Every week, we put together a list of our top 5 articles of the past week. Happy reading!
Jet.com falls by wayside as Walmart focuses on its website, online grocery Reuters (reading time: 5 minutes)
This short post highlights the difficult of online grocery. When Walmart purchased Jet.com for 3 billion a few years ago and highlights the difficulty of competing on a large scale in the US market. The article also shows some of the other challenges the retailer is facing and with this shift to digital commerce.
What Management Needs to Become in an Era of Ecosystems Harvard Business Review (reading time: 5 minutes)
We’ve been doing quite a bit of work and research recently on the topic of ecosystems. As digitally enabled ecosystems are on the rise, organizations are attempting to shift how they manage relationships across different groups. This post in HBR exposes what needs to change and how some organizations are succeeding.
When Everything That Counts Can’t Be Counted The Reformed Broker (reading time: 12 minutes)
I *highly* recommend reading this article. It is one of the most succinct explanations I’ve seen on what is happening in today’s markets. The value of intangible assets and brand are worth considerably more than hard assets. This is why WeWork, AirBnb and Uber (among others) are worth more than companies with real assets. With the cost of capital being almost zero, it has left incumbent companies trying to emulate their digital peers.
The M&A process is broken Atlassian, Work Life (reading time: 10 minutes)
Atlassian is a $32 billion behemoth in SAAS and regularly acquires other companies. In this fascinating post, the company explains why the current tech M&A process is broken being too buyer friendly. The company is laying bare its approach by publicly sharing its term sheet. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen this done before. This looks like a great move and can convince potential targets of working with Atlassian.
We Like Ike’s Matrix Chenmark Capital (reading time: 3 minutes)
At work, we’re often talking about what is important versus what is urgent. There is the well known 2×2 Eisenhower Matrix that is used to work what matters. “What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
Bonus:
Here’s a frightening look at a Chinese elementary school facial recognition system in action (found on Twitter)
