durosas

Will Barnes & Noble's new CEO help avoid it from being added to the list of retailers that have been mowed down by Amazon's seemingly unstoppable supremacy? If you follow the sports analogy that consistency in the leadership structure from ownership (i.e: public versus private, being bought or buying) to the coaching staff (management) to your players (employees) lends itself to success and given that B&N now finds itself on it's 5th CEO in four years it doesn't look good. https://www.wsj.com/articles/barnes-noble-names-demos-parneros-as-chief-executive-1493265601

I definitely think there is something to this theory of a company blowing up after it has invested share-owner dollars into creating a new HQ to celebrate the companies growth or a CEOs outsized ego (hey, it happens). There may be the rare exception to this rule as the article below calls like start-ups (see Facebook or Google) that have outgrown their current digs then obviously it will, like a kid hitting their growth spurt outgrowing their clothes, need at least something bigger to fit in and look good. But, I think what the author here is getting at is the underlying, real rationale for building or acquiring these new digs, Often times it seems companies build or acquire new buildings as trophies rather then taking those dollars and investing in research to enable; 1. increased share-owner profit (not sure how a brand new shiny building demonstrates that an executive team is using share-owner dollars wisely. Meaning how does the usage of those dollars increase share-owner value dir...

It's an story reminiscent of the epic browser wars (remember those? Explorer vs. Netscape) with the upstart constantly looking for that silver bullet that will enable it to leap-frog the competition while the incumbent simply mimics any new innovation thrown at it by integrating it into its already healthy portfolio (see Instagram Global Stores: http://adage.com/article/digital/instagram-global-stories-campaign-juxtaposes-epic-silly-heat-snapchat/308485/?utm_source=digital_email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=adage&ttl=1491843803&utm_visit=682760). Today the players names are replaced with Snap and Facebook. The key difference in this edition is that neither has a hardware play that would enable them to seamlessly bundle their offerings allowing them to be the default provider of choice for all users..at least not yet. To that end Snapchat Inc. renamed itself Snap Inc, in an attempt to communicate that it is more then just an app. The rebranding/pivot (aka rev...