Improving productivity to stay competitive is a survival imperative for businesses.

But reducing costs to the point of massively cutting intangible investment (innovation, training, etc.) might improve the short-term accounting result but will destroy value in the medium term.

This is the mistake, alas classic, made by the two illustrious shareholders of KraftHeinz. What’s more interesting is that one of them had already made the same mistake with Coca-Cola: how to turn a corporate strategy into an accounting KPI at the expense of shareholder value!