Value Creation and Profit Optimization

The present paper develops a basic framework for evaluating and optimizing profits in a business operation. In developing a business we are often faced with an infinity of choices ranging from what products or services to sell and what customers to target to how to structure and manage the organization. To support the decision-making process a semi- quantitative dimension is here added to the traditional strategic scenario planning. It consists of a general-purpose seven-step evaluation process: (1) The starting point is a list of strategic options, as they may have been identified during conventional strategic planning. (2-3) The next steps are to identify who will influence the value creation process, and what value drivers each of them use to influence it. (4) For customers representative of different segments we can evaluate the value to the customer, the risk to the customer and the relative market power between buyer and seller. The paper explains how this can be related to the market price that each of these customers is likely to be willing to pay. (5) While the income is critical, so it the cost: the following step is to analyze the cost structure and understand how it scales with market size. (6) By combining the results from the two previous steps it is possible to find the optimal profit as a function of volume, value drivers and the other parameters. (7) In the final step the strategic implications of the various options are integrated with other knowledge to form the basis for selecting a winning business strategy. An example of a yet-to-be consumer product is used to illustrate the process.cost, customer specific cost, market power, pricing, profit optimization, profits, radical innovation, risk discount, strategic scenario planning, value chain, value creation, value drivers, value net

Transport properties of partially equilibrated quantum wires

We study the effect of thermal equilibration on the transport properties of a weakly interacting one-dimensional electron system. Although equilibration is severely suppressed due to phase-space restrictions and conservation laws, it can lead to intriguing signatures in partially equilibrated quantum wires. We consider an ideal homogeneous quantum wire. We find a finite temperature correction to the quantized conductance, which for a short wire scales with its length, but saturates to a length-independent value once the wire becomes exponentially long. We also discuss thermoelectric properties of long quantum wires. We show that the uniform quantum wire is a perfect thermoelectric refrigerator, approaching Carnot efficiency with increasing wire length.Comment: 20 pages, 6 figure

Information propagation through quantum chains with fluctuating disorder

We investigate the propagation of information through one-dimensional quantum chains in fluctuating external fields. We find that information propagation is suppressed, but in a quite different way compared to the situation with static disorder. We study two settings: (i) a general model where an unobservable fluctuating field acts as a source of decoherence; (ii) the XX model with both observable and unobservable fluctuating fields. In the first setting we establish a noise threshold below which information can propagate ballistically and above which information is localised. In the second setting we find localisation for all levels of unobservable noise, whilst an observable field can yield diffusive propagation of information.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure