Tag: featured

Much has been written about the idea of "reinventing" your company.  However, in my 50+ years of studying big business, I have rarely seen...

I was working on a newsletter about Melville Shoe, a retailer I covered as a securities analyst at Citibank in the mid-70s.  It was...

As you know, I love retailing, and have since I was 12 years old. A lifetime of visiting retail stores, teaching retailing, founding BOOKSTOP...

In 1837, a blacksmith in Grand Detour, Illinois, struggled making plows for local farmers.  The traditional cast iron plows that were used back East...

Starting in Austin. Changing the World. In 1982, my friends and I founded the first chain of giant book superstores, BOOKSTOP, here in Austin.  In...

The American Master’s Degree in Business Administration is considered the premiere degree worldwide for people who want to understand and run businesses.  Yet we...

I have kept a list of business ideas for 52 years, since I was 12, and today it numbers over 300.  Since I will...

I moved from the Midwest to Austin 33 years ago.  An old college-era friend from New York soon suggested we meet up in Mexico...

Today virtually all forms of traditional media are under siege. The way we acquire and use movies, “records,” books, magazines, newspapers, radio, and television...

I began collecting books at about age 7 and have never stopped.  Today I live with around 56,000 books.  So it was inevitable that...

There have been many great two-person leadership teams in the annals of business history.  My favorite might be Walt and Roy Disney, two brothers...

I love cities.  I love great architecture.  Few achievements of mankind are more impressive.  Our “built environment” affects what we see, how and where...

  Few things in life or business are as important as meaning –  semantics.  Yet almost every day I see examples of managers and leaders...

For the last 52 years, I have been obsessed with understanding what makes a company great. What leads to success; what leads away. This...

I live with about 56,000 books. I started collecting them at age 7, with the goal of better understanding the world and everything in...

Over the last 20 years, I have spoken to thousands of people of all ages about building great enterprises and thinking entrepreneurially.  Few things...

In the spring of 2013, Nobel prize-winning physicist James Cronin was awarded the Alumni Medal for lifetime achievement as a professor at the University of Chicago, where I went to college. In his remarks, Mr. Cronin stated that his greatest concern about the future of America was our emphasis on science and technology education.