Exploring ideas in strategy, management and how organizations really work.
Is this thing on The world of stand-up comedy is known for its grueling circuit of obscure shows in small venues, where thousands of anonymous hopefuls work through their material with the aim of building a following and one day…
In the bubble As Paul Wolfowitz stepped out of his suburban Washington home one spring morning in 2007, he was greeted by the unusual sight of journalists camped out on the curb. The past weeks had seen intensifying scrutiny of…
Level up The Japanese company had been in the business of making playing cards for over 75 years, but its core market had become stagnant as customer preferences changed. It had produced few significant innovations in recent decades, aside from…
Drugs and drink As 19th-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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Just browsing A feature of the retail landscape across the state of Kerala in southern India is the large store devoted almost entirely to the sari, that single piece of fabric which, when draped and pleated in various ways, has…
All the news that’s fit to post The New York Times was one of the first traditional media companies to recognize the growing significance of the phenomenon known formally as the World Wide Web. It decided early on to establish…