Surviving Amazon, evolving to breath smoke, & reading Adam Smith 250 years later.
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Best Buy survived the first wave of e-commerce by providing a better experience for buying high ticket items. “Now we’re into the second phase where legacy brands are either leveraging their stores as a differentiator (Target, Best Buy) or fading (Bed Bath & Beyond, Sears / JC Penney / Macy’s).” - Jordan Bean
You want people to see your brand as innovative. But how do you measure it? Can we have a universal definition for fuzzy metrics with different meanings from person to person? The simple answer is no. All you can do is find a meaning that works for you. “What is it about this concept — in its fuzzy form — that seems relevant and pertinent to the decision we want to make? What concrete (and obtainable!) information would lead us to prefer one course of action over another? (Metric design is much easier when you have actions in mind before you begin. If possible, think about potential decisions before attempting to design a metric.)” - Cassie Kozyrkov
Modern day humans adapted a genetic resistance to toxins in smoke. Thanks to the discovery of fire we’re much better at inhaling smoke. “The MARCO receptors bind to all kinds of inanimate matter that ends up in our lungs. Modern humans have a stronger version of the genes coding for MARCO than Chimps, Neanderthals, or Denisovians. That would have protected us from dust storms in East Africa where we evolved as well as other kinds of toxins. They can also protect from lung diseases such as tuberculosis which is related to chronic lung inflammation.” - Tim Andersen
Adam Smith wrote the book on modern economics 250 years ago. Quotes from The Wealth of Nations are everywhere. And often the same ones are used to make vastly different points. “It is a feature of Adam Smith’s great insights that he is still worth reading, two hundred and fifty years after he wrote. But beware of selective reading, and only narrowly seeing what you think he wrote. Look beyond the snappy quotes, and you will see that he was not should not be read as a naive apologist for unfettered market capitalism, but a lucid observer of social and economic interactions, aware of the possible gains from large-scale cooperation through markets, as well as of the potential power dynamics in society that can lead to the capture of these gains by a minority.” - Lionel Page & Koen Smets
Thanks for reading!
Aliyar