Business Thinking

How do you get better at understanding — and therefore doing — business?

Feature image for Building a Valuable Business? It's How You Spend It That Matters

Building a Valuable Business? It's How You Spend It That Matters

The skill of capital allocation — a mysterious, under-discussed element of remarkable business performance.

Feature image for Beck’s Measurement Model, or Why It’s So Damn Hard to Measure Software Development

Beck’s Measurement Model, or Why It’s So Damn Hard to Measure Software Development

A pretty useful lens for when a business activity is easy to measure, and when it is not. Part of the Becoming Data Driven in Business Series.

 Members only
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What’s an Operational Definition Anyway?

Two principles on collecting data, from the field of Statistical Process Control. As with most principles in SPC, this is both simpler and more important than you might think.

Feature image for Charlie Munger’s Supply Demand Curve Puzzle

Charlie Munger’s Supply Demand Curve Puzzle

What a puzzle from Charlie Munger tells us about a supply-side business model with unreasonably high returns.

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The Capital Cycle

What a famous investing framework — part of the modern canon of value investing — tells us about the expertise of capital in business.

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Understand the Shape of the Game You're Playing

What it looks like when you come up with a diagnosis for your business, a thing that is necessary for strategy.

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Feature image for Lee Walker and the Dell Growth Plateau

Lee Walker and the Dell Growth Plateau

How Lee Walker overcame Dell's biggest growth plateau in 1986. A story about capital, imagination, and creative deal-making.

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Fundraising Without Investors

Two personal stories of capital expertise 'in the small' — or why financing creativity can be just as important to smaller businesses, as it is in larger, more sophisticated ones.

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The Skill of Capital

What, exactly, is the skill of capital? What does it consist of? How do you recognise it? We walk through three stories, and then talk about the shape of the skill in practice.

Feature image for Executing on Becoming Data Driven: The Technicals

Executing on Becoming Data Driven: The Technicals

A technical overview of how I'm applying the methods and ideas of the Becoming Data Driven in Business series.

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