Description:
Huge payoffs in business usually entail embracing lots of risk. That's the message of Real Options, by Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka. The authors argue that standard models of evaluating strategic investments fail to consider the element of risk fully. "Uncertainty creates opportunities. Managers should welcome, not fear uncertainty," write Amram, a California-based consultant, and Kulatilaka, a Boston University finance professor, in describing the "real options approach." The book provides plenty of theoretical case studies, formulas, and charts that demonstrate how to shape business strategies using a system based on option-pricing. The method can value everything from undeveloped land to untried products. "With it, market leaders will understand how value is created in an uncertain environment and will know how much risk they are bearing," the authors write. Risk is also inherently dangerous--that's an unintended lesson of Real Options. The two Nobel Prize-winning economists whose work serves as the foundation for this book--Robert Merton and Myron Scholes--were the brains behind Long-Term Capital Asset Management, the notorious hedge fund that was rescued under a plan engineered by the Federal Reserve. With that caveat in mind, business planners and managers should pursue Real Options with their eyes wide open. --Dan Ring
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