Finance and investing

How companies can build a long-term strategy that will keep them secure.

What you measure is what you get. Senior executives understand that their organization’s measurement system strongly affects the behavior of managers and employees. Executives also understand that traditional financial accounting measures like return-on-investment and earnings-per-share can give misleading signals for continuous improvement and innovation—activities today’s competitive environment demands. The traditional financial performance measures worked well […]

What every manager ought to know about the different kinds of forecasting and the times when they should be used.

In this article, Bob Zider, president of the Beta Group, a California-based firm that invests in commercializing new technologies, presents an analysis...

The huge sums that private equity firms make on their investments evoke admiration and envy. Typically, these returns are attributed to the firms' aggressive...

Many executives believe that all failure is bad (although it usually provides lessons)-and that learning from it is pretty straightforward. The author,...

Here is a [recently developed] tool for analyzing the choices, risks, objectives, monetary gains, and information needs involved in complex management decisions, like plant investment.

Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder...

It might not actually work.

What do companies like Rockwater, Apple Computer, and Advanced Micro Devices have in common? They’re using the scorecard to measure performance and set strategy.

What it missed was the business model.

In this article, authors James Anderson, professor at the Kellogg Graduate School, Northwestern University, and James Narus, associate professor at the...

For decades now, venture capitalists have played a crucial role in the economy by financing high-growth start-ups. While the companies they've backed--Amazon,...

Know what your project is worth in today’s dollars.

A book on Buffett spurs Gates to reflect on their friendship.

If you're launching a business, the odds are against you: Two-thirds of start-ups never show a positive return. Unnerved by that statistic, a professor...

Do you know what your most profitable product is?

An important task of the corporate financial manager is measurement of the company’s cost of equity capital. But estimating the cost of equity causes a lot of head scratching; often the result is subjective and therefore open to question as a reliable benchmark. This article describes a method for arriving at that figure, a method […]

Most entrepreneurs understand that if the fundamentals of a business idea—the management team, the market opportunities, the operating systems and controls—are sound, chances are there’s money out there. The challenge of landing that capital to grow a company can be exhilarating. But as exciting as the money search may be, it is equally threatening. Built […]

Companies profess devotion to shareholder value but rarely follow the practices that maximize it. What will it take to make your company a level 10 value creator?