We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective of individual talents and preferences.
Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
The convergence of desire is even more obvious at the top: all oligarchs have the same taste in Cristal, from Petersburg to Pyongyang.
So you might ask: are there any fields that matter but haven’t been standardized and institutionalized?
Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.
The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans.
To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.
A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball.
Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.
Everything important to us – the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment – is singular.
Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society; they’re powerful engines for making it better.
The Monopoly Question Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.
In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot. Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weekly active user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earnings reports. However, you can hit those numbers and still overlook deeper, harder-to-measure problems that threaten the durability of your business.
Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs; Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain; Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves. But.
You are not a lottery ticket.
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.