How can a company that has never turned a profit have a multibillion dollar valuation? Why do some start-ups attract large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, finance professor and experienced investor, argues that the power of story drives corporate value, adding substance to numbers and persuading even cautious investors to take risks. In business, there are the storytellers who spin compelling narratives and the number-crunchers who construct meaningful models and accounts. Both are essential to success, but only by combining the two, Damodaran argues, can a business deliver and sustain value. Through a range of case studies, Narrative and Numbers describes how storytellers can better incorporate and narrate numbers and how number-crunchers can calculate more imaginative models that withstand scrutiny. Damodaran considers Uber's debut and how narrative is key to understanding different valuations. He investigates why Twitter and Facebook were valued in the billions of dollars at their public offerings, and why one (Twitter) has stagnated while the other (Facebook) has grown. Damodaran also looks at more established business models such as Apple and Amazon to demonstrate how a company's history can both enrich and constrain its narrative. And through Vale, a global Brazil-based mining company, he shows the influence of external narrative, and how country, commodity, and currency can shape a company's story. Narrative and Numbers reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around numbers and how one can best test a story's plausibility.

How can a company that has never turned a profit have a multibillion dollar valuation? Why do some start-ups attract large investments while others do not? Aswath Damodaran, finance professor and experienced investor, argues that the power of story drives corporate value, adding substance to numbers and persuading even cautious investors to take risks. In business, there are the storytellers who spin compelling narratives and the number-crunchers who construct meaningful models and accounts. Both are essential to success, but only by combining the two, Damodaran argues, can a business deliver and sustain value. Damodaran considers Uber's debut and how narrative is key to understanding different valuations. He investigates why Twitter and Facebook were valued in the billions of dollars at their public offerings, and why one (Twitter) has stagnated while the other (Facebook) has grown. He also looks at more established business models such as Apple and Amazon to demonstrate how a company's history can both enrich and constrain its narrative. Narrative and Numbers reveals the benefits, challenges, and pitfalls of weaving narratives around numbers and how one can best test a story's plausibility.

Considering the recent impact of the capital market on corporate strategy, this text analyzes, through argument and supportive case studies, how pressures from the capital bull market of the 1990s and bear market of the early 2000s, have reshaped management action and calculation in large, publicly quoted US and UK corporations. Beginning with the dissatisfaction with classical strategy and its limited engagement with the processes of financialization, the book moves on to cover three detailed company case studies (General Electric, Ford and GlaxoSmithKline) which use long run financial data and analysis of company and industry narratives to illustrate and explore key themes. The book emphasizes the importance of company and industry narrative, while also analyzing long term financial results, and helps to explain the limits of management action and the burden of expectations placed on corporate governance. Presenting financial and market information on trajectory in an accessible way, this book provides a distinctive, critical social science account of management in large UK and US corporations, and it is a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers of business, management, political economy and non-mainstream economics. short listed for the 2007 IPEG Book Prize

Shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year Awards in the Sales and Marketing category. As jobs become increasingly similar, there are two skills that everyone needs if they’re going to thrive. These are the ability to interrogate and make sense of data, and the ability to use insights extracted from data to persuade others to act. Analytics + storytelling = influence. Humans are hardwired to respond to stories and story structure. Stories are how we make sense of and navigate the world. We respond best to stories that are based on evidence. But storytellers need to use data as the foundation of stories, not as the actual stories themselves. To be truly impactful, rational facts need to be presented with a veneer of emotion. The Big Data revolution means more data is available than ever. The trouble is, most people aren’t very numerate or good at statistics. Many find it hard to look at data and extract insights. Meanwhile, those for whom numbers hold no fear don’t always make the best storytellers. They mistakenly believe they need to prove their point by showing their workings. There are some simple and effective rules of data-driven storytelling that help everyone tell more compelling, evidence-based stories, whoever they need to convince. Narrative by Numbers shows you how.

This book focuses on socio-economic developments of Bangladesh by challenging the dominant international narrative of the case being termed as “development surprise”, “development paradox” or “development conundrum,” given the absence of good governance. In doing so, the book examines the political economic dynamics and offers valuable insights into the current state of the Bangladeshi economy in light of stability, transformability and sustainability. Pointing to the ‘high’ rate of growth in gross domestic product (GDP) in Bangladesh, there is wide belief that economic growth can be obtained even without functioning institutions, and is more important than an inclusive political system. Advocates go on to argue that authoritarianism may be condoned as long as a steady course of development is perused. However, the inadequacy of comparative analysis in to the state of the economy of Bangladesh vis-à-vis other relevant economies makes such claims myopic and parochial. This book thus investigates the numbers and narratives to ascertain the validity of such assertions and lamentations by looking at the necessary and sufficient conditions of development. The necessary conditions imply an incisive inquiry into the factors of economic growth— land, labour, capital and technology while sufficient conditions warrant a penetrating incisive inquiry into the factors of economic growth— land, labour, capital and technology. As such, the book explores development by drawing variables of politics and economics to find out a causal relationship, and interjects these variables have on themes such as growth, agriculture, manufacturing industry, financial sector, health, education, poverty and inequality.

"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author… Numbers Don't Lie takes everything that makes his writing great and boils it down into an easy-to-read format. I unabashedly recommend this book to anyone who loves learning."--Bill Gates, GatesNotes From the author of How the World Really Works, an essential guide to understanding how numbers reveal the true state of our world--exploring a wide range of topics including energy, the environment, technology, transportation, and food production. Vaclav Smil's mission is to make facts matter. An environmental scientist, policy analyst, and a hugely prolific author, he is Bill Gates' go-to guy for making sense of our world. In Numbers Don't Lie, Smil answers questions such as: What's worse for the environment--your car or your phone? How much do the world's cows weigh (and what does it matter)? And what makes people happy? From data about our societies and populations, through measures of the fuels and foods that energize them, to the impact of transportation and inventions of our modern world--and how all of this affects the planet itself--in Numbers Don't Lie, Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge conventional thinking. Packed with fascinating information and memorable examples, Numbers Don't Lie reveals how the US is leading a rising worldwide trend in chicken consumption, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet). Urgent and essential, with a mix of science, history, and wit--all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics--Numbers Don't Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true.