Making Lemonade from a Bumper Lemon Crop:
Choose Your Ingredients Wisely

Abstract

Buy low, sell high, put capital where it generates the highest risk-adjusted rates of return, and pursue those most attractive investment opportunities first. These maxims should be without debate and apply regardless of venue. Yet, too often subjectivity and agendas countermand objectivity, and this phenomenon often creeps into the capital budgeting process. In this article, we will contrast capital deployment in different environments and illustrate how, particularly in a corporate setting, certain factors—some systemic, others political—conspire to obscure and limit the availability of data necessary to ensure the intelligent allocation of resources. At this unpredicted economic juncture when capital budgets have been curtailed and a spectrum of companies and competitors lick their wounds, boards, management, and investors should seize upon the extraordinary opportunity to recast frameworks for growth through capital budgeting best practices.