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- 10 Company
- 2 Investor
- 1 Founder
- 1 Idea
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Company
LEGO, 2003: the toy company that almost lost the brick
Months from running out of cash, LEGO cut back to the thing it did best. What a near-death year teaches about focus.
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Company
Nokia: how the world's phone maker missed the phone
It had the engineers, the money and an early touchscreen. Why the people inside could not say what they saw.
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Company
Boeing and the 737 MAX
A company of engineers, a merger, and the moment cost started to outrank caution.
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Company
Nintendo: from playing cards to the Wii
A 130-year-old company that kept walking away from the race everyone else was running.
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Company
IKEA: the flat pack and the man who hated waste
How a teenager selling pens by mail built a company around one obsession: cost.
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Company
Kodak invented the digital camera. Then it buried it.
The 1975 prototype, the film profits it threatened, and how long a company can protect a dying cash cow.
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Company
Samsung's Frankfurt Declaration
"Change everything except your wife and children." The 1993 speech that turned a copycat into a leader.
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Company
Netflix vs Blockbuster: the meeting in Dallas
Blockbuster could have bought Netflix for $50 million. The real story is less simple and more useful.
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Company
Costco: the business model that looks like a mistake
Low margins, high wages, a $1.50 hot dog. Why the numbers that scare analysts are the moat.
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Company
Dyson: 5,127 prototypes
Years of debt and rejection before a vacuum cleaner worked. What it takes to keep going when the evidence says stop.
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Investor
Warren Buffett: how he decides a business is worth owning
Moats, managers and price. The handful of questions behind sixty years of choices, and the mistakes he admits to.
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Idea
Inversion: Charlie Munger's habit of thinking backwards
Instead of asking how to succeed, ask what would guarantee failure, then avoid it. Where the idea comes from and the companies that show it.
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Founder
Sam Walton: the five-and-dime owner who counted every penny
Before Walmart there was one small store in Arkansas and a habit of copying every good idea he saw.
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Investor
Peter Lynch: invest in what you know, and what that really meant
The Magellan years, and why the slogan everyone remembers is the least important part of his method.