The weekend is here! Pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit outside, and get ready for our longer weekend reads:
• The Physics of Kaizen: Why Someone Should Be Recognized for Solving Problems That Never Happened: Toyota’s Kaizen Culture: Continuous Improvement. It’s an obvious statement: companies must continually improve. Companies that are able to successfully adopt a Kaizen culture and practice have the ability to establish a dominant position in their market. (Taylor Pearson)
• The $100 billion gamble that a post-industrial U.S. city can reinvent itself as a high-tech hub: Can a massive injection of cash to make computer chips transform Syracuse’s economy and show us how to rebuild the nation’s industrial base? (MIT Technology Review)
• How to do a good job: If you put together lists of techniques for doing a good job in many different areas, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it. Part of my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing that this exercise shows is that it has a definite form; it’s not just a point labeled “work hard”. The following recipe assumes that you are very ambitious. (Paul Graham)
• How to Make Money Losing $300,000 a Year on Slots: Millions of people tune in to see others take on the casino mainstay. “It’s fun to watch someone else play with their money while you’re sitting on your couch having a beer.” (the wall street journal)
• Inside the AI Factory: As technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast subclass of tasks is emerging – and going nowhere. (The edge)
• How Tom Brady’s Crypto Ambitions Collided With Reality: The superstar quarterback is among the celebrities facing the fallout from the crypto crash. Others, like Taylor Swift, escaped. (New York Times)
• Walmart is quietly transforming into an online retail tech titan. The world’s largest retailer stumbled in the early innings of the e-commerce revolution. Now that Walmart has found its footing, it’s on its way to big profits. The action is a buy. (barrons)
• The Great Penis War: The inventor of the world’s first cosmetic penile implant says a group of Houston doctors are trying to steal his ideas. Inside the multi-million dollar feud. (Texas monthly)
• A new map of the universe, painted with cosmic neutrinos: Physicists finally know where at least some of these high-energy particles come from, helping to make neutrinos useful for exploring fundamental physics. (Quanta Magazine)
• Broken nerves, sleepless nights: the sound of pickleball is driving everyone crazy: The incessant pop-pop-pop of this burgeoning sport has caused a national plague of indecisive clashes, petitions, calls to the police and lawsuits, with no solution in sight. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this weekend with Franklin Templeton CEO Jenny Johnson, who manages $1.5 trillion in client assets. She has been with FT since 1988 and has held senior positions in investment management, distribution, technology, operations and high net worth clients. Franklin Templeton oversees more than 9,000 employees and 1,300 investment professionals. Johnson is on the list of the most powerful women (Barron’s, Forbes, American Banker, etc.). She was CEO in February 2020.
