Sublime

“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess.” WARREN BUFFETT

This is a different kind of prompt, courtesy of the management guru Peter Drucker. The idea is to catch the leading players in a market off balance by turning their strength into a weakness.

To sustain their luck, start-ups need a shifting mix of proprietary technology and low costs, but the actions that support one of these objectives often undermines the other.

A few examples include: Greed is good. Maximizing pleasure from consumption is the goal. A billion acts of selfishness will lead to a prosperous society. The social duty of business is just to maximize its profits. There’s no such thing as society, only individuals—that was Margaret Thatcher’s famous quote. Markets are efficient; other institutions

Bruce Greenwald’s book Competition Demystified was the concept of “local economies of

The business hadn’t even really been Sam’s idea but Tara’s. Tara had been running the Centre for Effective Altruism, in Berkeley, and Sam, while at Jane Street, had become one of her biggest donors. Through the spring and summer of 2017, the two of them were on the phone constantly. At some point Sam revealed his romantic interest in her; at some o

Choice architects (such as Carolyn the cafeteria director) have many opportunities to choose defaults, and they can do so in ways that are self-serving or welfare enhancing.

Most economists now accept the need for more realistic assumptions in economic theory; and methodologies such as network analysis, heterogeneous agent models, evolutionary game theory, and economic lab experiments are becoming standard.