Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

It’s a simple calculation to determine how many units must be sold at a given price to cover one’s fixed costs. Assume she must incur a fixed cost of $25,500 to produce and sell a kite. What if we want to make an investment and increase the fixed costs? What if we change the price?

Analysis 8

Analysis Fixed Costs Price Cost 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2011

This is the essence of Groupon's declaration last week that it will remove the controversial accounting metric called Adjusted Consolidated Segment Operating Income (ACSOI) from its financial statements. ACSOI essentially measures Groupon's profits before subtracting its subscriber-acquisition costs and stock option-based compensation.

Christensen 20

Christensen Fixed Costs Metrics Business Model 20

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 6, 2018

Consider its decision to pursue the market for pharmaceutical distribution, or the recent announcement that it will be teaming up with Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase to create joint solutions for reducing the health care spending of more than 1 million employees and their families. .”

Health Care 11

Health Care Retail Operations Insurance 11

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

For example, a decade ago, it''s unlikely that small-business owners would have told you that they needed a flexible way to host data and applications, one that preferably turned the fixed cost of computer hardware into a variable cost of renting capacity. When the company rides an enabling trend.

Industry 8

Industry Fixed Costs Trends Innovation 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 6, 2016

Driven by economies of scale, container ship size has been increasing for decades, with the largest ships now costing roughly $200 million. The latest nuclear reactor designs, promising higher safety, longer operating life, and lower operating costs, cost up to $25 billion after factoring in the huge budget overruns.

Co-Opetition 8

Co-Opetition Operations Cost Cooper 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

The essence of the phenomenon is the fact that each stage in the supply chain plans its capital projects and operations, including inventory levels, based on its future expectations. Macroeconomic data during the 2008 financial crisis show the bullwhip effect operating on a much broader scale. For example , U.S.

Supply Chain 8

Supply Chain Retail Crisis Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 5, 2017

While a laudable effort in principle, measuring a company’s tendency to make myopic operating and investing decisions is fiendishly complex. But the other indicators probably pick up legitimate differences in how companies in the sample operate, as opposed to whether they are myopic. Are all share repurchases myopic?

EPS 9

EPS Metrics Depreciation Short-term 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 21, 2015

Over the past two decades, there have been many attempts to reform the electric utility market. Consider how Uber opened up the transportation market. In both cases, the two goods (car and real estate) are given value-creating potential through a process of market fragmentation and consumer empowerment.

Energy 8

Energy Transportation Software Price 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 6, 2014

If round after round of profit warnings was not enough – group operating profits fell 20% between 2011 and 2013 and are likely to fall another 30% in 2014 — the company recently announced it had overstated its first-half profit by about $400 million. and spends it in international markets. Aldi UK sales grew from $6.3 billion to $8.6

Retail 12

Retail Merchandising Discount Price 12

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

Skype , for example, competes with fixed-line carriers by offering free mobile Skype calls. Google has its own contender in the market, Google Voice. Bharti's innovative business model converted fixed costs in capital expenditure to a variable cost based on usage of capacity. The trend is spreading.

Outsourcing 12

Outsourcing Wireless Telecommunications Core Competence 12

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Wall Street began charging a “conglomerate discount,” saying that diverse operations were hard to analyze with confidence. True synergies across the diverse operations were often hard to see. Before, a big conglomerate like GE diversified its risks by mixing pro-cyclical and counter-cyclical businesses.

Engineering 8

Engineering Learning Curve Fixed Costs Finance 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 28, 2014

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s “platform” reference has elicited many comparisons of Oculus to Google’s purchase of Android , the company that would provide Google with its own smartphone operating system. Virtual reality is not a disruption to the computing market, instead it stands poised to disrupt content consumption.

Disruptive Innovation 8

Disruptive Innovation Automotive Software Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Historically, larger scale has offered hospital systems a number of advantages, including increased referral volumes, better access to capital, stronger pricing power, and classic cost economies. For instance, larger scale has enabled many hospital systems to lower their per-patient operating costs significantly.

Health Care 8

Health Care System Cost Price 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 1, 2017

You have to consider salaries, marketing budget, office size, technology services, and on and on. Too often, assumptions about the potential market and its clients can cloud our judgement about expenses. They were both naïve to think that creating a high-expense, polished operation would automatically enhance their business.

Strategy 10

Strategy Budgeting Cost Price 10

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 7, 2015

market has witnessed a substantial rise of activist investors. is a top performing S&P 500 listed company whose two-year total return outperformed the market by over 60%. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense for companies operating in the same space to continually compete. Over the last three years the U.S.

How To 8

How To Due Diligence Strategy Proposal 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

The first category is exogenous factors over which the business has little control: the growth of the markets into which it sells; the competitive intensity and thus the average profitability of the industry in which it operates; or the fragmentation of its industry and thus the scope for a growth-by-acquisition approach.

Chemicals 8

Chemicals How To Kahneman Reputation 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

Third, corporate VCs and accelerators are costly and complex to operate, turning them into a slow and expensive innovation tool. And the fixed cost from “touchpoint-to-pilot” are immense. Top startups already have market leading solutions. Private VCs and other professional investors can provide the first two.

Venture Capitalist 8

Venture Capitalist Meyer Innovation Fixed Costs 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 29, 2013

A fascinating business dynamic will unfold as health care providers in the United States shift from a reimbursement system that has historically paid for procedures performed to one that rewards population health — providing the total care of a community at a fixed cost and improving its members overall health.

Health Care 8

Health Care Committee Cost Operations 8

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 25, 2013

Just like the pilot makes a calm assessment and operates the right levers, leaders need to create a climate and culture where people can make a calm assessment and fine-tune the right set of drivers. Further, sales variation can get widened much more when it comes to financial variation because of fixed costs.

Business Intelligence 8

Business Intelligence Information Technology Uncertainty Fixed Costs 8

The Horizons Tracker

MARCH 23, 2023

” The Matthew Effect Indeed, far from technology being found to disrupt incumbent operators, the data suggests that investments in digital technology are largely ensuring that dominant incumbents can entrench their strong market position and fight off any upstarts.

Creativity 123

Creativity Innovation Trends Decentralization 123

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

As each of these companies expands its fixed-cost infrastructure, profits grow geometrically because the additional variable cost of adding each new user is near zero. Adding a profile on Facebook has little to no impact on Facebook's operating costs. Greater scale bestows greater competitive advantage.

CPA 15

CPA CPM Advertising Disintermediation 15

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 18, 2013

These businesses have powerful disruptive potential because they can provide consulting at a fraction of the cost of traditional models, largely because they do not need to carry expensive fixed costs like recruiting, training, consultant “beach” time, and expensive real estate.

McCallum 9

McCallum Consultative Real Estate Disruptive Innovation 9

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2013

In every part of the industry, the open innovation model is changing the economics of advertising by switching significant fixed costs to variable costs and sourcing creative from more relevant and, many times, lower cost sources. Advertising Innovation Marketing'

Advertising 10

Advertising Brand Innovation Creativity 10

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 31, 2018

has slowed , and that in most industries the biggest firms have higher market share than they did a decade ago. By cutting the fixed costs of computing — avoiding the need to hire IT staff, servers, and hardware — even the smallest firm can satisfy large and unexpected computing needs. businesses.

Technology 10

Technology Agility Fixed Costs Software 10

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 5, 2017

Political campaigns are marketing campaigns, messages aimed at selling a product. Yet by 2004 its market share was down to 3%. It focused its efforts on earning a majority share of Europe’s digital classified advertising market (a product that connects buyers and sellers). Bigger marketing budgets may not pay off.

Media 12

Media Advertising Fixed Costs Content 12