Costing

In my last post, I talked about the ways you can use green data — footprinting information on your products and services up and down the value chain — to create enormous value for your company. As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And those with the best information can cut costs, […]

There's considerable waste in the system.

This blog post is written with Pepijn Veling, Utrecht University, Netherlands. There is a general consensus that U.S. healthcare needs major reform. Can...

Few economic decisions are as difficult as those involving the choice between present and future consumption. Some people, unable to place much faith in the future, happily borrow to fund present pleasures; others, with longer time horizons, are wary of such “fly now, pay later” policies. They fear that the required payments, when viewed up […]

Few, if any, articles on finance that have appeared in HBR have enjoyed the influence of the 1962 article reprinted here as a “Classic.” Gordon Donaldson’s analysis of how many companies haphazardly established their debt capacity, and his careful explanation of what he considered a better way, seemed to strike a chord among corporate administrative […]

Don't burn all your cash on a fancy office.

Even Jeff Bezos wants to open a physical store.

Companies doing business in the developing world have to contend with the staggering human and financial costs of HIV infection—and most would agree that conventional approaches to controlling the epidemic aren’t working. In our experience in the labor-intensive mining industries of Russia, South Africa, and Botswana, we’ve seen infection rates among workers exceeding 90% in […]

Five years ago, people at the Roseville Networks Division of Hewlett-Packard didn’t believe the numbers the accounting system produced. Now they do. When marketing, manufacturing, product design, and accounting sat down to discuss a product, we invariably argued about how to find a product’s “real” cost. Production, in particular, viewed accounting as a watchdog, not […]

States, Congress, and the Trump administration are considering actions.

How much control do managers really need?

Managing your money doesn't have to be overwhelming.

The Association for Financial Professionals surveyed its members about the assumptions built into the financial models they use to evaluate investment...

Revenue is one of the most misunderstood, mismanaged, and neglected measures in business. Consequently, many executives still rely on gut feel, rather than on hard data, to make revenue decisions—often destroying value in the process. We’ve seen this happen in the dozens of companies we’ve studied. Consider the short shrift revenue gets on accounting reports, […]

Instead of casting a wide net, try a more strategic approach.

You need more than a rainy day fund.

Do we really need to switch to replacement-cost accounting to understand how companies have performed?

The American health care industry is sick. Its huge fraction of our GNP—one out of every eight dollars—is double that of Japan and at least 50% higher than that of other developed countries. Because it is growing at rates 50% higher than the GNP, the industry’s cost hampers control of our disastrous trade deficit. Even […]

Innovative hospitals in India are pointing the way.

HBR's fictionalized case studies present dilemmas faced by leaders in real companies and offer solutions from experts. This one is based on the HBS Case...