In The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications, Aswath Damodaran presents the corporate life cycle as a universal key for demystifying business finance, strategy and company valuation.

Damodaran is a professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University. Known as “the Dean of Valuation,” he has published extensively in academic journals, written many books for students and practitioners, and remains the world’s foremost expert on the subject of corporate valuation. In his latest book, he outlines how corporations age, describes the characteristics of each stage of their life cycle, and discusses implications for managers and investors.

In his conversation with Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Damodaran outlines how to determine where in the life cycle your company is at, what leadership skills and behaviors are required at each stage, and how the distribution of life cycle stages has changed over recent decades.

Key topics discussed: 

[00:56] The stages of the corporate life cycle
[02:21] How to determine your stage in the life cycle
[03:36] The importance of acting your age
[10:06] Balancing capital allocation across the portfolio
[11:27] Leadership skills for different stages in the life cycle
[16:56] Creating value at any stage of the life cycle
[20:21] How the distribution of life cycle “shapes” is changing
[22:58] The art of communicating complex ideas in simple ways

Additional inspirations from Aswath Damodaran:

• Applied Corporate Finance (Wiley, 2014)
• Investment Valuation: Tools and Techniques for Determining the Value of Any Asset (Wiley, 2012)
• Musings on Markets  (Blog)