Sublime

Figure 23. The combination of Scale of your database and Value per transaction is a determining factor for deciding if personalization is profitable.

With Ford in almost complete possession of the low-price field, it would have been suicidal to compete with him head on. No conceivable amount of capital short of the United States Treasury could have sustained the losses required to take volume away from him at his own game. The strategy we devised was to take a bite from the top of his position,

The second-best scenario is a serial entrepreneur CEO planning to build out a new team. Third best is a team that did amazing things, but perhaps due to macro market conditions did not achieve a high return for investors.

Clayton Christensen wrote about the innovator’s dilemma, where companies defend their turf rather than disrupting it. Almost by definition, they’re trying to get the most ROI out of products they’ve created rather than disrupting their industry with something totally new.

Now put the clock forward twenty years—or perhaps fifty years—and ask yourself how many now unknown industries will likely exist then. If history is any predictor of the future, again the answer is many of them.

tracked—and then revised or adapted as circumstances dictate.

in October 2004, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was announced as the new managing director of LEGO,