Number of words – 745 When White House press secretary Sean Spicer lied about how many people attended US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway, defended him, saying the made-up numbers were an “alternative fact”. I am delighted to report that we too now have a Kellyanne in our midst, … Read more

Number of words – 1,400 It’s 4 am in the morning. I’m waking up in a Boston hotel room and can only think of one thing: tooth pain. One of my ceramic inlays fell off the evening before. Five hours later, I’m sitting in a dentist’s chair. But instead of having a repair of my … Read more

Number of words – 2,921 Gardening consists largely in protecting plants from blight and weeds, and the same is true of attending to the growth of children. If a plant fails to grow properly because attacked by a pest, only a poor gardener would look for the cause in that plant alone. The good gardener … Read more

Number of words – 290 At Yellowstone, despite the re-introduction of wolves, the willows are not actually recovering as well as was hoped. One reason, Marris found, may be that wolves don’t actually scare elk away from their preferred feeding areas, as earlier research suggested they might. “When elk are really hungry, they’re going to … Read more

Number of words – 793 You hit the fast food drive-through a couple times a week, and your grocery cart is regularly filled with cookies, packaged doughnuts, ice cream, chips (and dip). But you’re thin. You run—a lot—and you’re not gaining any weight, so all’s good, right? Well, not exactly. Put down the chocolate cupcake … Read more

Number of words – 819 In 2017 there were 946,060 births and 1,340,433 deaths in Japan, marking a seventh consecutive year of population decline. By some estimates, Japan’s population could shrink by a third over the next 50 years, and there’s little chance the trend will reverse. The roots of the problem reach back to … Read more

Number of words – 362 Costco was founded in 1983 by Jim Sinegal and Jeffrey Brotman. Sinegal learnt about discount retailing from Sol Price, the same person from whom Sam Walton had admitted to borrowing much of what Walmart knew about the business. And, like Walton, Sinegal believed in People First. “We’re going to be … Read more

Number of words – 360 If you look back at the history of Starbucks, it thrived not because of its coffee but because of the experience it offered to customers. It was Schultz who bought that why to the company when he arrived in 1982, 10 years after Gordon Walker, Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl … Read more

Number of words – 158 In the 1970s, Southwest Airlines decided to put their flight attendants in hot pants and Go Go boots as part of their uniforms. It wasn’t their idea. Pacific Southwest, the California based airline after which Southwest modelled itself, did it first. Southwest simply copied them. Unlike Pacific Southwest, however, Southwest … Read more

Number of words – 137 In the 1800s, the railroads were the biggest companies in the country. Having achieved such monumental success, even having changed the landscape of America, remembering why stopped being important to them. Instead they became obsessed with what they did – they were in the railroad business. This narrowing of perspective … Read more