Harvard Business Review

JUNE 20, 2012

Instead, companies seeking to improve the lives of the world's poor should focus on a more realistic route to profitability: They need to elevate gross margins far above the company average by pushing down variable costs and boosting the price consumers are willing to pay for a unit of product. Localize and bundle base products.

Variable Costs 14

Variable Costs Banking Sales Sales 14

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

Cloud service providers are increasingly proxies for utilities — they require 100% uptime, significant quantities of their own power, and predictable variable cost (which for renewables is nearly zero). Sales/Becoming the Vendor of Choice. Even so, they will collect north of $10 million, which is enough to buy offsets.

Energy 16

Energy Variable Costs Travel Operations 16

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 3, 2018

In a follow up HBR article , we interviewed several chief financial officers (CFOs) of leading technology companies and senior analysts of investment banks and distilled seven key insights from those discussions. For example, Twitter provides “cost per ad engagement.” Investors should have access to those estimates, too.

Variable Costs 8

Variable Costs Revenue Assets Cash Flow 8