How an obscure brand conquered the world

Posted on April 24, 2019

Drugs and drink

As 19^th-century America regained its footing after the Civil War, the dislocation caused by rapid urbanization and industrialization created a fertile environment for innovators and hucksters of all stripes. Rising prosperity coupled with the intensifying rhythms of life shined a spotlight on various diseases, both real and imagined.

Curiosity and gullibility often outstripped common sense as people sought to treat their ailments, which could include specific symptoms like migraines or indigestion, or vaguer complaints like a surfeit of nervous energy. Sufferers turned to a growing number of tonics and liniments and oils and other concoctions of dubious efficacy.1 These were sometimes spiked with exotic substances but just as often had no active ingredients. Nonetheless manufacturers would make sweeping, unsubstantiated claims to cure all manner of diseases.

Creators of these so-called patent medicines, with their quaint and hyperbolic names, could generate extraordinary fortunes before interest evaporated and the market moved on to the next big thing.2 Entrepreneurs looking to get rich would hawk their creations to prospective buyers through new forms of advertising, crowded into newspaper pages and painted on every available surface, dominating the public consciousness. The lines demarcating the fledgling pharmaceutical industry from general commerce had yet to form, so the market was open to anyone with a persuasive pitch. Read more…

In their similarly frantic desire for wellness, modern Westerners haven’t advanced as much as we like to think. ↩
The industry is more formalized and respectable today, but the billions of dollars coursing through the healthcare system suggest a similar mad scramble for profits. ↩
Notably including the inventor we’re about to encounter, John Pemberton. ↩
“The” in the corporate name always being capitalized, to distinguish the current iteration from its predecessor company, which it supplanted after some truly byzantine corporate machinations. ↩
This was its slogan in the U.S. in the early 1980s, the “it” being unspecified but broad enough for the hearer to imbue it with whatever aspirations he saw fit. ↩
Someting validated personally: when I asked the tour guide at Atlanta’s World of Coca-Cola Museum about this unsavory part of the company’s heritage, he was quick to deny it, but without the indignation of one being falsely accused. ↩
One summer in my college years I was fortunate to spend a week in an isolated village in Mali that lacked electricity, telecommunications, or plumbing. But even there one could find lukewarm Coke, cooled however slightly from the baking ambient temperatures by a small generator-powered refrigerator in the back of a tiny shop. ↩
Should humans ever colonize the Moon, the Coca-Cola supply rocket won’t be far behind. ↩
Even billionaires are not immune: Warren Buffett is famous for his predilection for Coke, which he goes through at the diabetes-defying rate of 5 cans (1.75 liters) a day. ↩
The diamond industry pulled this off to great effect, essentially telling men that the best way—even we dare say the only way—to prove to your bride-to-be that you love her is by giving us a whole lot of your money. ↩

herding cats

Posted on April 24, 2019

the process of managing diverging personalities or perspectives in order to achieve a broader objective, which is being hindered by the multiplicity of opinions or goals; as with cats, which stubbornly refuse to follow instructions even if they are perfectly understood, the term suggests independent orientations that may be unhelpful but are not actively malicious; the herder may experience frustration or weariness depending on how many metaphorical cats there are; surprisingly not the only feline corporate jargon, with hairball as another example

Stand apart by doing the same thing

Clusters of potential

Posted on April 17, 2019

Cultural masala

Prior to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, the quota for Indian immigrants to the United States was fixed at 100 persons per year. This was infinitesimal relative to the populations of both the sending and receiving countries, especially considering that even then India had roughly half a billion people.

The lifting of this restriction unleashed a wave of entrepreneurial immigrants. This group included numerous budding restaurateurs who brought the varied cuisines of their home country to their adopted cities. Most Americans at the time were unfamiliar with Indian cooking, so local support networks and a natural customer base of those from similar backgrounds meant these early establishments were often located near each other.

A curious thing happened starting in the 1970s, as the broader South Asian population grew larger and more restaurants opened. Instead of spreading out across their localities to reach more potential consumers with their curries and dosa, many prospective owners chose locations directly adjacent to the few existing ones. Rather than staking out new territory, these restaurants and related businesses chose to go where the competition was most intense. A dozen eateries featuring comparable Indian or Pakistani or Bangladeshi cuisine could be reached within a few minutes’ walk. Read more…

