Tag: Strategy

There are historic lessons to be learnt from the recent high definition format war: the importance of the installed base and the unpredictability of consumer markets.

Mr Buffett’s success demonstrates the weakness of one economic theory, the efficient market hypothesis, and the strength of another – the central role that the pursuit and defence of economic rents plays in modern corporate life.

Warren Buffett's emergence as the world's richest man illustrates the power of compound interest. Warren neither pays nor makes management charges. The effect is larger than you would believe possible.

Asset prices are a measure less of our wealth than of our propensity for self-congratulation. The net effect is only a transfer between the existing owners and the prospective owners.

People who hold to a single idea, or a fixed design, generally lose in chess, as they lose in battle, in business and in economics.

European companies are increasingly imitating US ones in the cult and remuneration of chief executives. Political organisation may evolve similarly as party membership declines and ideology fades.

In politics, business and finance, as on the seas, the hero is the person who tackles a problem, rather than the person whose actions prevent the problem arising.

Christmas shopping in Marylebone High Street provides insight into the internalisation of externalities and the relationship between corporate governance and business strategy.

Perhaps the most difficult of investment lessons is that inaction is often the best action.

The mistake both authors and publishers of business books make is to confuse a book about “what I did” with a book about “how to do it”.