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Autobiographies are the best way to learn firsthand from those who have "won" at business: Sam Walton - this is easily the best. Solid gold nuggets of wisdom e

Autobiographies are the best way to learn firsthand from those who have "won" at business: Sam Walton - this is easily the best. Solid gold nuggets of wisdom every page. Henry Ford - strong business, science, and tech ideas. Plus his biography of his good friend Thomas Edison is great. Larry Ellison - pretty solid. Richard Branson - okay autobiographies, probably too many though.

graemep 3y ago
The problem with reading "winners" is the huge survivorship bias, and autobiographies are inevitably biased towards showing the author in a good light.
- refurb 3y ago
  Business books are terrible in general for this reason. Even basic statistics is throw out the door in these analyses. The best book I read is “Halo Effect” which calls all this out.
- max_ 3y ago
  What exactly isn't survivorship bias? Everything can be put in that bucket. Being born without autism, becoming a doctor, engineer, start-up founder, successful athlete et al. They can all be abstracted as lottery tickets. I think the survivorship bias arguments sweeps under the rug the fact that we might be able to learn something from successful people.
  - refurb 3y ago
    I think the point is that the “lessons” from these books suffer from bias. Sam Walton might say “this was the reason Walmart succeeded”, but plenty of people do the same thing and fail. So what’s the lesson?
    - max_ 3y ago
      Well, things like law school & medical school have high rates of failure. So if one of the successful that passed the bar & became doctors people say "They studied hard" — yet many failed, even when the also studied. Does that nullify the value of "studying hard"?
      - refurb 3y ago
        No, it doesn’t nullify it, but it’s not exactly useful info? And your analogy is a good one. When you read many of these books the “lesson” is really obvious too - “listen to your customer” or “aggressively cut costs in your supply chain”. Those thinks are the basics of business. Everyone is trying to do those things.
      - graemep 3y ago
        We know what the rates of failure are. We know that studying hard does not guarantee success and what the level of risk is. We have no idea how many people tried to do the same thing as highly successful businesses and failed. We know that luck or resourced (initial funding, contacts, timing) not available to most people have played a part in many success stories. We know that things could have gone badly wrong for them (e.g. Richard Branson's family had to put up a lot of money including a £70k fine to avoid a prosecution for tax dodging). We know that the rate of failures in businesses (especially ambitious high risk high high risk high reward ones) is far higher than in medical school or law school. All that makes survivourship bias a lot more relevant
        max_ 3y ago
        >We know that studying hard does not guarantee success and what the level of risk is. That's exactly my point even though the survivorship bias is higher or lower. We shouldn't discredit advice from successful people on the grounds of survivaship bias. We should only discredit advice on grounds of merit.
        graemep 3y ago
        There is a subtle distinction you are missing. The advice may have merit, but survivourship bias means it is not more credible because it comes from someone successful than the same advice from a random person.

graemep 3y ago

The problem with reading "winners" is the huge survivorship bias, and autobiographies are inevitably biased towards showing the author in a good light.

refurb 3y ago
Business books are terrible in general for this reason. Even basic statistics is throw out the door in these analyses. The best book I read is “Halo Effect” which calls all this out.
max_ 3y ago
What exactly isn't survivorship bias? Everything can be put in that bucket. Being born without autism, becoming a doctor, engineer, start-up founder, successful athlete et al. They can all be abstracted as lottery tickets. I think the survivorship bias arguments sweeps under the rug the fact that we might be able to learn something from successful people.
- refurb 3y ago
  I think the point is that the “lessons” from these books suffer from bias. Sam Walton might say “this was the reason Walmart succeeded”, but plenty of people do the same thing and fail. So what’s the lesson?
  - max_ 3y ago
    Well, things like law school & medical school have high rates of failure. So if one of the successful that passed the bar & became doctors people say "They studied hard" — yet many failed, even when the also studied. Does that nullify the value of "studying hard"?
    - refurb 3y ago
      No, it doesn’t nullify it, but it’s not exactly useful info? And your analogy is a good one. When you read many of these books the “lesson” is really obvious too - “listen to your customer” or “aggressively cut costs in your supply chain”. Those thinks are the basics of business. Everyone is trying to do those things.
    - graemep 3y ago
      We know what the rates of failure are. We know that studying hard does not guarantee success and what the level of risk is. We have no idea how many people tried to do the same thing as highly successful businesses and failed. We know that luck or resourced (initial funding, contacts, timing) not available to most people have played a part in many success stories. We know that things could have gone badly wrong for them (e.g. Richard Branson's family had to put up a lot of money including a £70k fine to avoid a prosecution for tax dodging). We know that the rate of failures in businesses (especially ambitious high risk high high risk high reward ones) is far higher than in medical school or law school. All that makes survivourship bias a lot more relevant
      - max_ 3y ago
        >We know that studying hard does not guarantee success and what the level of risk is. That's exactly my point even though the survivorship bias is higher or lower. We shouldn't discredit advice from successful people on the grounds of survivaship bias. We should only discredit advice on grounds of merit.
        graemep 3y ago
        There is a subtle distinction you are missing. The advice may have merit, but survivourship bias means it is not more credible because it comes from someone successful than the same advice from a random person.