Howard Schultz on Strategy

As organizations succeed and grow, they become more formalized, more bureaucratic, more careful, more remote from customers, and slower to act. Diseconomies of scale begin to work, overshadowing the cost advantages of size. Overhead grows, decision-making slows. Direct feedback from customers is reduced, filtered, and often ignored. The demon of af

The only reason we would go into a new sector is if we felt it was being badly run by other people. The reason we went into trains was that the government were running trains. British Rail had dilapidated trains, miserable service, and we felt we could go in, get fantastic new rail stock, motivate the staff, and we could make a big difference. I th

no doubt. But to not do it risked losing first-mover status. It’s clear that the Starbucks strategy is to move fast, see what works, and not necessarily wait for enterprise-level shifts.