WSJ: “Fifteen years ago, both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo bought back their bottlers to tighten control. Then they split paths. Coca-Cola spun the business back out while PepsiCo kept it in house. That divergence proved crucial. Coca-Cola, freed from trucks and warehouses, doubled down on brand building and pruning underperforming products. PepsiCo—already more complex because of its giant snacks business—was left managing fleets of trucks and armies of sales reps. The payoff has been clear. Coca-Cola’s discipline shows up in steady share gains from stadium coolers to corner stores. PepsiCo, weighed down by a sprawl of products and bottling baggage, has slipped. And while Coke’s asset-light model has lifted profit margins, margins at PepsiCo’s North American beverage division are down from where they were in the past.”
NYTimes: “A company cultivates its “halo” when it tries to parlay positive associations with one of its products into a positive reputation for the overall brand; the hope is that a beloved item can shine light on, and even serve as a shorthand for, the enterprise as a whole. The iPhone, for example, has offered Apple something of a brand halo since it was introduced in 2007, analysts have noted. The concept has been around for decades, and it continues to pop up in business circles. A spokesperson for the ID. Buzz, an electric version of the classic Volkswagen van, recently told The Wall Street Journal that it was intended as a “halo” product, one that would inspire customers to go into showrooms and check out cars, even if they didn’t necessarily buy a van.”
Tyler Cowen: “The AI world before us is rather rapidly being bifurcated into two sectors: a) progress already is extreme, and is hard to improve upon, and b) progress is ongoing, but will take a long time to be visible to actual users and consumers. And so people will complain that AI progress is failing us, but mostly they will be wrong. They will be the victim of cognitive error and biases. The reality is that progress is continuing apace, but it swallows up and renders ordinary some of its more visible successes. What is left behind for future progress can be pretty slow.”
WSJ: “Economists worry that a ‘universal basic income’ would make recipients lazier. Data from programs around the world suggests the opposite is true.”
