Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Theory of Games is his foundational text, and here’s what I learned within its pages: the entire theory was inspired by a single game—poker. “Real life consists of bluffing, of little tactics of deception, of asking yourself what is the other man going to think I mean to do,” von Neumann wrote. “And that is what games are about in my theory.”
Maria Konnikova • The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
Give me some new information. Tell me what my competitors are up to. Tell me what you’ve been doing for other companies like mine. Find a way to be helpful to me. You’ve got to give a favor to get a favor—there’s no better way to win my trust than to be helpful to me right from the beginning. Someone who brings me new ideas and suggestions, without
... See moreDavid H. Maister • Managing The Professional Service Firm
Law of Comparative Advantage. Even if you’re a polymath freak who can beat your competitors at every task, you still ought to maximise your gains by focusing on the one area you have the highest relative advantage, and trade in exchange for everything else. This is a highly counterintuitive insight, but it's one of the most widely-accepted ideas in
... See moreRichard Meadows • Optionality: How to Survive and Thrive in a Volatile World
Ngenic is helping itself (and others) succeed by providing value in a crowded market and offering different pricing and packaging bundles to different kinds of clients. That’s a lesson for all of us.
Tien Tzuo • Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It
The businesses that participate in such industries have to figure out ways to get both sides on board. One way to do this is to obtain a critical mass of users on one side of the market by giving them the service for free or even paying them to take it. Especially at the entry phase of firms in multisided markets, it is not uncommon to see precisel
... See moreDavid S. Evans • Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries
From the outside, these types of venture-funded battles for market share look to be determined solely by who can raise the most capital and thus outlast their opponents. That’s half-true: while the amount of money raised is important, so is the burn rate and the “stickiness” of the customers bought through subsidies. Startups locked in these battle
... See moreKai-Fu Lee • AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
it. If the default fund is terrific and can work well for most participants, or if the choosers are likely to blunder, then it might make sense to encourage people to select the default. If the creators of the default fund are not really experts, if the choosers know a lot, and if the situations of different choosers are relevantly different, then
... See moreCass R. Sunstein • Nudge: The Final Edition
If you are building a multisided business,