Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 5, 2014

The logic, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and banks like HSBC, is this: as the world migrates away from carbon-based fuels, trillions of barrels of oil and billions of tons of coal — the assets sitting on the books of energy companies — will become “stranded,” or worthless. Let’s quickly look at each.

Assets 14

Assets Energy Variable Costs Government 14

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 14, 2016

These more “ intelligent assets ” read performance data, giving Cisco a detailed view of energy consumption — one that had not been available before. In the tech world, for example, energy is now the largest component of variable costs for running a datacenter. Some sectors have woken up already.

Energy 14

Energy Variable Costs Operations Metrics 14

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 3, 2018

For example, ostensibly, Facebook’s customers are its daily users (call them “asset units” for argument’s sake). Those outlays could be on soft avenues, such as customer acquisition, data breach and safety, regulatory fines, and product enhancement, or on hard assets, such as hardware, servers, and cellphone towers.

Variable Costs 8

Variable Costs Revenue Assets Accounts 8

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.

Fixed Costs 8

Fixed Costs Variable Costs Assets Banking 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

Capital-intensive factories have a high-fixed-cost, low-variable-cost operating model. If you greatly reduce the production volume, the cars that do come out have to absorb more of the fixed costs, and that eventually sends the product into a profitability death spiral. These questions that doesn’t get asked enough.

Fixed Costs 15

Fixed Costs Assets Cash Flow Variable Costs 15