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Summer Reading List 2025

In keeping with our tradition at Adam Smith, Esq. of publishing a summertime diversion in the form of a selective list of what we’ve been reading lately, herewith the 2025 installment: Fiction, nonfiction, and one millennia-old classic. Our hope is that you might find... read more +

On Being a Splendid Gray

by | Jul 26, 2019 | 8 Comments

In our third and final installment of the Maroons/Grays segmentation analysis, we presented this: Here’s a simplistic way of thinking about the two types of firms and the consequences for each of strong or of weak management.   Maroons Grays Superbly run Steady as she...

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Do Laterals Create or Destroy Value?

by | Jun 27, 2019 | 2 Comments

Ask almost any Managing Partner or office leader this question and odds are about 98% that the answer you'll get is, "It depends." Indeed. We wish there were reliable, consistent, industry-wide data on laterals' success ratios, but we've never seen it or even heard...

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Maroons & Grays: Part 3

by | Jun 14, 2019 | 15 Comments

Let's open this third and final installment with the #1 question we're most frequently asked about this model: Can one firm excel at being both a Maroon and a Gray? No. Or in the very best of circumstances, it's extremely hard to do and it's usually done not well. In...

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Maroons & Grays: Part 2

by | Jun 9, 2019 | 5 Comments

At the end of installment #1, we promised you we'd discuss what happens if you apply Porter's famous "five forces" to the Maroons and the Grays.  Shall we? Insight from Porter’s “Five Forces” In 1979, Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter published his...

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