Despite some common features across regions a monolithic Indian cuisine does not exist, and what is commonly known as Indian food in the West is generally that of a small part of northern India. ↩
Prodigious appetites excepted. ↩
The phenomenon is not exclusively American, with London in particular recognized for the number and quality of its South Asian restaurants, notably the numerous options lined up on Brick Lane. ↩
Doubly true if the clientele has a high percentage of Nepalis, who would know the real deal and quickly shun impostors. ↩
In the category of electric vehicles, some assume that Tesla is the future Ford, while others believe it will fade after performing its thankless pioneering role. Time will tell. ↩
These are sometimes segregated by price point, with the luxury marques off in their own clusters to avoid any association with their plebeian brethren. ↩
An example of Hotelling’s Law. ↩
Which has been known to irk city officials and bewildered pedestrians alike. ↩

planting in their fields

Posted on April 16, 2019

to make a competitive move that encroaches on a position staked out by another party, an action likely to be perceived as provocative, devious, or disrespectful, as in “I don’t think starting our own kids’ streaming service is a good idea, Disney will think we’re planting in their fields”; the ownership of the metaphorical land in question could be based merely on tradition or some more formal arrangement between the entities involved; this action risks triggering a territorial reaction by the organization whose fields are thus sown, as it has the implicit right to cultivate and enjoy the harvest from them

Bundling value and offers you can’t refuse

But wait, there's more

Posted on April 10, 2019

Classroom daydreams

Although Harvard Business School student Dan Bricklin was physically present in class, his mind was elsewhere. He had become increasingly preoccupied with the inefficiency of analyzing business problems by means of calculator and paper, which often required tedious reworking of entire sequences when initial conditions changed. He envisioned a computer program that could reference data laid out in a grid and automatically recalculate it when needed, prefiguring the development of what is today known as the spreadsheet.

In early 1979 Bricklin cofounded a company that produced the first commercial spreadsheet software, named VisiCalc.1 Although it was the innovator, in the heady early days of the personal computing revolution his product would soon be eclipsed by the cryptically-named Lotus 1-2-3, not coincidentally developed by an early colleague of Bricklin’s. This program would go on to define the market through the 1980s. It had the good luck of being tied to the fortunes of the IBM PC, which went on to dominate the business world, unlike the Apple computers for which VisiCalc was first developed.

Those below a certain age will have never heard of either of these trailblazers, instead knowing the spreadsheet as the domain of Microsoft. Its now-ubiquitous Excel entered the fray late, but when paired with the growth of its Windows operating system it would go on to become the de facto global standard, relegating Lotus 1-2-3 and VisiCalc to historical footnotes. Read more…

His invention is commemorated in the classroom where he conceived of it by a plaque, which includes some of his initial sketches showing how a spreadsheet could work. Even Harvard formally acknowledges that not paying attention to the professor can pay off. ↩
And if you are currently using any of the open-source competition, bravo for your iconoclasm, but I’m guessing you don’t deal with corporate IT on the regular. ↩
A customer who probably should be sleeping, given the late hour at which many of these come on, which is not conducive to clear financial decisions. ↩
Unless you follow college sports, reality television, historical dramas, cooking, adventure travel, children’s cartoons, and political news with equal fervor. ↩
In a remarkable example of either coincidence or cunning, users of the Macintosh version of Microsoft Office 98 would see its menu icon for Internet Explorer appear larger than those of other applications, but only when Netscape was also running. I can find no evidence either way as to whether this was intentional, but it has a strong whiff of subliminal messaging. Somewhere in Redmond, a programmer knows the truth. ↩
No, you probably don’t need the upgrade/platinum package/full coverage. ↩
Be careful not to run afoul of your local regulators though, especially if you have what looks like a monopoly. ↩

puts and takes

Posted on April 8, 2019

the various elements that together make up the substance of a deal or compromise between two or more parties, with “puts” being the items of value that are offered or contributed, and “takes” referring to one side’s requirements or the value it expects to capture; these can serve as bargaining chips that are metaphorically placed on or removed from the table during negotiations; used in the context of deals that have a lot of moving parts, suggesting many small details that must be analyzed and valued appropriately before a successful conclusion can be reached, as in “We need to lay out all the puts and takes before we go ahead with this joint venture”

Weather forecasts, big bets, and predicting the future

Effects and causes

Posted on April 3, 2019

Fair winds and following seas

For thousands of years people attempted to predict the weather, with limited success.

A rich folklore developed around various methods of forecasting, including the color of the sky, or the behavior of animals, or even aching joints in the elderly.1 In a few places and under certain conditions these could loosely be relied on. But their broader predictive value was low, and these forecasts had limited ability to see beyond the next weather system.

Humans remained at the mercy of wind and rain when going about their daily routines, farming, or traveling. Voyages by ship were especially precarious, as seas could easily be deadly for vessels caught unaware by storms.

