2 ms·

I was enthusiastic about the theories and practices touted in his subsequent book "Built to Last", but then watched nearly every company profiled either utterly

I was enthusiastic about the theories and practices touted in his subsequent book "Built to Last", but then watched nearly every company profiled either utterly fail or completely drop the ball a few years later. Mr. Collins cherry-picks examples from very disparate enterprises and markets to attempt to arrive at a general set of market-spanning, culture-spanning, and era-spanning operational principles. It's bad advice and worse--bad data science. In my personal business experience there were also several instances of "one killer innovation" or "one lucky break" that, we realized both at the time and in retrospect, really did "make" the business.

tazu 2y ago
> In my personal business experience there were also several instances of "one killer innovation" or "one lucky break" that, we realized both at the time and in retrospect, really did "make" the business. My experience as well. This is why Taleb's writing appeals to me most for "business advice": structure everything to benefit from chaos, and build an environment conducive to tinkering and breakthroughs. Highly recommend his article, "Understanding is a Poor Substitute for Convexity"[1]. [1]: https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-understanding-is-a-poor-substitute-for-convexity-antifragility https://www.edge.org/conversation/nassim_nicholas_taleb-unde...
- calmbonsai 2y ago
  Agreed. His entire Incerto series (as well as all of the background mathematics (and corrections/revisions)) provided gratis at his site are one of my absolute favorite examples of 'modern open scholarship'. Also along a similar vein but with less rigor is Patio11's ongoing "Bits About Money".