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, […]

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 […]

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

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 […]

Leaders can approach this challenging time with flexibility, transparency, and compassion.

The most popular offshore sites for service functions are overheating. Now is the time for companies to explore a world of opportunity beyond those hot spots and to base investment decisions not just on costs but also on talent, markets, strategic aims, and appetite for risk.

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 […]

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, […]

If you put an energy meter inside a home and show people total usage in real time, a miraculous thing happens: they use about 10 percent less energy....

What today's businesses can learn about pricing strategies and consumer trust.

Five proven principles for reducing costs without compromising quality.

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 […]

Neither markets nor managers accurately value investments in intangibles like R&D, studies show. The result: misallocated resources. The solution: read on.

How much control do managers really need?

Since the video game console industry began with the Atari 2600, every successive generation has been touted for its better graphics, faster processors, and increasingly complex controls. In 2005, when the latest generation of consoles was first announced, many assumed Sony’s Playstation 3, which had the boldest specs, would prevail, following on the monster success […]

Innovative hospitals in India are pointing the way.

Do you really know what your customers value in your network?