Top articles of the week | August 31

August 31, 2019

Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!

Starbucks, monetary superpower Moneyness (reading time: 8 minutes)

This is my must read article of the week. JP Koning of the Moneyness blog breaks down how Starbucks leverages its gift card as a competitive advantage. The stored value accrued by consumers provides great leverage to the company and not to mention profits. The potential for alliances with other consumer brands brings up interesting possibilities as well.

The Sports News Site Haters Love to Dunk on Keeps Signing Up Subscribers Bloomberg (reading time: 14 minutes)

I’ve been following The Athletic for a while now. It is a digital subscription site focused entirely on sports. The upstart is challenging local sports newspapers globally with its approach. The company employs a fascinating strategy; high quality content only, niche stories and poaching sports journalists. Given the current challenges in the media landscape, The Athletic shows a potential way forward.

How Target Packaged a Turnaround Fortune (reading time: 15 minutes)

Many news headlines declare that retailers are trying to become “tech companies”. One company that bucked that trend was Target. Instead of trying to be more tech focused, the company strived to be a better retailer – and that started with investing in its stores. This piece dives into how the company turned its fortunes around by investing in its stores, staff and fashion brands.

30 years, 30 lessons in Leadership Dan Greene (reading time: 9 minutes)

This list of leadership principles contains some great reminders. Though pretty simple to write down on a list, it’s a bit more challenging to put into practice.

An Entrepreneurial, Ecosystem Enabling Organization Simone Cicero (reading time: 11 minutes)

Haier is an organization that I’ve followed for a long time. It is a pioneer in management and platform structures. We’ve covered platforms for a few months on this newsletter and this is a great addition to that corpus. Simone Cicero covers How Haier built an entrepreneurial organization and the company’s core principles.