The Current — Volume #016
Welcome — our goal is to provide a roundup of key stories and trends influencing the business landscape in the Sunshine State. We’ll bring the goods with strategies, tools, content, and tactics to help you visualize the future and chart the path to positive outcomes.
And of course, a few fun conversation starters for the (virtual) water cooler. Away we go.
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The Best Stuff We Have Read
Are Videogames the Future of Remote Work?
This is a fascinating profile of a handful of companies who are using videogame-like-software to recreate the feel of the physical office in the virtual world. Some of these scenarios like offices in castles, speakeasy bars, and beach front workspaces may make you smirk, but many of us are wrestling with what the future of the office will look like, and this is an interesting take.
A Taxonomy of Moats
Most of us are familiar with competitive advantage, but sometimes it can come off as an abstract concept that is hard to execute against. In this essay, Venture Capitalist and professor Jerry Neumann does a nice job of breaking down various types of ‘moats.’ For any leader looking to establish and/or maintain competitive advantage, this is critical reading.
The great mall of China: Why retailers everywhere should look to China
We all have read stories about the rapid rise of China’s economy, but few of us are able to grasp just how advanced their e-commerce marketplace is. A lot of these concepts like social selling, group buying, and omnichannel delivery are becoming increasingly popular in the United States as we emerge from the COVID crisis; yet, these concepts have been mainstays in China for years. For folks looking to understand the future of retail, China is a good place to start.
How Jeff Bezos Has Run Amazon, From Meetings to Managing
What Jeff Bezos has accomplished over the last quarter century at Amazon is nothing short of amazing. From surviving the dot com bubble, to launching the Kindle, and unlocking productivity in the business world with AWS, Bezos has left an imprint on our world that few others in business ever have. In this piece, the WSJ highlights some of the principles Bezos has used to run Amazon. If these worked for him, maybe you should give them a try?
A Few Quotes
“If you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones”
— Ray Dalio
“If you absolutely can’t tolerate critics, then don’t do anything new or interesting.”
— Jeff Bezos
Maybe You’re Wondering, “Who is Slalom?”
Slalom is a local-first company. With an 8,000-person international presence, we launched in Florida last Fall with the goal of becoming a driving force in our local community.
Thanks for reading!
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