Business Thinking

Every experimentation and iteration loop looks the same, but the vast majority of folk in business don't seem to have the discipline to execute till the end. Why this is, and why it's hard.

Focus may be about saying no to good ideas, but it certainly doesn't mean doing one thing at a time. This is what focus looks like at an organisational level, told through the story of a business turnaround and the Marine Corps approach to war.

Several stories about one of the hardest maxims to put to practice in business.

Professor Rand Spiro on why (and how!) business cases are more important to learn from than synthesised business concepts.

Cognitive Flexibility Theory creator Rand Spiro on what complexity theory has to say about the wickedness of business.

Competitive advantages in business that come from cultural differences tend to be counter-positioning, not process power. Why this is surprising, and why it matters.

What it's like putting Amazon's famed Working Backwards process to practice in a small company context, and what was surprising and difficult about it.

What a question about growth marketing tells us about expertise — and why expert-novice differences are so useful to probe if you're a practitioner.

If you read history for concept instantiations, then: a) how do you hunt for cases for each concept, and b) how do you identify new concepts from the history you read? We look at answers to both questions.

If everyone competent iterates their way to the same kind of hiring process, then you can probably use that process as a smell test when you're evaluating companies.