HBR on Web3: “In Web3, instead of platforms having full control of the underlying data, users typically own whatever content they have created (such as posts or videos), as well as digital objects they have purchased. Moreover, these digital assets are typically created according to interoperable standards on public blockchains, instead of being privately hosted on a company’s servers. This makes the assets “portable,” in the sense that a user can, in principle, leave any given platform whenever they want by unplugging from that app and moving — along with their data — to another one. This is a major shift, which could fundamentally change how digital companies operate: Users’ ability to take their data from one platform to another introduces new sources of competitive pressure, and likely requires firms to update their business strategies. If a platform isn’t creating enough value for its users, they might simply leave.”
FT: “The Penguin Book Of Indian Poets, an anthology of poems exclusively written in English, is vast in scope and ambition. The book’s editor [is] Jeet Thayil, an acclaimed novelist and poet himself…For his latest project, Thayil has selected the work of 95 poets (49 women, 45 men) from across the country and the Indian diaspora, and he is steely in his determination to claim each of these writers as truly Indian. “Three quarters of a century separate the oldest poet, born in 1924, from the youngest, born in 2001. The dates service as bookends in a movement’s unlikely coming of age,” Thayil writes in the introduction. He argues persuasively that by the 21st century, a new generation of Indian poets had ushered in “a flowering, an uprising” of creativity, which complemented the work of 20th-century modernist poets in the west. In the hands of the poets Thayil highlights here, English ceases to be the language of India’s former colonisers; rather it has the force of a rushing young river that has joined up with the ocean of older Indian languages.”
FT: “In corporate strategy, [Richard] Rumelt says, it is important to identify “the most critical part of the challenge you can actually expect to solve. Don’t pick a challenge you cannot yet deal with — attack the crux of the situation, build momentum, and then re-examine your position and its possibilities…The logical consequence of this attitude is that as business challenges alter, so strategists must correct their course. Strategy, Rumelt writes, is “a journey through, over, and around a sequence of challenges”. As for the objection that a short-term focus turns strategy into tactics, he points out that, in military planning, the distinction between strategy and tactics merely “denotes the difference between the general’s action plan and the top sergeant’s action plan”.”
