Strategy Boffins

Idea Almanac

Daily update on new ideas and books so that you can grow each day

March 30, 2022

Idea Almanac

What type of gamification works for my company ?

“What if our employees don’t want to play games? Is calling something a quest considered gamification? Is the gamification BlendTech uses to promote its blenders the same as the gamification that eBay uses to make its platform addictive? How do I know what type of gamification works for my company? All this can be quite confusing to the average reader . As Gamification is such an all-encompassing umbrella term for “making things game-like” , there are almost no bounds for what it can or cannot be.”

Excerpt From: Yu-kai Chou. “Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards.”

March 27, 2022

Idea Almanac

Options – Implied Volatility

Volatility is a measure of the speed at which a stock’s price changes over time. High-volatility stocks are more likely to make large percentage moves up or down, and therefore options on such stocks have a higher likelihood of expiring in the money, perhaps deep in the money. Therefore, options on stocks with high volatility will tend to have higher relative option premiums than stocks with lower volatility.

The Option Trader Handbook: Strategies and Trade Adjustments

March 21, 2022

Idea Almanac

There are two types of options: calls and puts

To understand how options work, one needs first to understand what an option is. An option is a contract that gives its owner the right to buy or the right to sell a fixed quantity of an underlying security at a specific price within a certain time constraint. There are two types of options: calls and puts. A call gives the owner of the option the right to buy the underlying security. A put gives the owner of the option the right to sell the underlying security. As in any transaction, there are two parties to an option contract—a buyer and a seller.

TRADING OPTION GREEKS -How Time, Volatility, and Other Pricing Factors Drive Profits

March 19, 2022

Idea Almanac

The Law of the ladder in Marketing

“All products are not created equal. There’s a hierarchy in the mind that prospects use in making decisions. For each category, there is a product ladder in the mind. On each rung is a brand name. Take the car rental category. Hertz got into the mind first and wound up on the top rung. Avis got in second and National got in third. Your marketing strategy should depend on how soon you got into the mind and consequently which rung of the ladder you occupy. The higher the better, of course.”

Excerpt From: Al Ries. “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Exposed and Explained by the World’s Two.”.

March 18, 2022

Idea Almanac

Destroy your Debt

“Well-dressed poverty is still poverty. Just because your business is making lots of money doesn’t mean you’re hanging on to it. Too many entrepreneurs believe the top line is what defines success, and then they behave accordingly. Another big client comes on board, and the entrepreneur expands the office. A big sale rolls in, and with it a fancy dinner. It’s like putting Frankenstein’s monster in a tuxedo and having it dance and sing to “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.“One tiny bit of faulty wiring—as when the big client decides not to pay his bills—and the monster goes on a rampage, and everything falls apart.”

Excerpt From: Mike Michalowicz. “Profit First.”

March 17, 2022

Idea Almanac

Stockpicking Tools

“It wasn’t long ago that amateur stockpickers had a hard time following the fundamentals of the companies whose stocks they owned. Analysts at the brokerage houses were scurrying around, finding out everything they could, but this information rarely reached the client. If a brokerage house changed its recommendation from “buy” to “sell,” the small-time customer was the last to know. If you asked for it, your broker might send you an analyst’s report on a company, but these reports were often several months out of date. Amateur investors had to rely on the quarterly and annual reports put out by companies themselves. They also made frequent trips to the local library, where they pored over a publication called Value Line. Value Line gives a one-page rundown on hundreds of companies and is packed with useful information—it’s an excellent resource even today.”

Excerpt From: Peter Lynch and John Rothchild. “Learn to Earn.”

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March 9, 2022

Idea Almanac

Low-income people are physiologically different than high-income people

“So low-income people in this country are basically juggling a whole bunch of balls simultaneously. The result of that constant juggling is stress. These communities were “incubators of chronic stress,” he said in a TEDx talk. “Low-income people are physiologically different than high-income people. Not because they were born that way, but because we made them that way.” There’s a well-established link between chronic stress and a variety of health problems, among them cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and inflammation. And that’s why the health care system was so poorly positioned to close the gap. The problem was not the lack of treatment. It was the lack of health. 

Excerpt From: Dan Heath. “Upstream.”

March 2, 2022

Idea Almanac

Being an entrepreneur isn’t the right path for you

“I don’t think everyone wants to build the next Apple. I don’t think everyone wants to be the next Elon Musk. I don’t think everyone wants to have a life working eighty to a hundred hours a week for twenty-plus years to build a massive empire. Some people simply want to build a small business that will give them control without having to deal with the day-to-day politics of working for a Fortune 500 company. Others want to build an online business that they can run while traveling the world. Self-awareness is critical to forging your path. When you are honest with yourself, you may realize that being an entrepreneur isn’t the right path for you.”

Excerpt From: Patrick Bet-David. “Your Next Five Moves.”

February 20, 2022

Idea Almanac

WHAT IS STRATEGY?

WHAT IS STRATEGY? For one thing, it is probably the business world’s most used and abused word. We have strategies for everything: from advertising to logistics to human resources to custodian engineering. This is a shame, for the concept of strategy is both profound and useful. Bruce Henderson captured it classically: “All competitors who persist over time must maintain a unique advantage by differentiation over all others. Managing that differentiation is the essence of long-term business strategy.

The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy: Classic Concepts and New Perspectives

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