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January 1 - January 6, 2020
How did these companies aggregate so much power? How can an inanimate, for-profit enterprise become so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it reshapes the rules of what a company can do and be?
Their formula: an unparalleled investment in last-mile infrastructure, made possible by an irrationally generous lender—retail
At its core, Apple fills two instinctual needs: to feel closer to God and be more attractive to the opposite sex. It mimics religion with its own belief system, objects of veneration, cult following, and Christ figure.
By achieving a paradoxical goal in business—a low-cost product that sells for a premium price—Apple has become the most profitable company in history.
As measured by adoption and usage, Facebook is the most successful thing in the history of humankind.
There are 7.5 billion people in the world, and 1.5 billion have a daily relationship with Facebook.
The social network and its properties register fifty minutes of a user’s typical day.16 One of every six minutes online is spent on Facebook, and one in five minutes spent on mobile is on Facebook.
It’s our source of knowledge—ever-present, aware of our deepest secrets, reassuring us where we are and where we need to go, answering questions from trivial to profound.
No institution has the trust and credibility of Google:
Google, unlike most products, ages in reverse, becoming more valuable with use.
It harnesses the power of 2 billion people, twenty-four hours a day, connected by their intentions (what you want) and decisions (what you chose),
yielding a whole infinitely greater than the s...
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Other tech companies, old and new, big and bigger, are losing relevance.
Aging behemoths, including HP and IBM, barely warrant the attention of the Four. Thousands of start-ups fly by like gnats hardly worth swatting at.
Any firm that begins to show the potential to bother the Four is acquired—at prices lesse...
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Ultimately, the only competitors the Four face are . . . each other.
there’s safety in hatred.
They are now competing directly, as their respective sectors are running out of easy prey.
To grasp the choices that ushered in the Four is to understand business and value creation in the digital age.
show how the Four defend their markets with
analog moats:
real-world infrastructure designed to blunt attacks from pot...
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Gateway, which sold three times more computers annually than Apple, at a fifth the margin—it didn’t end well.
To better understand these firms, the instincts they tap into, and their intersection between technology and stakeholder value is to gain insight into modern-day business, our world, and ourselves.
When in a brick-and-mortar store, one in four consumers check user reviews on Amazon before purchasing.
I love these sorts of statistics...really gives context to how penetrated Amazon Prime has become in our world.
Instinct is a powerful chaperone, always watching and whispering in your ear, telling you what you must do to survive.
Instinct has a camera, but it’s low resolution.
It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of y...
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Instinct, coupled with a profit motive, makes for excess.
And the worst economic system, except for all the rest—capitalism—is specifically designed to maximize that equation.
Fundamental to business is the notion that in a capitalist society the consumer reigns supreme, and consumption is the most noble of activities.
Thus a country’s place in the world is correlated with its level of consumer demand and production.
Consumption has taken the place of shared sacrifice during times of war and economic malaise. The nation needs you to keep buying more stuff.
Few industries have created more wealth by tapping into our consuming selves than retail.
Of the four hundred wealthiest people in the world (excluding those who inherited wealth or are in finance) more names on the list are in retail than even technology.
Of the ten biggest retailers in 1990, only two remain on the list in 2016.
Dead man (retailer) walking begins with margin erosion—the cholesterol of retail—and ends with endless promotions and sales.
How did we get here? Let’s take a brief walk down retail’s memory lane. In the United States and Europe,
there have been six major stages of retail evolution.
Retailing in the first half of the twentieth century was defined by the corner store.
Proximity ruled the day.
The notion of differentiation through service, and of becoming the customer’s temporary friend and shopping guide, broke new ground.
It humanized large-scale retailing and redirected investing toward human capital at the store level.
Department stores also reshaped the relationship between business and consumers.
four of the five oldest surviving retailers are department stores: Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and Sears.
the car and refrigerator meant we could drive farther to get more stuff we could store safely longer.
Advances in distribution led to fewer visits, bigger stores, more selection, and lower prices.
Department stores evolved int...
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By 1987, half of U.S. retail sales were occurring in malls.
