Category: Business

Business Models for the First and the 21st Centuries

~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Businesses and other organizations can be understood in three different types. Facilitated Networking, Value Added, and Solution Shop business models, and combinations thereof, have existed since before Rome ruled. Modern entrepreneurs will benefit as they think of their endeavors in these ways.  

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

Several women at a baby shower share stories about giving birth, providing tips to an expectant mother on how to make delivery easier and less painful. One older woman provides a beautiful baby dress, while another shares the address of a bargain store.

A farmer plants acres of grain. He and his family labor over their fields for months, watering and weeding while the crop comes in. In due time, they harvest an abundance. They keep some grain for their own consumption and sell the rest.

Two colonels pore over a map on a battlefield, discussing how to defeat the enemy dug in on a ridgeline nearby. They are not sure of their opponent’s strength and disposition, but they are losing the initiative and need to act soon.

Continue reading “Business Models for the First and the 21st Centuries” →

Financial Statements, Stock Price, and Truth

~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Financial statements provide the most important details about the financial health of a company. In aggregate, they indicate how a whole sector is doing. How do you read them? What do they contain? What useful information should be in financial statements, but is not? How can management manipulate financial statements to deceive outsiders? Learn it all here!

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

Introduction

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requires annual statements (10K) and quarterly statements (10Q) from all publicly traded companies. These reports inform stakeholders about the company’s earnings and other key factors that influence the behavior of lenders, investors, employees, analysts, ratings agencies, governments, and others. These stakeholders rely on company management to report accurately.

Stock price, at least in theory, encapsulates all the pertinent factors of a company, such as management, product, demand, and other internal and external factors, and summarizes everything stakeholders need to know about a company. In the real world, however, stock price can be affected by firm characteristics and can be manipulated by managers seeking their own interests over the interests of shareholders.

Continue reading “Financial Statements, Stock Price, and Truth” →

Maximizing Customer Value and Engagement

~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Businesses exist to serve their customers. Self-perpetuation, environmental sustenance, social issues, and even shareholder value maximization are of little importance if the customer is not served. How can companies, and other organizations, give their customers their best?

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

The rug dealer at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul carefully poured the Turkish apple chi into a small cup. “Here, my friend,” he said as he handed the cup to me. He sat down close by and asked, “How is your family?” Thus began ten minutes of chit chat before we even mentioned the silk rug that I had admired when I came in. The small talk would have gone on longer, but my American impatience cut it short. By the time we were done, the rug dealer had $500 of my hard-earned dollars, and I walked out with a beautiful rug that probably cost less than half that to make. The dealer may have congratulated himself for fleecing another rich American. I congratulated myself on buying a rug that my wife would like, having a fascinating experience, and helping support a Turkish businessman and the economy of a third world nation. A fair deal, I figure.

Buying and selling across the world

Americans walk into a store, find what they want, check to see if the price is reasonable to them, and if it is, they buy the item. Rarely is there any dickering between buyer and seller over price. My experience in northern and western Europe has been the same.

Continue reading “Maximizing Customer Value and Engagement” →

Task Automation and Jobs

~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Will automation and robotics replace most workers across the world? Which industries are at the greatest risk? What will societies do with and for people who lose their jobs? What can individuals, families, churches, and communities do to help?

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

By the 1920s, the automated production line, new tools, and the principles of “scientific management” had dramatically increased worker productivity in the US. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that productivity would increase so much that in 100 years, his grandchildren would need to work only 15 hours per week (Bessen, 2020). This has not happened, of course, because of the vaster array of goods and services now produced, the much larger number of people those products are produced for, and the skyrocketing expectations of consumers throughout the world.

More recently, voices in business, labor, and the general population have decried automation and robotics as job-killing. CNBC reported in 2019 that 25% of US jobs, especially the “boring and repetitive ones,” were at risk for vanishing due to automation (Nova, 2019). Such predictions frighten workers and introduce a list of questions and policy problems. Whose jobs are likely to go? How can we retrain these people into jobs through which they and their families can thrive? What degree of safety net do we need to have for these people in the meantime? Will robots and other types of automation decrease the human need to work so much that in the future, Keynes will be right? Will we all be working 15 hours per week, or less?

Continue reading “Task Automation and Jobs” →

How to Improve Business Success During War

~ MD Harris Institute ~ Leave a comment

Global instability is growing, not declining. The world is less capable, not more capable, of handling such instability. What can companies, large and small, do to improve their success and that of all their stakeholders, despite war and instability?

By Mark D, Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

Business has been international since before the Hebrew King Solomon imported peacocks from India (1 Kings 10:22). The Chinese traded all over East and Central Asia, Arabs bought and sold from western India to southern Africa, and the Vikings plied their wares from the British Isles to the Black Sea. The development of the blue water navy in the 1500s, including reliable time pieces and deep draft sailing vessels, opened the Far East and the New World to European traders. With technological advances in communication, transportation, finance, and production, business has become global at a volume and speed unimaginable to our ancestors (Hout et al., 1982).

All eight billion people on earth are consumers, but they are also producers. Trade used to be primarily local, and the farmers and craftsmen in a village and region provided almost all the goods and services needed. Family, friends, and other neighbors conducted business with each other, and little or nothing that a person possessed came from more than fifty miles away. Pricing could be flexible, with buyers and sellers negotiating on timing and price. During the recent financial crises, businesses and banks that primarily serviced Amish customers were more stable and even profitable than those seeking the highest rates of return. Contrary to the opinion of Gordon Gekko in the movie Wall Street, greed is not good.

Continue reading “How to Improve Business Success During War” →