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Malcolm Gladwell says he was prompted to write Blink because he grew his hair long and found as a result that he was being stopped by the police more. “It used to be cut very short and conservatively. But I decided on a whim to let it grow wild as it had been when I was a teenager. Immediately in very small but significant ways my life changed. I started getting speeding tickets. I started getting pulled out of airport security lines. And one day as I was walking in downtown Manhattan a police van pulled up on the sidewalk and three officers jumped out. They were looking for a rapist and the rapist, they said, looked a lot like me. “They pulled out the sketch and the description. I looked at it and pointed out to them that the rapist looked nothing at all like me. He was much taller and much heavier and about 15 years younger. All we had in common was a large head of curly hair. After 20 minutes or so the officers finally agreed with me and let me go.” A master story te

The Curve by Nicholas Lovell is a book that will help you to think about your business differently and particularly about how to think about your customers and how to make money from them. For example, at one point he discusses the difference between “free” and “cheap” by quoting a famous experiment where psychologist Dan Ariely set up a table to offer customers two kinds of chocolate, a high quality Lindt truffle or an “ordinary” Hershey Kiss. “A large sign above the table read, ‘One chocolate per customer’. Customers could only see the chocolates and their prices once they stepped up to the table. “Ariely started the experiment by setting the price of Lindt at 15 cents [the cost price was 30 cents] and Kisses at 1 cent. [The customers] acted with a great deal of rationality: they compared the price and quality of the Kiss with the price and quality of the truffle, and about 73% of them chose the truffle. “The purpose of the experiment was to see what impact free had on

I don’t fear Amazon, it’s One Stop, a senior wholesale executive told me recently. But a flick through The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age ofAmazon by Brad Stone might make him rethink. I am sure that Jeff Bezos will write a better book about his business ideas 20 years from now and while Stone’s book has been slated by some insiders, it is a great read. For anyone involved in distribution it is a must read. Famously frugal with company funds, the Amazon attitude to burning up money buying companies that failed during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s will dazzle you. Even more impressive is Bezos pursuit of the best brains from Walmart. He started his career in a New York hedge fund run by David E Shaw, whose mastery of maths and computing made him a billion dollars exploiting inefficiencies in the way Wall Street worked. DESCO had a policy of hiring the best brains and Bezos was a prodigy. He left this well paid job to set up an internet business that had a 70

There are five things that most people get wrong about what makes great companies succeed. Great companies are not led by risk takers. They do not innovate more than their competitors. They are not quicker to react to change. They don’t change the way they work. And they don’t have more good luck. In Great byChoice , written by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, the real attributes of success are analysed and presented in a way that will help any business leader think about what she is doing well and where she needs to improve. But first a spoiler alert. If you are a fan of Robert Falcon Scott, this book is not for you. Collins and Hansen use a discussion of the ways that Roald Amundsen and Scott approached their 1911 race to be first to the South Pole to demonstrate how the findings above make the difference between life and death. While the book runs to 304 pages, mostly to back up the authors’ arguments, you can get a great deal out of reading the stories. In just six page

In a briefing reported by the Financial Times, Walmart suggests it is hitting an inflexion point in its business as shoppers wanted smaller stores closer to their homes. While its model of big out-of-town stores is still successful, Bill Simon, head of the US business, said consumers were reluctant to drive long distances to shop and people were moving back to city centres. He split shopping trips into three types: - large grocery shops often at weekends (falling) - medium-sized purchases (flat) - "immediate access" trips (growth). Competition with small stores was intense as dollar stores had expanded, drug stores were competing for sales and competitors were opening small format stores. What does a Walmart small store look like in the US? - Neighbourhood markets = 38,000 sq ft - Express stores = 15,000 sq ft. Simon stressed that Walmart was not abandoning its business model as a mass market discount retailer.

  The US edition of Setting the Table , Danny Meyer’s inspiring guide to success as an independent restaurateur, has a brilliant blue cover with a single saltshaker. The edition I bought does not and that is the only weakness with this useful guide to setting up your first shop, moving from one to two, from two to four, and from four to infinity. The saltshaker is relevant because it is attached to a brilliant story about leadership from Meyer’s early days in the mid-1980s when he had opened his first restaurant and was developing his business style. Pat Cetta, an experienced restaurateur who informally mentored Meyer asked him to clear a table of everything except a saltshaker. He asked: “Where is the saltshaker now”. “Right where you told me in the centre of the table.” “Are you sure it’s where you want it?” I looked closely. The shaker was actually about a quarter of an inch off centre. “Go ahead put it where you really want it.” I moved it very slightly to