objectives of the sustainable investing movement.

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Entrepreneurship Suffers When Well-Paid Jobs Are Plentiful

The Horizons Tracker

A few years ago I wrote about innovation and entrepreneurship in Norway and Qatar. The author believes that while lower costs of capital would certainly help raise the entrepreneurship rate, it would be most beneficial to entrepreneurs with lower skills. Positive or negative?

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4 Ways Leaders Can Get More from Their Company’s Innovation Efforts

Harvard Business Review

A recent McKinsey report found that while 84% of corporate executives think innovation is key to achieving growth objectives, only 6% are satisfied with the innovation performance of their firm. Even if executives try to prioritize it, innovation often gets crowded out by more “urgent” short-term pressures.

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What You Don’t Know About Sales Can Hurt Your Strategy

Harvard Business Review

The goal of strategy is profitable growth, meaning economic value above the firm’s cost of capital. Smartly reducing assets devoted to activities that earn less than their cost of capital requires good links with evolving market realities. ( Isn’t that a function of risk parameters and the debt-to-equity ratio?

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The Real Reasons Companies Are So Focused on the Short Term

Harvard Business Review

Some argue that profits are stagnant because of short-termism—that decades of focusing on current profits over long-run innovativeness has resulted, now, in companies that are hollowed out. One trend that has contributed to short-termism and lower innovativeness is the increased prevalence of outside CEOs.

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The Case for Investing More in People

Harvard Business Review

We know that great ideas that drive breakthroughs in productivity come from human beings with the time, talent and energy to innovate. One step in reversing this trend is to start treating hours like dollars, with a real opportunity cost. Both Kaizen events and Agile sprints are investments in innovation and human capital productivity.

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What U.S. CEOs Should Do with the Money from Corporate Tax Cuts

Harvard Business Review

The cost of capital is at historic lows, averaging below 6% for most large U.S. Indeed, for most companies, the value of accelerating growth greatly exceeds the value of returning capital to shareholders. Investing in true innovation. The lower the discount rate, the more that future cash is worth.)