Latest
The Quota Stops at the Port: Europe's Cap on Chinese Hybrids.
Innovation Is a System
Most companies that say they need more innovation do not lack ideas. Their system is stuck at one stage: finding the right problems, converting ideas into funded offers, or scaling what works. Seven cases, from Corning to Xerox, show why R&D spending will not tell you which.
China Shock 2.0: The Panic Is Misplaced. The Exposure Is Not.
Europe is bracing for a China shock the data says is landing elsewhere. EU imports from China are up 42% since 2019, yet total EU imports rose just 4%. The real damage is in South-east Asia, China's own factories and input dependency, and the surplus may already have peaked.
The Same Bet Twice: How Corning Cut the Budget and Kept the Capability
The business that almost destroyed Corning in 2001 is now its largest again. What saved it was not research spending, which it cut by 45%, but where it moved the scientists.
Invented Here, Captured Elsewhere: The Difference Between Inventing and Profiting.
Xerox invented the personal computer and earned almost nothing from it. Filings from eight companies show why: value goes to whoever owns what the invention needs, not who spends most on R&D.
The Partners: How Xerox Fumbled and Fujifilm Reinvented.
Xerox invented the future and lost it; Fujifilm lost its core and rebuilt. Two partners, two books.
Shimano: Freewheeling
He chose the freewheel—not the frame, wheel or saddle—the hardest component to manufacture well. The logic was simple: the most difficult part gives you the right to make everything around it. Quality, price and service became the founding creed.
The Hidden Economics of Ecosystem Lock-In
The strategy behind Shimano’s ~70% share, Apple’s 2.5 billion devices and Nespresso’s resilience after patents expired is the same: ecosystem lock-in. It creates real advantage, but rarely a permanent one. John Deere’s FTC fight shows where that advantage can go too far.
Technology Starts the Race. Ecosystems Decide the Winner.
Ron Adner mapped the ecosystem. Richard Foster mapped the curve. Read together, they see what neither sees alone.
Toyota: The Machine Nobody Could Copy — Until It Had to Copy Itself
For seventy-five years, Toyota's operating system has been studied, copied, and celebrated, yet never truly replicated. Today, certification scandals, a ¥6 trillion buyout, China's rapid rise, and new leadership test whether Toyota can carry that system into electrification and the next generation.
The Metrics That Lie: Why Measurement Decays, and What Holds It in Place
"What gets measured gets managed" is management's most repeated—and most misunderstood—phrase. Every metric is a proxy for a value, and every proxy drifts as it is optimized. The executive's task is not choosing metrics but continually realigning them with the purpose they were meant to serve.
Book Review
The Book That Named Lean, and the Book That Explained It
Two books shaped how the world understands Toyota: "The Machine That Changed the World" (1990) and "The Toyota Way" (2004). Together they defined the operating system behind Toyota's success and remain the clearest account of industrial competitiveness in an era of reshoring and AI.
Company
Starbucks and the Aristocracy Trap: Too Big to Smell the Coffee?
Between 2023 and 2025, Starbucks' operating income fell by 51%. China market share collapsed from over 40% to 14%. Six consecutive quarters of US same-store sales declined. This is not a story about bad execution.
Analysis
What Survives: The Seven Factors of Corporate Longevity
Corporate longevity is the exception, not the rule. The median publicly traded US company lasts only about a decade, and size offers no protection.
Book Review
Two Empires, One Lesson
Joël Glenn Brenner's The Emperors of Chocolate remains the only narrative business journalism of the American confectionery industry written from the inside...
Company
Fujifilm: The Second Foundation — How a Company Invented Its Way Out of Extinction
This case examines how Komori's Second Foundation strategy turned 80 years of film science into four monopoly-grade businesses.
Analysis
The Excellence Trap: When Operational Perfection Meets Technological Disruption
Operational excellence may be replicable, strategic, and adaptive. Christensen asks the harder question: can it survive when disruption destroys the product category itself?
Book Review
The Dilemma That Never Resolved: Christensen's Classic, Tested Against Thirty Years of Evidence
The Innovator's Dilemma is the most influential strategy book of the past three decades. It is also the most misunderstood, the most misapplied, and — in certain crucial respects — the most incomplete.
Company
Intel Corporation: The $100 Billion Question — What Is Intel in 2026?
Intel is not a company that has lost its way. It is a company in the middle of redefining what it is — simultaneously an IDM, a contract foundry, and a national industrial asset.
Analysis
Value-Based Pricing and the Good-Better-Best Model: A Roadmap to Hidden Profits
Most companies are leaving significant margin on the table — not because their products lack value, but because their pricing systems fail to capture it. This article explains the framework that closes the gap, and follows one team at AeroVision Systems as they apply it in the field.
Book Review
The Paranoid and the Complacent: Andy Grove's Classic, Revisited in 2026
Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive" remains one of the most important strategy books ever written by a practising executive. Thirty years on, the framework is sharper than ever..
Company
Costco Wholesale: The Coherent Strategy — How a Retailer Built Seven Mutually Reinforcing Moats
Costco built a powerful retail system by capping margins, paying employees well, charging membership fees, and avoiding ads. Each choice reinforces the others—creating durable competitive moats.
Analysis
The Architecture of Great Work: Why Job Design Is the Most Underrated Source of Competitive Advantage
Most firms treat job design as HR administration. The companies in this article treat it as operational architecture: a system that determines whether employees build institutional knowledge and judgment—or cycle through roles too quickly to develop either.