HBS Working Knowledge: Adding Time to Activity-Based Costing
Determining a company’s true costs and profitability has always been difficult, although advancements such as activity-based costing (ABC) have helped. In a new book – Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing, Professor Robert Kaplan and Acorn Systems’ Steven Anderson offer a simplified system based on time-driven ABC that leverages existing enterprise resource planning systems.
Found+READ: Patents, why bother?
Patents are, quite simply, a pain in the neck. Sure, there are potential benefits of holding them, but the truth is that the cost—in time and dollars—of acquiring patent protections often outweighs any future gains from licensing fees, or litigation settlements. As sexy as it sounds to be a patent-holder, there are plenty of hurdles in the time-consuming, vaguely beneficial, and guaranteed-to-be-pricey world of intellectual property. Find out when you should, and shouldn’t, spend $$ to protect your IP.
The McKinsey Quarterly: Coaching innovation – An interview with Intuit’s Bill Campbell
Innovative organizations, Campbell believes, start with engineers who have the clout to lead the product-development process. He outlines ways for managers to organize a culture of innovation and motivate teams to advance it. Campbell also discusses managerial approaches to marketing, setting priorities for innovation, and balancing the need for investment in innovation with the financial markets’ demand for strong quarterly financial results.
HBS Working Knowledge: Delivering the Digital Goods – iTunes vs. Peer-to-Peer
Apple’s iTunes music download service and illegal peer-to-peer music downloads offer two contrasting approaches to delivering digital content to users. Can Apple and the recording industry seriously compete against free? Do iTunes and p2p help each other in some ways? Professor Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and collaborator Andres Hervas-Drane discuss their recent research on competition in digital distribution.
Knowledge@Wharton: Short-Circuited: Cutting Jobs as Corporate Strategy
Layoffs. Downsizing. Rightsizing. Job cuts. Separations. Terminations. Workforce reductions. Off-shoring. Outsourcing. Should I say any more?