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by John Feinstein When Charlie Weatherbie arrived to take up his first head coaching position, he was asked about Army-Navy. He’d seen other rivalries, he said. He knew about other rivalries, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, for instance. Seemed no different to him. People at Navy spent way too much time worrying about Army when there was a whole season to play. A subtitle to the Navy side might be “The Education of Charlie Weatherbie.” Even going into the game, after Army Week and a whole season of “Beat Army,” he was more […]

by Eliot A. Cohen Almost everything you think you know about the civilian-military relationship in a democracy is wrong. Sure, you know that the military needs to be subordinate to the civilian. But what, exactly, does that mean? You think you know that the politicians should declare war, and let the military win it. You think that war is too technical for politicians to understand. You think that political interference lost Vietnam, and military autonomy won the first Gulf War. You think that the US military is non-political. And you […]

by Benoit Mandelbrot According to Modern Portfolio Theory, the basis for most of modern stock market analysis, the crash of October 1987 shouldn’t have happened in our lifetimes. In fact, it shouldn’t have happened in the lifetime of the country. It should have happened, perhaps, once in the lifetime of the universe. It was just our good fortune to have lived through it. Now we can relax. In fact, even as Robert Merton and Myron Scholes were accepting the Nobel Prize for their contributions, the markets were preparing to given […]

by James Surowiecki How can a crowd correctly guess the number of beans in a jar, time after time, far more accurately than the average of the best guesser? How can all of us be smarter than the smartest of us? Especially when “all of us” includes some really dumb people? That’s the question that James Surowiecki attacks in The Wisdom of Crowds, a deceptively short book packed with examples of collective wisdom. The crowd collectively is smarter than any of its individuals – even the smartest. While there will […]

Inventing Money: The Story of Long-Term Capital Management and the legends behind it by Nicholas Dunbar When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein Just when you think you’ve got it all figured out, Life comes along, sneaking up behind you with a bit of lead piping, to steal from P.G. Wodehouse. The story of Long Term Capital Management is the story of The Smartest Guys in the World, and how maybe they just managed to outsmart themselves. In the meantime, they almost collapsed […]

by Malcolm Gladwell Shoot/Don’t Shoot. Speed Dating. Student teacher evaluations. Coke or Pepsi? How do you decide? The answer, according to Malcolm Gladwell, is quicker than you think. Quicker than you can think. The thesis of his book, Blink, is that you make snap decisions by filtering out extraneous information, a process Gladwell calls “thin-slicing.” You go with pattern recognition and pre-existing associations that you can’t possibly be conscious of at the time. Further, he argues persuasively, unless you’re a trained professional, you can’t get inside the “locked box” holding […]

by Jim Collins The good is the enemy of the best. Good enough is good enough. Then, when the water’s smooth and it’s a clear night out and everyone’s asleep in their cabins, it isn’t good enough anymore. In the face of a crisis, or with the insight into an impending crisis, some companies fold up, call it a good run, and go look for something else to do. Others start flailing and picking battles they can’t win. Still others go all ostrich-like as they fade from memory. The winners […]

by Hugh Hewitt Combine freedom with low barriers to entry and you’ll be continually amazed at the results. That’s one of the messages from Hugh Hewitt’sBlog: Understanding theInformation Reformation That’s Changing Your World. Hugh’s been a follower and booster of theblogsphere as an alternative and corrective to the mainstream media for years now. He recognized theincipient media early on, and has been relentless in promoting the best of the individual blogs. Now,he’s turned his attention to the medium as a whole, and how it may be useful outside of mediacriticism […]

by William Poundstone Puzzle: You’re responsible for hiring a team. They need to work well together, respond to changing business conditions, solve problems. You have one hour to interview each candidate. What questions will you ask them? Think about it before answering. There is no time limit. Twenty years ago, the answer was obvious. Ask the prospect about his experience, about his plans, and then call his prior employer and find out if the guy’s worth it, or a deadweight who’ll spend his time running the office football pool. Round […]

by Howard Schultz Reading this book was like taking a trip back through b-school. Virtually everything Howard Schultz mentions is standard fare now at the DU curriculum, from the founding ideals of a company, to how companies raise money, to the strategies for growth, and how to keep those core values as the company turns from underdog into 800-pound gorilla. The story is fascinating, and even if you don’t care much for Starbucks’s coffee (I prefer a lighter blend, myself), it’s worth the read for any American whose business is […]