This all changed in a meaningful way on August 1, 1861, when the British Meteorological Office issued its first official forecast, covering the weather two days out for selected cities across the U.K. and on the nearby continent. So began the practice of systematic predictions shared with the general public, providing the ability to plan outdoor activities and subtly influencing the rhythms of commerce. Read more…

One such method was even mentioned by Jesus 2,000 years ago, when he noted that the redness of the sky was used as a predictor for stormy weather by the scholars of the time. This is due to refraction of sunlight on clouds, captured in the more recent proverb “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.” ↩
The staggering mathematical complexity of forecasting means weather bureaus invest in some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Even then the results are not nearly as accurate as some would like, leading to the irate local television viewer putting the hapless weatherman on blast. ↩
Often finance bros, these can be recognized by their corporate-branded fleeces and the jocular manner that belies the haggard look in their eyes. ↩
More importantly, they want to identify and act on these before anyone else does, because information that is commonly known is no longer actionable, at least if you want to make a killing. ↩
Also an attempt to import some of that legendary Teutonic stability to what was a shakier British economy. ↩
Keen observers will note that this money did not materialize from the ether and was in fact provided in a circuitous way by British taxpayers, who vented their frustration on the politicians who presided over the policy, hastening their electoral decline. ↩
If nothing else the ongoing drama has introduced those non-Brits among us to the spectacle that is parliamentary debate in the House of Commons, complete with bellows for “order” issuing from its speaker, to whom members ritually bow, and the queen’s ceremonial mace, this last feature being extra foreign to Americans, what with the royal overthrow that got the country started. ↩

eat your own dog food

Posted on April 3, 2019

to be a consumer of the product or service that one’s employer offers to the general public, thus simultaneously inhabiting the role of customer as well as seller; originated in the technology industry, in which companies used their software for their internal operations, forcing them to grapple directly with the instability and bugs inherent in code development; in a broader business context the phrase is usually divorced from its technical origins, and the unappetizing nature of dog food and the comical imagery it evokes makes it informal; if prefaced by a negative (“He won’t…), can serve as an indication that the subject is unwilling to share in the burdens or unpleasantness that he imposes on others; it remains unclear why any party, at any time, would be willing to ingest dog food, either their own or that belonging to someone else; not used by those who wish to be understood

Not knowing what you already know

Per aspera ad astra

Posted on March 27, 2019

73 seconds

Rocket engineer Robert Boisjoly was extremely concerned.

According to his calculations, a structural component that linked segments of the system he worked on was prone to failure if ambient temperatures were too low. This part had been assigned the highest criticality level for mission success. In recent days managers had cancelled launches several times as weather issues and minor equipment failures kept cropping up. Pressure was high to stick to the schedule, but he felt strongly that another delay was necessary.

On the night before the new launch, Boisjoly and his colleagues had an intense conference call with their counterparts where he laid out his reasoning. Notwithstanding the data his team sent and an extended back-and-forth, his warnings ultimately did not penetrate the managerial bureaucracy and convince those in authority to scrub yet again. The launch was still on when morning dawned, despite record cold.

Unlike many modern missions, this one did more than loft payloads into orbit. Its technical aspects were hardly the focus, as the American public was captivated by the presence among the crew of a school teacher, who was about to become the first member of the general public in space.

It was January 28, 1986, and the Space Shuttle Challenger waited on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral on an unusually frigid day in southern Florida. The temperature was below freezing and icicles hung from the launch structure. Read more…

Despite popular perception the Challenger itself did not explode, at least not in the conventional sense of being destroyed in an incendiary reaction. It instead broke apart violently as the stack comprising the boosters and fuel tank cracked up, subjecting the orbiter to tremendous aerodynamic stress. The astronauts survived the initial disintegration as their crew compartment blew out of the vapor cloud intact, though at this point there was no conceivable rescue. They were alive, if not conscious, when their cabin struck the surface of the Atlantic Ocean a few minutes later. ↩
Along with the human tragedy and massive disruptions to NASA, another knock-on effect of the Challenger disaster was the eventual decommissioning of a planned California shuttle base, for which billions of dollars had already been spent. It was shut down without seeing a single launch. ↩
The familiar orange external fuel tank was originally painted white, matching the shuttle. NASA soon realized this was unnecessary and saved several hundred kilograms in paint weight by skipping that step. ↩
The most likely rescue scenario involved preparing another shuttle for launch in an extremely rapid manner and sending it up to transfer the astronauts. The supply of breathable air for the Columbia crew was the limiting factor, leaving only a small window when rescue was possible. This would involve numerous procedures never attempted before, seriously risk the lives of a second shuttle crew, and transfix the entire world for days. But who doesn’t want to believe that it ultimately would have succeeded, adding an epic chapter to the human story of discovery? ↩
At the end of his contribution to the report investigating the Challenger disaster physicist Richard Feynman wrote “…reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” ↩
And if you were wondering, no, managing the people who do the work is not the core work. ↩

bottom-up

Posted on March 27, 2019

an adjective that indicates that the following analysis will be exhaustive and require significant effort, as in, “We need to do a bottom-up look at those valuation models”; depending on context may mean starting from scratch or evaluating something from its most elemental components, in a form of inductive reasoning; used when the hypotheses or principles that would support a top-down, deductive reasoning approach are deficient or cannot be determined; can also be used to give listeners confidence that the referenced work has been thorough and no pertinent details have been overlooked