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Conway’s Law on Campus: Why Your Org Chart is Ruining Your Brand
In the late nineteen sixties, a computer programmer named Melvin Conway submitted a paper to the Harvard Business Review. The editors rejected his submission. Conway subsequently published his observations in Datamation magazine in April of nineteen sixty-eight. His central thesis eventually became a foundational rule of software engineering. Conway observed…
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Institutional Isomorphism and the U.S. News Trap: Why Mimicking R1s Kills Regional Brands
Gather ten strategic plans from ten different regional universities. Lay them side by side on a large conference table. The physical artifacts themselves tell a story of compliance. Look closely at the typography, the paper stock, the photography, and the core pillars. You will find an unyielding repetition. The glossy…
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The LUV Hangover: Why Southwest’s Corporate Religion is Tanking
For decades, Southwest Airlines has been the undisputed golden child of American aviation. They were the outliers, the rebels in hot pants who traded the stiff formality of legacy carriers for peanuts, “LUV,” and a seating policy that resembled a middle-school fire drill. They built a brand on a “Why”…
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Congratulations on Your Series A! (Anthropic Will Be Releasing Your Entire Product for Free Next Tuesday)
The digital skyline of March 2026 is cluttered with the scaffolding of an empire that was supposed to be built by a thousand different architects. Three years ago, venture capitalists spoke of a decentralized future — a Cambrian explosion of AI-first companies that would reinvent everything from legal discovery to…
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Stop Starting With Why.
For fifteen years, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why has been the undisputed gospel of the world of corporate strategy. It was the perfect philosophy for a specific moment in history; a moment of economic abundance, cheap capital, and boundless optimism. It told us that commerce didn’t have to be dirty.…
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The Booming Business of Leaving Your Customers the Hell Alone
Consider the physical mechanics of a modern commercial transaction. You walk through the automatic glass doors of a mid-tier lifestyle retailer. Before your foot has fully settled onto the polished concrete floor, a proximity sensor triggers not just a chime, but a human response. A floor associate, trained to within…
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Pragmatic Revival 