Circle Three 62 / You Get What You Give
Welcome to Q4. A few pieces below that I enjoyed this week. Heavy on the culture.
Contents:
brain bites: Culture
Life After Lifestyle
The Widening Gyre
Death Over Dinner
brain bites: Business & Investing
Grayscale Ex-ETH
Strategy’s Strategist: Richard Rumelt Interview
Lyric: You Get What You Give by New Radicals
brain bites: culture
Life After Lifestyle. Article here on the evolution of brands and culture. I’m building my mental model of how culture and brands are evolving: we are moving towards producing culture itself.
In the 2010s, supply chain innovation opened up lifestyle brands. In the 2020s, financial mechanism innovation is opening up the space for incentivized ideologies, networked publics, and co-owned faiths.
The Widening Gyre. From Ben Hunt’s Epsilon Theory here. The political state of the nation has shifted from a game of cooperation to one of competition. I think it’s as much psychology as it is political opinions. If the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is one solution to the widening gyre, it’s worth exploring.
“If there’s one thing you get from Epsilon Theory, get this: when common knowledge is established – when everyone knows that everyone knows that something is ‘true’ – then the only rational behavior, even if you do NOT believe that the thing is true, is to act AS IF the thing is true.”
Death Over Dinner. Death is one of the hard-to-talk-about topics that can be delayed for years or decades. Awesome journey here to get discussion going.
“We have created an uplifting interactive adventure that transforms this seemingly difficult conversation into one of deep engagement, insight and empowerment.”
brain bites: business & investing
Grayscale® Smart Contract Platform Ex-Ethereum Fund. Grayscale has released a number of products offering exposure to the digital asset economy. After Ethereum’s recent Merge, one of particular interest is the Smart Contract Platform Ex-Ethereum Fund. Since its inception in March of this year, it currently holds seven tokens of smart contract platforms and sits down 57% since inception. This offering is harder to differentiate after Ethereum’s switch to proof of stake.
Strategy’s Strategist. Interview with strategy expert Richard Rumelt here. Key takeaways: Deployment of resources is not strategy. Strategy is about “exploiting some change in your environment and ride that change with quickness and skill.” Effective strategy work is more episodic than the traditional annual allocation to a strategy budget.
Toss your “strategic plan” in the trash:
“So my basic recommendation is to do two things: avoid the label ‘strategic plan’ — call those budgets ‘long-term resources plans’ — and start a separate, non-annual, opportunity-driven process for strategic work.”
I realize it’s not always possible to make predictions with data. That’s where strategy comes in.
“Strategic thinking is essentially a substitute for having clear connections between the positions we take and their economic outcomes. [It] helps us take positions in a world that is confusing ad uncertain.”
Successful leaders and entrepreneurs find a window of opportunity and jump through it. They focus on big wins. Polishing doorknobs (aka maintenance activities) is not conducive to the predatory posture for success.
Want to come up with an idea? Look at “value denials.”
“These are products or services that are both desired and feasible but are not being supplied to the market.”
Lyric: You Get What You Give by New Radicals
New Radicals released this song weeks before Y2K amid heated politics and technology changes. Or at least that’s what I read (I was 5). Felt to me like an appropriate song to get on the aux heading into what is shaping up to be a roller coaster of a Q4.
You've got the music in you
Don't let go, you've got the music in you
One dance left, this world is gonna pull through
Don't give up, you've got a reason to live
Can't forget, we only get what we give
Stay Curious,
Dan