modelthinking

The older adults are often far more motivated to perform well. They try harder. They engage more. They are more serious, more present, more involved. To them, the performance matters a great deal. It says something about their mental capabilities—and they are out to prove that they haven’t lost the touch as they’ve aged. Not so younger adults. Ther

When development of large wind-farms in China began in the late 1990s, all turbines were imported. But Chinese manufacturers acquired wind turbine technology through joint ventures, licensing, and acquisitions, and by 2009 China’s market was dominated by locally-produced turbines. Today, China’s Goldwind is one of the largest wind turbine manufactu

Instead of spending your time worrying about finding the right topic, you will spend your time actually working on your already existing interests and doing what is necessary to make informed decisions – reading, thinking and writing.

There’s an even bigger challenge needed to build a lasting business: scaling your taste, not just into a single object, but into an organization that can build and distribute many products that reflect that taste

Finally, he came upon a promising beginning: a series of pictures, of a windup toy, an automobile, and a boy on a bicycle. Under each was a question: “What makes it go?” At last, he thought, something that was going to explain the basic science, starting with the fundamentals of mechanics (the toy), chemistry (the car), and biology (the boy). Alas,

Militaries are engines of innovation because they occasionally deal with problems so important—so urgent, so vital—that money and manpower are removed as obstacles, and those involved collaborate in ways that are hard to emulate during calm times.

A system can be analyzed as an eco system if it has independent, competing agents who can change and adapt to their environment.

The risk of any asset then becomes the risk added to this “market portfolio,” which is measured with a beta. The beta is a relative risk measure and it is standardized around one; a stock with a beta above one is more exposed to market risk than the average stock, and a stock with a beta below one is less exposed. The expected return on the investm

My friend’s wisdom was a type of abstraction, abstracting heartbreak down to its very essence. Abstraction can appear to take you further and further away from reality, but really you’re getting closer and closer to the heart of the matter. To get to the heart, you have to strip away clothes and skin and flesh and bone.

All of my agency hacks are kind of like this—seeking out big, glaring edges that most people might rather ignore.