Strategy Driven

MARCH 18, 2011

These choices historically conferred advantage – first-mover, scale – but asset-based scale advantages have diminished in recent years, thanks to technology, cheap information, and outsourcing. Assets are important, but they are, increasingly, table stakes in most competitive industries; everyone in the game has them.

Resources 51

Resources Industry System Strategy 51

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 3, 2011

Focus on capabilities rather than just fixed assets: Fixed assets, including brands, are more difficult to leverage across diverse businesses and tend to expire, become obsolete, or give way to related services. Paul Leinwand is a Partner in Booz & Company's global consumer, media, and retail practice.

Strategy 16

Strategy Fixed Assets Competitive Advantage Long-term 16

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 3, 2011

How crazy is it that companies are willing to invest in preventative maintenance on fixed assets such as their machinery, but typically won't make a comparable investment to enhance and sustain the health and well-being of their employees?

Fixed Assets 18

Fixed Assets Competitive Advantage Commitment Definition 18

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 19, 2011

It is derived by adjusting for changes in gross margin, capital intensity (fixed assets as a proportion of total assets), and positively for sales surprise (the degree to which actual sales exceeds or falls short of forecast). Consider the following example that Vishal Gaur of Cornell, my frequent co-author, shared with me.

Retail 15

Retail Marketing Benchmarking Fixed Assets 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2013

At many companies the total cash investment in acquisitions, R&D, and fixed assets has not earned back its cost of capital after adjusting for the time lag in realizing incremental benefits. That outcome reflects the wrong allocation and/or ineffective execution.

P&L 11

P&L Fixed Assets Charan Delegation 11

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 23, 2014

Because of the vast space between these, the astute manager shouldn’t simply aspire to innovation in general. Without differentiating between things like sustaining and disruptive innovations, the conversation never directs managers to the nitty-gritty details where new products and services live or die.

Innovation 10

Innovation Disruptive Innovation Fixed Assets Project 10

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

We have just witnessed what journalists too easily have called China's "once-in-a-decade" transition--this despite the minor detail that the People's Republic of China had managed exactly one routinized transition of power in its first sixty-two years. There have been many more coups d'état than peaceful transitions.)

Politics 9

Politics Fixed Assets System Banking 9

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 7, 2017

Companies deliver superior results when executives manage for long-term value creation and resist pressure from analysts and investors to focus excessively on meeting Wall Street’s quarterly earnings expectations. This has long seemed intuitively true to us. The returns to society and the overall economy were equally impressive.

Long-term 8

Long-term EPS Short-term Management 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Failure to present a groundbreaking new vision risks leaving in place old economic drivers, especially the over-reliance on fixed-asset investment, that have created serious challenges such as China’s “ghost cities” and high levels of local government debt. Which Management Style Will China Adopt? An HBR Insight Center.

GDP 8

GDP Fixed Assets Globalization Survey 8