A few weeks ago, I attended the bat mitzvah of a close family member. Bat and bar mitzvahs celebrate the coming of age into adulthood for Jewish kids and occur when they turn 13, or soon thereafter. It got me thinking (during a brief moment when I wasn’t immersed in the service, of course!) about how…
In the early weeks of March, many in the tech sector were surprised and distressed by the sudden collapse of a once-great institution, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Founded in 1983, it was the 16th largest bank in the US and was a very active and positive influence on the technology sector — in Silicon Valley, of…
I teach a strategy class at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. This month, we have been discussing what is known as “Blue Ocean” strategy. In short, Blue Ocean suggests that rather than seeking differentiation from competitors, organizations should work to define completely new industries (“spaces”) in which there are no competitors at all. One often-cited example is Nintendo. For…
Last week, I attended a ceremony at Boston University at which a good friend and colleague was honored with an endowed chair, thanks to his impact teaching entrepreneurship and much more (congratulations, Ian!). Ever since, I have given a lot of thought to a point he made in his talk that day: One of the challenges in teaching…
Try this simple math exercise: If you had one cent on the first day of the month and you doubled it every day for the next 30 days, how much money would you have at the end of the month? The answer may surprise you: $5,368,709! Equally surprising is that since the money in this example grows exponentially,…
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the concept of truisms — those often-simple statements that we all believe to be correct. These can be helpful, of course, especially in a business context. We can’t…
It’s common knowledge that data is valuable and data analysis can provide significant, often critical, insights for organizations in all fields.So, it is often quite helpful to “consult the data” when making important decisions. However, and because there are many ways in which data can be misunderstood or used incorrectly (if not deliberately manipulated), data…
Have you heard about the “Two Pizza Rule?” It was introduced by Jeff Bezos in the early days of Amazon. The idea: every internal team should be small enough that it can be fed with just two pizzas. Beyond that, Bezos believed, the group would start to become less effective. Pizza aside, there is research to…
A statement I often hear and that is attributed to a range of business gurus, was apparently first said in 1976 by Grace Hopper: “The most dangerous phrase in the English language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’” The clear implication is that remaining on a given path, simply because you are already on…
I often hear about companies that want to use a process of “best practices” in their planning work. This may seem like a logical place to start, however, in my mind, the best practice — especially when it comes to developing strategy for an organization — is to not use “best practices” at all. Consider…