Understanding your cost structure is a fundamental step in business decision-making. It helps guide efforts to minimize costs, set appropriate prices, recognize economies of scale, and make informed decisions about whether to continue operations. It also plays a key role…
Why Marketing Strategy Matters Among the many types of business strategies—such as financial, technological, or operational—marketing strategy stands out as especially relevant to nearly everyone in a business environment. Understanding marketing strategy isn’t too difficult—especially at the level we encounter…
Stockholders’ equity represents the portion of a company’s assets that remains after we subtract all liabilities. Think of it as the owners’ residual claim on the company. This equity section primarily consists of two key parts: Contributed Capital and Earned…
Understanding where cash comes from and where it goes is the heartbeat of any business. While the Income Statement tells you about profitability, the Statement of Cash Flows tells you about survival and liquidity. This guide breaks down how to…
In science and engineering, we rarely get perfect data. When we collect measurements \((t_i, y_i)\), they almost never fall perfectly on a straight line due to noise or experimental error. We are usually looking for the “best fit” line \(y…
Economies of scale refer to the cost advantages that businesses gain as they increase their production levels. Why do these advantages occur? To understand this, let’s review some key variables and introduce new ones along with appropriate notation. The variables…
What Are Economies of Scope? Economies of scope are the cost savings a company gets by producing a variety of products together, rather than producing each one separately. Instead of getting cheaper by being bigger, the company gets cheaper by…
Analyzing a business situation typically involves examining both the external environment and a company’s internal capabilities. In this session, we’ll begin by exploring frameworks specifically designed to assess the external environment. Why the External Environment Matters Understanding external factors—especially the…
2st Force: Threat of New Entrants Second force is Threat of New Entrants. When analyzing the threat of new entrants, we assess the barriers that prevent new competitors from entering the market. These barriers may be actively created—such as patents—or…
3st Force: Threat of Substitutes Rethinking Competition: More Than Just Direct Rivals We often think of competition as coming from businesses that offer the same product or service. However, there’s another, often subtler, type of competitor: substitutes. What Are Substitutes?…