The little things that make Cornell good: Making shots
Once more this Friday night, I was fortunate enough to find a last minute ticket to a sold-out (!) Harvard basketball game when I got a press pass thanks to my friend Kathy. What luck that I got in because it was a joy to watch the battle between the athleticism of the Harvard squad and the experience of the Big Red. The Harvard team, hyped throughout the pre-conference season, certainly has the talent and skill to not only own the Ivies in the future, but compete on the bigger stage. However, at this stage in their development, they have a lot that they can learn from Cornell. I would say how they play, but it’s more than that. The thing that makes Cornell the best team the Ivies have had for a couple of years is exactly what makes a company great: culture. In both settings, it’s the little things that matter the most and it’s those little things that they do so well. Let me explain.
Don’t drink the Flavor-Aid
The now-classic saying “drinking the Kool-Aid” has come into my life a couple of times in the past couple of weeks, mainly as people discussed the job prospects they have lined up and the cult-like nature that many of the big firms display. Having worked at McKinsey, I can confirm that it’s a common phrase among early tenure folk as they struggle with their initial skepticism about the all-encompassing way the job can take over your life. With that said, I thought it might be time to share an interesting story I have about the phrase.
The Telltale Brown M&M
Fast Company has a fascinating operational management article in their latest issue (http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/143/made-to-stick-the-telltale-brown-mampm.html). The basic premise that the author looks to explore is how to use data that you have to predict when a system isn’t functioning as it should.
The world wide web, locally
In business school, we continuously look for ways to expand the market for a particular product while standardizing its production. After all, many of the best businesses of the past 15 years have been those that are scaleable to the world with minimal marginal costs. Even beyond obvious examples like the internet’s allowance for proliferation of software, there’s been a push to homogeneity by huge multinational corporations as they can produce more cheaply by taking advantage of the economies of scale that their size affords them (think a Starbucks on every corner). This is globalization. It makes things cheaper for consumers and standardizes experiences. This can be good. But remember that it also makes it very difficult to build and maintain anything at a local level. Is it any wonder why so many cities feel manufactured now and seem to have lost some of their character? How could a ‘mom and pop burger shop’ compete with McDonald’s? How could ‘Al’s Auto’ compete with Meineke? Well, like me, there’s people who wish that wasn’t so. Further, we wish we could take advantage of the benefits of that scale without having the cost of an assembly-line experience. Enter Root Orange (www.rootorange.com).
Molecular Mourning
If you’re not one of the privileged few to have eaten at elBulli, looks like you’re out of luck. Ferran Adria has decided to close the world’s most prestigious restaurant in order to start a culinary academy. Read more…
Entrepreneurial distribution: Gypsy Bar
It’s funny how spending a good portion of the week studying cases of businesses shades your perspective and allows you to see much of the world in terms of the entrepreneurial opportunities. This is especially true when you actually see someone taking advantage of an opportunity that few would notice as existing. Ironically, the innovative entrepreneur here wasn’t one of my classmates, but rather a homeless guy outside of Gypsy Bar, the club that was home to a huge collection of Harvard grad students last night. Let me explain.
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An Unprincipled Rebuttal
What does this say about our society that this is necessary? It brings to light the fact that we are a rule-based, not a principle-based society.
You’re right. We are absolutely a rule-based society. The question is why, and are we better off for it?
I think that it’s a natural human tendency to create rules, even if strong principles exist. There are some actions that are so clearly unacceptable to a society that there’s no reason not to codify them. Don’t kill people, for example. It certainly fits under my common sense umbrella, but common sense varies and we don’t want ambiguity on this issue. So we make a rule. Read more…
Tyranny of Incrementalism (Part 1): the US Legal System
Today in our Leadership and Corporate Accountability class we studied the fallout after Enron’s collapse in the early ‘naughts’. Among the most explicit changes was the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. In looking at it, our classmate Emily could not have summed up my thoughts any better, “This is all common sense!” In response to a fallout, Congress of course felt the need to legislate basic ethics and put in rules as silly as “It’s illegal to shred important papers during a federal investigation.” What does this say about our society that this is necessary? It brings to light the fact that we are a rule-based, not a principle-based society. I maintain that the impact of this is that we open ourselves up to the tyranny of incrementalism and are vulnerable to creating a society that we don’t want to live in.
Reactions to the Harvard-Princeton game
Last night I was lucky enough to get a last minute ticket to sold-out Lavietes Field House up in Cambridge (a block from where I live!) to see Harvard battle my Princeton Tigers in men’s basketball. I hadn’t seen the boys in person for a couple of years so it was especially nice to get an up close seat behind the bench and watch a great (and hard-fought) win. Personally, it was awesome to see the seniors (freshmen when I finished my career) and shoot the shit with the Princeton basketball community after the game. A few reflections on the team and the game below.
Concise Guide: Cultivating Favorable Expectations?
In the Concise Guide to Macro Economics, David Moss points out that, along with output and money, expectations are a key driver of economic activity. While governments have been explicitly managing production and money supply for centuries, Keynes was really the first guy to dive deeply into how governments could “cultivate favorable expectations.” By spending to a deficit in a contracting economy, a government could replace private demand, but more importantly, it could send a signal to the private sector that things were getting better. As with nearly all economic policies, its efficacy is debatable, but deficit spending is certainly the favored prescription of the Bush and Obama economic teams. Read more…
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