by Bruce | October 17, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Just Plain Interesting, Strategy
In connection with an ongoing research/whitepaper project, further about which affiant sayeth not, I had occasion to look at the Original AmLaw 50 from 1985. Here are the first three columns: Rank, firm, and gross revenue: Aside from the historic time warp we...
by Bruce | September 23, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Globalization, Strategy
Along with Brexit and the apparently unsinkable Trump, another surprise has been brewing on the world stage and I hope you’ve noticed. Globalization—measured by the most fundamental and reliable metric, crossborder trade volume—has ended its ever upward...
by Bruce | August 11, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Leadership, Strategy
Spoiler alert: If you’re looking for a hard-hitting expose of everything that’s wrong with RPL, look elsewhere. I’m on record as saying that RPL is the most telling metric we have, and I stand by that with permission to amend, or permission to put...
by Bruce | July 28, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
This is the first part in a series I will audaciously and perhaps misguidedly and at the risk of over-promising call “Metrics that might matter.” It’s prompted, as many new creative efforts in human life, by frustration with the status quo. Our...
by Bruce | July 19, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Compensation, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
With the release a bit earlier this month of Legal Business’s annual “Global 100,” we have more data to scrutinize, should we care to. I’ll give you the highlights of the numbers here but even the most innumerate among us could not exactly...
by Bruce | June 9, 2016 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
“Something looks wrong.” So begins Greg Ip’s most recent column in The Wall Street Journal. What exactly “looks wrong?” Well, the economy, stupid. Specifically, as Ip points out, consumer spending has been rising strongly recently but...