Jason George shares an article that explores building contingency at the cost of agility, and why taking the safe route may be more costly.  The next time you travel by airplane, look out the window and see if you can count how many engines are attached to the wings. Chances are pretty good you will find only one on each side. This holds true even on routes with long stretches over water or harsh terrain that provide no suitable diversion…

  Jason George provides a riveting read on cost and value, cunning tactics, and strategies from behind the scenes of manufacturers and pricing models. Sleep tight The choice of a mattress is fraught with implications, given how much of life is spent asleep and the infrequency of their purchase, not to mention the high price tag. Manufacturers are keenly aware of this and do their best to stoke the wallet-opening concerns of customers, using florid language to highlight coil counts…

  Jason George shares a post that explores the Harvard Business School’s case method of teaching; and how this experimental approach in the construction of their classrooms became a model for many industries to follow.  Harvard Business School’s campus is an extreme outlier, even when compared to those of peer institutions with similar histories. Situated on the Charles River across from the main buildings of its parent university, the self-contained layout was originally conceived in the 1920s. At the time…

  Jason George takes us back a few years to an original disruptor, Aereo, a company that tried to bypass regulations and use technology to distribute media content in the days before Netflix and the subscription-based business model.  Network effects The scrappy technology startup faced an existential threat. The company was down to its final arguments in the United States Supreme Court, where the ruling would determine its fate and if millions of invested dollars would be lost. The fact…

  Jason George shares an origin story of management consulting and lessons from the barnyard to highlight the benefits of putting people and practice before personal profit.  Marvin Bower faced a critical choice. He had led McKinsey & Company from its earliest years, in the process helping to define the fledgling field of management consulting. Now nearing retirement age, it was time to hand the reins to the next generation of leaders. As the principal shareholder in the partnership, Bower’s…

  Jason George explains with delightful simplicity how the formula used by Dr. Seuss to tell a story is a good example to follow for presentations. The distillation of the core idea to ensure comprehensive understanding that opens the door to deeper exploration. Author Theodor Geisel was dealing with some tough constraints. The audience for his next book required an instantly captivating story with a clear narrative arc, but there was a catch: they could only process a limited set…

  Jason George provides insight on the changes that may emerge after the current crisis.   A good strategy should be responsive to the various scenarios that could plausibly materialize, but even the most tightly crafted ones get blown apart when their subject is hit by an asteroid. In our current situation the object wreaking havoc on a planetary scale happens to be a microscopic bit of encapsulated genetic information containing less data than an image used as website filler….

  Jason George uses the evolution of the aviation industry as a means to explore the cost of risk aversion and how it can stymie growth. Building in every possible contingency as part of a strategy can end up producing something so encrusted with extraneous elements that agility is compromised. Alternatively, it may hew so closely to known and safe paths that it ends up losing the novelty that would make it compelling. If you can’t cut yourself loose from…

  Jason George explores the sale reach and marketing savvy of Time and Newsweek to demonstrate the success of a strategy that encompasses a large demographic; he then explains how and why the internet disrupted this  model by pursuing the individual.  In the early twentieth century Americans seeking the news had plenty of print sources to choose from, many of which were local papers. Even smallish towns had markets deep enough to support multiple publications, each jockeying to make their…

Jason George explores the relationship between the human need for ritual, community, and purpose, and the organizations or entrepreneurs who see that need as their next opportunity.   Come all ye faithful Some of the devoted choose to meet in the early morning, braving the cold and arriving at their nondescript buildings in the predawn darkness. The name on the sign outside might reference “soul” or “cross,” but there is nothing outwardly grand about these places. The real draw is…

Jason George takes a look at the mind maps of the London Cabbie to illustrate the difference between storing knowledge in the brain and accessing knowledge stored elsewhere. Having been built up over hundreds of years into its current dense and meandering tangle, London’s road network shows few signs of the regularity that characterizes its counterparts in younger countries. Prior to the advent of cheap map technology, anyone wanting to explore unfamiliar neighborhoods would need a detailed atlas to find…

Jason George tackles the intricacies of tariffs and taxes and discusses the potential of a fair system that takes into account concentrated benefits and diffuse costs while dealing with the interests of the few vs. the masses. Observers who dig even a little into government policy in areas like tariffs or taxes might note some peculiar features. Regulations are often crafted to provide benefits to a favored constituency, while the corresponding costs are borne by the broader population in some…