This week’s highlights:  Inbox Management, Strategic Strategy, and Zion’s Shoe

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Fifteen on Friday – Issue 321

Happy Friday,

David

Food for Thought:

Top Read of the Week:  Medium – How I’ve Made Email my Secret Weapon

Why It Matters:   Whether it is near constant pop-ups announcing the arrival of new mail or tons of irrelevant messages, I’m going to guess for the vast majority of people their inbox has become the master they never wanted. This piece is spot on about how to ruthlessly manage your inbox and not the other way around.

Consider as well:

1. NYT Mag – Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable  Author Charles Duhigg reflects on the life of his Harvard Business School classmates.
2. Tennessean – The hospital is dead. Welcome to Ducktown  Rural Hospitals Are Collapsing Throughout Tennessee, Creating Health Care Deserts In Poor, Far-Flung Towns Where Residents Are The Most Vulnerable.
3. Guardian – New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators  The Elon Musk-backed nonprofit company OpenAI declines to release research publicly for fear of misuse
4. NYT – A Real Tube Carrying Dreams of 600-M.P.H. Transit   Virgin Hyperloop One is testing a system that would put passengers in pods hurtling through vacuum tubes. Other companies are moving ahead with similar plans.

Business/Economics:

Top Read of the Week:  McKinsey – Strategy’s strategist: An interview with Richard Rumelt

Why It Matters:   “Most corporate strategic plans have little to do with strategy. They are simply three-year or five-year rolling resource budgets and some sort of market share projection. Calling this strategic planning creates false expectations that the exercise will somehow produce a coherent strategy.:

Consider as well:

1. VF – “She Never Looks Back”: Inside Elizabeth Holmes’S Chilling Final Months At Theranos  At the end, Theranos was overrun by a dog defecating in the boardroom, nearly a dozen law firms on retainer, and a C.E.O. grinning through her teeth about an implausible turnaround.
2. Forbes – The Greatest Investor You’ve Never Heard Of: An Optometrist Who Beat The Odds To Become A Billionaire
3. Novus – A New Era for Long/Short Fundamental Equity  Examining the forces behind the challenging environment for fundamental equity long/short strategies, and how successful players can respond.
4. NYT – As McKinsey Sells Advice, Its Hedge Fund May Have a Stake in the Outcome

Culture/Tech/Science:

Top Read of the Week: NYT – Zion Williamson’s Injury Has Some Saying He Should Quit Duke 

Why It Matters:   “A freakish injury to Duke’s Zion Williamson, college basketball’s best and most prominent player, only seconds into a game on Wednesday night has instantaneously renewed a debate about the contradictions of the sport’s economic foundation, shining a harsh new light on the N.C.A.A.’s policy of amateurism and the influence of billion-dollar shoe companies.”

Consider as well:

1. Guardian – Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the ‘pencil towers’ of New York What are air rights and why do they matter?
2. Engadget – Samsung’s foldable phone is officially the ‘Galaxy Fold’
3. MIT – Once hailed as unhackable, blockchains are now getting hacked  More and more security holes are appearing in cryptocurrency and smart contract platforms, and some are fundamental to the way they were built.
4. BusinessWeek – Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same  Cheap stick framing has led to a proliferation of blocky, forgettable mid-rises—and more than a few construction fires