Publications

In 1959, with his partner Jay Van Andel, DeVos established one of the most profitable direct selling companies in the world. Van Andel and DeVos accomplished their success through the use of an elaborate pyramid-like distribution system... View Details

Keywords: Personal Care & Home Products

May 2007
Article

Aspects of Endowment: A Query Theory of Value Construction

By: Eric Johnson, Gerald Häubl and Anat Keinan

How do people judge the monetary value of objects? One clue is provided by the typical endowment study (D. Kahneman, J. L. Knetsch, & R. H. Thaler, 1991), in which participants are randomly given either a good, such as a coffee mug, that they may later sell ("sellers")... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Forecasting and Prediction; Theory; Valuation; Loss; Ownership; Decision Choices and Conditions

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May 2001 (Revised January 2003)
Case

Calpine Corporation: The Evolution from Project to Corporate Finance

By: Benjamin C. Esty and Michael Kane

In early 1999, Calpine Corp.'s CEO Pete Cartwright adopted an aggressive growth strategy with the goal of increasing the company's aggregate generating capacity from approximately 3,000 to 15,000 megawatts (MW) by 2004. He believed there was a fleeting opportunity to... View Details

Keywords: Information Technology; Cost of Capital; Project Finance; Adaptation; Profit; Financial Strategy; Corporate Finance; Energy Industry; United States

Article

Finding Lost Profits: An Equilibrium Analysis of Patent Infringement Damages

By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao

We discuss how a seller can appropriate rents when selling knowledge that lacks legal property rights by solving either an expropriation or a valuation problem and then analyze how seller rents increase when a portion of the intellectual property (IP) can be protected.... View Details

Keywords: Profit; Patents; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Knowledge; Rights; Strategy; Valuation; Problems and Challenges

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Read Now

equal-revenue-earning teams. These changes allowed the NFL to become a profitable enterprise by promoting competition among the teams for players and among the networks and merchandisers for broadcasting and advertising rights,... View Details

Keywords: Entertainment & Broadcast Media

Bernard F. Gimbel

and Milwaukee, Gimbel ran Saks Fifth Avenue stores in New York, Chicago, Detroit and Beverly Hills. During World War II, Gimbel earned huge profits on scarce consumer goods, which he had purchased earlier at low prices. View Details

Keywords: Retail

Sigfried Weis

Weis was instrumental in managing the growth of Weis Markets, often noted as the most profitable supermarket chain in the United States. Weis took the company public in 1965 and went on to produce over 25 consecutive years of successful... View Details

Keywords: Retail

March 2008 (Revised March 2014)
Case

Facebook

By: Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Aaron Smith, David Chen and Brian Feinstein

As Facebook topped one billion monthly users in October 2012, the online social network continued to face questions about how best to monetize its surging traffic. The company could invest further in new advertising products, which represented the majority of the... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Profit; Open Source Distribution; Social and Collaborative Networks; Competition; Competitive Strategy; Internet and the Web; Digital Platforms; Information Technology Industry

July 2001
Technical Note

Technical Note on LBO Valuation (A): LBO Structure and the Target IRR Method of Valuation

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

Explains the equity cash flow method of valuation as it applies to leveraged buyouts. Also explains: 1) earnings and cash flow forecasts, 2) debt structure and the cash sweep, 3) the cashing out horizon and terminal valuation, and 4) the target IRR method of valuation. View Details

Keywords: Valuation; Leveraged Buyouts; Capital Budgeting; Borrowing and Debt; Cash Flow; Equity; Profit; Price; Forecasting and Prediction

When he assumed the CEO position of United Airlines, Carlson inherited a company that had just produced a record $40 million loss. Despite no prior experience in the airline industry, Carlson embarked on a stringent cost reduction and revitalization program that... View Details

Keywords: Transportation

05 Aug 2015
What Do You Think?

What Happened to the ‘Innovation, Disruption, Technology’ Dividend?

in the field of analytics are focused on improved utilization of productive equipment and materials It is hard to get much GDP growth or wage growth this way, but corporate profits are certainly going up. Perhaps that is a better way to... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett; Computer; Technology

22 Feb 2022
News

Ink: Bringing Purpose to Life

organization’s DNA and treat it as a radical new operating system. Deep Purpose is the result of a three-year journey for Gulati, in which he visited organizations around the world to see, firsthand, how leaders have managed to create immense View Details

Keywords: Publishing Industries (except Internet); Information

O. Wayne Rollins

In 1964, Rollins completed what is believed to be the first leveraged buy-out in business history through the acquisition of Orkin Exterminating Company. Through a number of acquisitions, he parlayed this initial company into one of the world’s largest and most View Details

Keywords: Services

James R. Moffett

In 1981, Moffett orchestrated one of the largest and most profitable mergers in Wall Street history – the merger of his oil exploration company, McMoRan Oil and Gas Company, with Freeport Minerals Corporation – creating a $4 billion... View Details

Keywords: Agriculture & Mining

Mills B. Lane, Jr.

Taking over the small southern bank after the death of his father, Lane went on to build it into one of the largest and most profitable banks in the Southeast. Lane shook up the staid banking community by employing a variety of marketing... View Details

Keywords: Finance

Howard B. Keck

profits of $200 million in 1979. Equally notable, however, was Keck’s work with the W. M. Keck Foundation, which was a huge supporter of science and technology. Under Keck’s leadership, the Foundation’s charitable trust grew from $250... View Details

Keywords: Utilities & Energy

Leonard Abramson

Abramson accurately predicted the need for prepaid medical plans to manage spiraling medical spending in the 60’s and 70’s and founded U. S. Healthcare to capitalize on this opportunity. Abramson built a fast-growing and extremely View Details

Keywords: Healthcare

Article

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and the Market for Digital Information Goods

By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Andres Hervas-Drane

We study competitive interaction between two alternative models of digital content distribution over the Internet: peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing and centralized client-server distribution. We present microfoundations for a stylized model of p2p file sharing where all... View Details

Keywords: Competition; Distribution; Internet and the Web; Information Infrastructure; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Strategy; Profit; Price; Performance Efficiency

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