sari

I don’t buy the argument that being brandless was a mistake. Brandless is the brand and it was very clever of them. If there is something they got right, it was the branding. What undid them is the cost of goods sold. It’s beyond me as to why they didn’t go premium with pricing and focused on lesser categories. But they had a thesis to follow and... See more

Technology is both the problem and the solution.

It's true that the gains from picking the right problem can be greater than the gains from having better tactical execution because the gains from picking the right problem can be unbounded, but it's also much easier to improve tactical execution and doing so also helps with picking the right problem because having faster execution lets you... See more

The good-to-great companies at their best followed a simple mantra: “Anything that does not fit with our Hedgehog Concept, we will not do. We will not launch unrelated businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn’t fit, we don’t do it.

At some point while I was trying to write a dissertation as a parent of a preschooler and an infant, I attended a workshop from which I remember exactly one thing: Touch Your Project Every Day. We all lead busy lives, one of the organizers explained, and it can be difficult to find long stretches of time to focus and work through such a large and... See more

It’s one thing to understand something intellectually. It’s another to make it real, day in and day out.