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SpaceX, economies of scale, and a revolution in space access
By Matthew C. Weinzierl, Kylie Lucas, Mehak Sarang. 2020
From the time he transformed the world of online banking, Elon Musk had established himself as a bold innovator eager…
to challenge the status quo in hopes of, as he put it, advancing human society. After selling X.com to PayPal in 2002, he founded a series of start-ups in pursuit of that dream, starting with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Hoping to "make human life multiplanetary", Musk aimed to establish the first Mars civilization, but was unable to procure rockets that would be cheap or reliable enough to make the journey. Over the course of the next decade, SpaceX would develop a line of revolutionary rockets that transformed the commercial space launch industry. Using reusable rockets to exploit the benefits of economies of scale, SpaceX cut costs to orbit by a factor of 18 and captured a large percentage of the global launch market, once thought to be inaccessible to newcomers in the industry. But after a remarkable decade, Musk's original goal to reach Mars seemed both within reach and impossibly optimistic. SpaceX had proven technologies that would be critical in supporting a crewed mission to Mars, but the cost to get there was estimated to be well above $200 billion dollars in 2014. While revenues from the launch services market were impressive, they were nowhere near the $200 billion needed to develop a Mars civilization. Would there be enough demand for launch services to make Elon Musk's vision a possibility, or would SpaceX have to find other ways to get there?First published in 1999, this volume explores port strategic management in Poland and Germany. It is part of the Plymouth…
Studies in Contemporary Shipping series represents a unique collection of papers and edited texts from the leading maritime institute in Western Europe at the University of Plymouth. It covers all aspects of the industry from operations through to the logistical framework that supports the sector. Designed both for practising academics and the shipping and ports industry itself, the series, combining the output for some of the leading academic commentators in the world from the UK, Korea, Germany and Poland, is an original and novel contribution to the maritime debate.Customer Management Dynamics and Cohort Analysis
By Elie Ofek, Barak Libai, Eitan Muller. 2020
The digital revolution has allowed companies to amass considerable amounts of data on their customers. Using this information to generate…
actionable insights is fast becoming a critical skill that firms must master if they wish to effectively compete and win in today's data-driven marketplace. This note explains the value of examining customer metrics, such as retention rate, revenues, and social influence (k-factor), on an ongoing basis by conducting a cohort analysis. Such an analysis segments customers using one or more criteria, and tracks the behavior and performance of each of these segments over time. Using several instructive examples, the presentation highlights the benefits of running a cohort analysis for deriving a deep understanding of customer trends. Moreover, the examples expose the pitfalls that arise from not accounting for segment characteristics (such as when a customer joined, from what media vehicle they were acquired, how heavily they use the product, etc.) and not paying attention to the evolution of customer metrics over time. The implications of conducting a cohort analysis for firm strategy and for determining customer lifetime value (CLV) are discussed.LaCroix Sparkling Water
By Das Narayandas, Kerry Herman, Tomomichi Amano. 2019
Launched in 1981 as an "all occasion" sparkling water brand, LaCroix Sparkling Water has had a number of ups and…
downs as a brand. After being purchased by National Beverage in 1996, the brand was re-positioned as a new, colorful, fun alternative to the other sparkling water players at the time. As time passed; however, the brand was faced with internal turmoil as well as shifting customer expectations. How did LaCroix react to change both within the company and within the industry?Portillo's: How to Deliver?
By Lena G. Goldberg, Michael S. Kaufman. 2020
Legal Aspects of Religion in the Workplace
By Lena G. Goldberg. 2018
Leadership and Independence at the Federal Reserve
By David A. Moss, Marc Campasano. 2016
Paul had opposed the Fed for decades and had offered several bills to dismantle it, dating back to 1983. As…
with all of his previous attempts, the 2009 bill died in committee. Although few members of Congress shared Paul's desire to eliminate the Fed, the central bank's unprecedented interventions during the 2007-2009 financial crisis provoked new sources of resistance. At a minimum, many more Americans were curious about the inner workings of the Fed, whose activities and decisions were frequently wrapped in secrecy. From its earliest days, the Fed's supporters had insisted that monetary policy had to be separated from electoral politics to prevent the manipulation of the money supply and interest rates for short-term political gain. Increasingly, however, critics questioned whether the costs of Federal Reserve independence and secrecy might outweigh the benefits. By late 2009, mounting concerns in Congress had breathed new life into one of Representative Paul's milder proposals for containing the Fed. Though his ultimate goal was to "end the Fed," Paul had also repeatedly proposed a full audit of the institution. By November 19, 2009, his latest audit bill had attracted 313 cosponsors, a record level of support, and the House Financial Services Committee was scheduled to vote that very day on whether to append a version of the proposal to a major financial reform bill that was then taking shape in Congress. If the audit provision became law, it would represent a notable change in policy, providing an unprecedented window on Fed activities and raising significant new questions about the nature of central bank independence in America.Note on Shared Ownership
By Ethan S. Bernstein, Nick Rekenthaler. 2019
While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct…
is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies have found that sharing ownership with employees can benefit a number of workplace performance metrics. This note summarizes the historical context from which shared corporate ownership grew, presents the three key decisions that leaders need to make when offering shared ownership (how broadly to do so, with what accountability, and with what rights), details the strategies that companies can use to share ownership with employees (e.g., profit-sharing, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), etc.), illustrates different strategies particular companies have employed, and concludes with open questions for future leaders. The goal of the note is to educate future leaders and managers on the implications of shared ownership decisions on employee engagement, and ultimately, long-term company performance. The note also provides a basic how-to user's guide to familiarize future managers with approaches to sharing ownership more broadly with employees.Beth Israel Deaconess: Consolidating to Strengthen, or to Stave Off, Competition?
