Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

This week, Microsoft is announcing an unusual initiative that it hopes will change how the company operates: an internal fee on carbon. And this charge will, in theory, move managers to make greener choices. So the point of this fee, like all "taxes," is to change behavior, discouraging some pathways by making them less palatable.

Energy 16

Energy Variable Costs Travel Operations 16

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

But amidst a seemingly scripted set of responses on Walmart's supply chain and operational greening efforts, the discussion took an interesting turn. In essence, Bedore was saying that Walmart recognizes that it can help take the solar market to scale, thus lowering its costs in the future.

ROI 15

ROI Variable Costs Energy Scaling 15

Harvard Business Review

JULY 2, 2014

Managers typically use breakeven analysis to set a price to understand the economic impact of various price- and sales-volume scenario. These costs are fixed because they will not change with the number of kites sold. Therefore, the unit variable costs to make a single kite is: $50 ($20 in materials and $30 in labor).

Variable Costs 10

Variable Costs Fixed Costs Sales Sales 10

Harvard Business Review

MAY 8, 2012

In response, the management team made a counterintuitive move: It outsourced network installation, maintenance, and service to Ericsson, Nokia, and Siemens, and chose IBM to build and manage its IT systems. The vendors for telecom network management were paid only for the capacity utilized by Bharti Airtel, not for the equipment.

Balance Sheet 12

Balance Sheet Variable Costs Telecommunications Fixed Costs 12

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2013

In every part of the industry, the open innovation model is changing the economics of advertising by switching significant fixed costs to variable costs and sourcing creative from more relevant and, many times, lower cost sources. Advertising Innovation Marketing'

Advertising 13

Advertising Variable Costs Media Fixed Costs 13

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 11, 2017

In 2016 the Scottish National Health Service (NHS Scotland) piloted an approach to value improvement that took both cost and quality into account and turned the management of value into the basic task of the point-of-care manager. The following tools constitute the basic building blocks of the value-management system.

Manager 8

Manager Hospitality Variable Costs Implementation 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 3, 2018

Investors, therefore, look not just for reported revenues but for drivers behind the revenues, especially because digital companies’ operating activities often differ from their revenue-generating activities. The first category should describe the amount spent on supporting current operations.

Variable Costs 8

Variable Costs Revenue Assets Cash Flow 8

Harvard Business Review

SEPTEMBER 4, 2013

But in reality most companies, particularly those that manage to last for any reasonable period of time, do day-to-day innovation extremely well. It''s not like large companies never manage to do it. Most large corporations will admit to struggling with innovation. Your television picture quality is significantly better.

Fixed Costs 8

Fixed Costs Variable Costs Assets Banking 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 25, 2017

Projects were identified as the best management structure to break up silos and encourage teams to work transversally (end-to-end) in the organization. It now has around 10,000 operating projects. Accountabilities and responsibilities were shared between products, segments, countries, regions, functions, and headquarters.

Revenue 8

Revenue Variable Costs Sales Sales 8

Harvard Business Review

JULY 27, 2017

To fill the void and build such a new BMW startup unit, Gimmy partnered with an experienced innovation manager from BMW, Matthias Meyer. Third, corporate VCs and accelerators are costly and complex to operate, turning them into a slow and expensive innovation tool.

Fixed Costs 8

Fixed Costs Variable Costs Administration Media 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. That is what GM is trying to do.

Fixed Costs 14

Fixed Costs Assets Cash Flow Variable Costs 14