Dumb Luck or Deep Understanding?….Five Ways to Kill Your Dreams….Shall We Interface?….Econ Recon: A Triple Mandate…..Let’ Hear it for Income Inequality!…One of the Many Things I Did in the Navy

“The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.”

Albert Einstein

“Disruption”:  Dumb Luck or Deep Understanding?

We often think of “disruption” as belonging to the realm of startups or big and innovative and relatively young companies like Google or Apple. Is it luck…is it art…or is it science? One really old, really large company that makes many products you use every day knows that disruption upon occasion can be due to dumb luck, but more often due to deep understanding of customers born of a disciplined approach to undiscovered needs. Click here for a short article that provides a great perspective on “disruption”.  

 Shall We Interface??

A recent article about what may be the most important part of your business model states that “The new breed of companies are the fastest-growing in history. Uber, Instacart, Alibaba, Airbnb, Seamless, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google: These companies are indescribably thin layers that sit on top of vast supply systems (where the costs are) and interface with a huge number of people (where the money is). There is no better business to be in…”

This one page article posits that there are two approaches to a successful customer interface. Find out which one could work for your business.

 Five Ways to Kill Your Dreams

The “Success” Industry has no lack of books about how to become successful. Maybe it might also be helpful to know what NOT to do. Check out this seven minute TED Talk by a young Brazilian entrepreneur, who has more than one success under her belt, who warns us about the “Five Ways to Kill Your Dreams.” There’s wisdom here for all, and especially for the young people in your life as they graduate in the coming months.

Econ Recon

A Triple Mandate:  Most central banks have a single mandate: either to control inflation or maintain full employment. Our Federal Reserve has both of these. In his latest Wesbury 101, economist Brian Wesbury maintains that there is a now a third mandate. In this six minute video you’ll find out what it is…. and it’s relation to the other two.

Let’s Hear it for Income Inequality!!:  Increasingly, concerns over income inequality are shaping up as a key aspect of economic policy, especially as the presidential candidates begin to throw their hats in the ring. Washington Post Columnist George Will holds that so called “monopolists: like John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs have created an economy in which  as “the wealth gap widens, the lifestyle gap shrinks.”

Check out his recent column on “How Income Inequality Benefits Everybody” and his reference therein to a new book “Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and Lebron James Can Teach You About Economics.“

One of the Things I Did in the Navy

Most of you know that I served in four nuclear submarines during my Navy career, and I get asked all the time “what did you do in the Navy?” Well many of the things I did I can’t really talk about, but one thing I can tell you is that I went into and out of dry dock a lot, at least twice on each ship I served on. Here is an interesting time-lapse video of a 688 class attack submarine (similar to the one I commanded) going into dry dock in San Diego recently. How would you go about lifting almost 7000 tons of ship out of the water in a couple of hours (after days of preparation, and with the right equipment, of course)?