By Leemore S Dafny. 2018
In July 2017, CEO Kevin Tabb of Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center announced his plan to consolidate 11 Massachusetts…
hospitals under a common management structure. These hospitals collectively generated $5 billion in patient revenue and 25% of privately-insured hospital stays in the state. The merger would create a credible competitor to Partners Healthcare, the state's dominant health care provider, but would potentially reduce competition and raise prices. State regulators were assessing the merger, and Tabb needed to argue its merits.Clover Food Lab in 2016
By Lena G. Goldberg, Sandra Bahous, Sonia Smith. 2017
Ayr Muir, founder and CEO of Clover Food Lab, has grown his restaurant chain from a single food truck to…
11 thriving stores but he has no interest in running a regional chain. His ambition is to change the way America eats and his goal is national expansion. As he surveys the competitive landscape and the forces shaping the restaurant industry in 2016, however, he must decide whether to pause the company's planned expansion beyond the greater Boston area and pursue other opportunities for growth or continue to expand Clover's geographic footprint.Quantopian: A New Model for Active Management (B)
By Scott Duke Kominers, Sara L. Fleiss, Charles B. Ughetta. 2019
Busse Place (B): Hannah's Dilemma
By Arthur I Segel, John H. Vogel. 2014
Marisa Sanchez, a new Associate at Douglas Private Equity Advisors, confronts a dilemma when she is asked by a Senior…
Vice President (SVP) to do due diligence on a deal he wants to bring before the investment committee which will include the SVP, Douglas' owner and founder and others. The meeting is timed just before annual bonus season. Marisa's due diligence findings indicate that her boss, the SVP, has significantly misrepresented the market information and that the pricing should be considerably less than he is advocating. He asks her to manipulate the numbers, "to make the numbers work." She has to decide, when asked at the committee meeting, what to say and how.Income Inequality and the CEO Pay Ratio at TJX Cos
By Ethan Rouen, Akari Furukawa. 2019
The Ford Foundation: Creating Alpha with Affordable Housing?
By Charles F Wu, Anna Ponting, Mahek Mehta, Mo Gulamhusein, Ryan Liu, Wande Olabisi. 2019
A Tower for the People: 425 Park Avenue
By John D. Macomber, Emily Jones, Joseph G Allen. 2020
Healthy buildings and superior air quality are increasingly important since people now spend so much time indoors. Indoor spaces drive…
performance and productivity. Commercial real estate landords and investors are responding to the demands of sophisticated tenants and end users by making investment choices around indoor air quality and certification, and related expectations for increased rent or increased occupancy. It's anticipated that these learnings will extend to other situations including offices, schools, hospitals, factories, and homes. This case investigates the tradeoffs in several engineering, marketing, and finance decisions. The setting is a billion dollar premier new office building on Park Avenue in New York City, designed by the eminent architecture firm Foster + Partners. The decision factors in the case include health information from CogFX and 9 Foundations of Healthy Buildings research from the TH Chan Harvard School of Public Health.Traders Versus The State: Anthropological Approaches To Unofficial Economies
By Gracia Clark. 1998
This book addresses the multifaceted issue of the state vis-a-vis those perceived as actors in the informal or simple commodity…
production economy. It discusses both state and traders' strategies to display recurrent themes, emphasized and combined differently in specific contexts.US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare
By Thomas K. Adams. 1998
Armies in the 1990s are commonly involved in low-level, ill-defined, politically charged, messy situations known collectively as "unconventional warfare". Thomas…
Adams argues for a shift in expectations with a greater willingness to accept lengthy commitments and incremental progress.The Single Market in Insurance: Breaking Down the Barriers (Routledge Revivals)
By Andrew McGee. 1998
First published in 1998, this volume was formally completed in July 1994, but completing the structure of the market is…
not all the same thing as having a genuine Single Market. This book explores the difficulties inherent in the concept of the Single Market in Insurance, as well as the practical difficulties of implementation. It looks to the future of the Single Market as well as at the present. It should be of interest to lawyers studying law or EC law, as well as to economists and political scientists interested in the development of Project Europe.Underground Economies in Transition: Unrecorded Activity, Tax Evasion, Corruption and Organized Crime (Routledge Revivals)
By Edgar L. Feige, Katarina Ott. 1999
Published in 1999, this work examines the crucial role played by unofficial and underground activities in the transitional economies of…
Central and Eastern Europe and new independent states. Countries undergoing radical transformations from socialism to capitalism experience fundamental changes in institutional rules governing property rights, government regulations, taxation and the appropriate conduct of public service. Underground and unofficial activities represents non-compliant economic behaviours involving evasion, avoidance, circumvention, abuse and/or corruption of the institutional rules as well as efforts to conceal these illicit behaviours from the view of public authorities. The book employs the conceptual framework of the new institutional economics to elaborate the theoretical relationship between underground activities and overall performance of transition economies. The social, cultural and economic causes of unofficial activities are examined as well as their consequences for economic policy and performance. Policy issues include the relationship between tax evasion and corruption, the underground economy and organized crime, state and regulation, and methods and consequences of legalization of the underground economy.This book provides a critical evaluation of the literature on finance, investment and innovation and proposes new research methods for…
evaluating the comparative performance of financial systems in supporting innovation. The comparative advantage of this book is that of being directly focused on one of the main unsolved issues in monetary and financial economics: the relative effectiveness of national financial systems in supporting innovation. It proposes various theoretical and empirical contributions that, taken together, allow to evaluate the relative effectiveness of some of the most important country systems such as Japan, and the UK and Italy.