subject
Business
How firms are organized and how they compete — strategy, operations, and the structural reasons some businesses persist while others don't.
12 lessons in business
Franchise and Corporate: Two Ways the Same Brand Operates
Walk into two McDonald's restaurants on opposite sides of a city.
3 min · comparison
How a Coffee Shop Decides What to Charge
A latte at the shop on the corner costs $5.25. The milk, the espresso, the cup, the lid, and the splash of syrup inside it cost the shop maybe 80 cents. So where does the other $4.45 come from, and wh…
3 min · deepening
How Working Capital Determines a Business's Survival
A bakery sells every loaf it makes. Its margins are healthy, its customers loyal, its accountant cheerful. Then, one Tuesday morning, the flour supplier refuses to deliver because last month's invoice…
4 min · deepening
Vertical and Horizontal Integration: Two Growth Strategies
When Andrew Carnegie's steel empire bought the iron mines that fed its furnaces and the railroads that carried its rails, he was doing something different from what John D.
4 min · comparison
What a Profit Margin Tells You About a Business
Two coffee shops on the same block both pull in a million dollars in sales a year.
4 min · foundation
What Happens When You Pay With a Credit Card
You hand a card to a cashier. They tap it on a small reader. A second later, the screen says "Approved." The transaction feels like a single event. It is not. In that one second, money does not actual…
3 min · foundation
What Pricing Power Actually Is
When the price of a candy bar at the grocery store goes up by ten cents, almost no one notices.
4 min · foundation
Why Companies Build Moats — and What That Actually Means
A profitable company is a target. The moment a firm earns returns above its cost of capital, competitors notice, capital rushes in, and — absent some structural barrier — the excess profit gets compet…
4 min · deepening
Why Companies Spend So Much on Advertising
Coca-Cola spent roughly five billion dollars on marketing in a recent year.
3 min · foundation
Why Most Mergers Fail
On the day a merger is announced, two stock prices usually move in opposite directions.
4 min · synthesis
Why Network Effects Make Some Markets Winner-Take-All
A telephone sitting alone on a desk is a paperweight. The second telephone, somewhere across town, is what turns the first one into something worth owning. This is the strange property at the heart of…
4 min · foundation
Why Two Versions of the Same Product Cost Different Amounts
Walk into any coffee shop and you'll see a small coffee for $3 and a large for $4.
3 min · foundation