Opinion | Let the Arms Race Begin
Once New START ends, we will have returned to an era without limits, when arsenals can reach unconstrained heights.
Sustainable Sources of Competitive Advantage
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com.
What Ethiopian running says about the limits of human ability | Aeon Essays
One school of training is highly personalised, technical and data-driven. The other is the one that wins marathons
Why I'm Worried About Job Loss + Thoughts on Comparative Advantage — LessWrong
David Oks published a well-written essay yesterday arguing that the current panic about AI job displacement is overblown. I agree with a few of his p…
Why a majority of runners, even among international elites, are heel strikers by Blaise Dubois
Below is the text of a newsletter that my friend Blaise Dubois, a physiotherapist from Quebec City, just sent out regarding the topic of heel striking. If you don’t subscribe to Blaise’s newsletter, I recommend that you do – he sends out a lot of interesting information, and posts like this one are great for sparking debate and discussion – you can subscribe here.
Starting Point
You compete with others, on an unfair playing field. Are you aware of this? Are you good at games? Starting equally Starting unequally Advantages in Games Life is Competitive Seeing Life as a Game What to keep in mind When to use this View Your Starting Point Starting equally You...
What Is Strategy?
Today’s dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and re-engineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. And gradually, the tools have taken the place of strategy. In his five-part article, Michael Porter explores how that shift has led to the rise of mutually destructive competitive battles that damage the profitability of many companies. As managers push to improve on all fronts, they move further away from viable competitive positions. Porter argues that operational effectiveness, although necessary to superior performance, is not sufficient, because its techniques are easy to imitate. In contrast, the essence of strategy is choosing a unique and valuable position rooted in systems of activities that are much more difficult to match. Porter thus traces the economic basis of competitive advantage down to the level of the specific activities a company performs. Using cases such as Ikea and Vanguard, he shows how making trade-offs among activities is critical to the sustainability of a strategy. Whereas managers often focus on individual components of success such as core competencies or critical resources, Porter shows how managing fit across all of a company’s activities enhances both competitive advantage and sustainability. While stressing the role of leadership in making and enforcing clear strategic choices, Porter also offers advice on how companies can reconnect with strategies that have become blurred over time.
The soft body of the turtle
What if humanity's greatest strength is not competition but cooperation? Kate Raworth in conversation with Jeremy Lent.
Read OpenAI’s latest internal memo about beating the competition — including Anthropic
The memo directly mentioned OpenAI’s intensifying competition with Anthropic.
Ground Effect
Runners looking for aerodynamic advantage typically wear sneakers because some fancy dress shoes can create wingtip vortices.
Collections: How the Weak Can Win – A Primer on Protracted War
Thanks to our volunteer narrator, this post is now available in audio format. This week, in an effort to fill in some of the theoretical basis for thinking about how weaker powers think about fight…
Barbell strategy
In finance, a barbell strategy is formed when a trader invests in long- and short-duration bonds, but does not invest in intermediate-duration bonds. This strategy is useful when interest rates are rising; as the short term maturities are rolled over they receive a higher interest rate, raising the value.[1] A contrasting strategy is the bullet strategy, which involves investing only in intermediate-term bonds.
