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Tech News
A first-person account describes competing in the tabletop game Diplomacy against 80 other players at Dixiecon, held in a dorm basement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The narrator recounts forming an alliance with fellow player Brian Ecton, only to be warned by other competitors that Ecton was manipulating him, before the alliance ultimately collapsed when an English-aligned player refused to support the narrator's army.
A commentary on higher education argues that top-tier institutions can no longer coast on prestige alone to attract students. Instead, it says these schools are adopting strategies long used by luxury brands to build lasting customer relationships, focusing on creating an overall experience rather than just a credential.
A marketing writer describes four years spent interviewing people who broke conventional marketing rules, including CMOs and other leaders. The piece highlights three unconventional figures—a monk, a real estate mogul and a musician—who are described as marketing gurus despite never setting out to be one, and draws lessons from how each built influence and audience without formal marketing titles.
An Entrepreneur contributor writes that the modern CFO role increasingly stretches beyond accounting, treasury and financial planning into sales, product development, operations, technology, risk and strategy. Drawing on experience across construction and financial services CFO roles, the author says financial reporting, liquidity and controls should remain the foundation of the job rather than its outer limit. The piece calls for CFOs to embed themselves in commercial functions like sales pricing and incentive structures.
Modern chess engines can defeat the world's best grandmasters, but researchers note they still cannot converge on one definitive, infallible way to play the game. Rather than making chess feel 'solved' or stale, these AI systems are reportedly revealing new strategic ideas and approaches to the game.
A commentary piece traces corporate identity design back a century, noting that early visual identities were built by craftspeople with deep expertise in applied arts. It argues that today, having a polished visual identity is no longer enough to set a brand apart from competitors.
Jotform founder Aytekin Tank describes building the online form-builder outside Silicon Valley's typical playbook, launching the product free for its first two years before introducing pricing. He says he avoided venture capital, skipped relocating to Silicon Valley, and built the company around long-term thinking and teamwork rather than rapid VC-fueled growth.
An Entrepreneur contributor describes a client who, as the only person of color on her executive team, started monthly breakfasts open to employees across all levels and departments rather than pursuing typical networking events like golf or drinks. Over two years these gatherings evolved into an informal communication channel that helped colleagues share information and solve problems, and the executive was later promoted to vice president.
Oatly creative director Michael Lee says the company has long refused to create a standard brand book, the style guide most large companies use to keep messaging consistent. He says new creative hires are told to 'unlearn everything you know about marketing,' and the company instead gives its creative team unusual autonomy to write and execute its own briefs. Oatly's shift traces back to 2012, when new CEO Toni Petersson and creative chief John Schoolcraft rebuilt the marketing department around creatives rather than traditional marketing structures.
Jeff Bezos has long attributed Amazon's rise from a small Seattle startup to a global corporate giant to a consistent two-word principle he says he repeated for three decades. He frames this mantra as the underlying operating philosophy that shaped Amazon's decisions and culture throughout its history.
Ron Johnson, who led Apple's retail division from 2000 to 2011, has published a new book titled 'Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius,' co-written with Zander Nethercutt. The book details his collaboration with Steve Jobs to design the Apple Store concept and grow it into one of the most profitable retail operations globally. Johnson also recently appeared on 9to5Mac's Overtime podcast to discuss the book and the store's early history.
A marketing analysis outlines four recurring reasons target buyers ignore campaigns even when they see the right messaging: audiences defined too broadly, content that describes products rather than buyer problems, insufficient buyer confidence to act, and marketing that answers questions nobody is actually asking. The piece recommends conducting five to ten interviews with people across different relationships to the company to spot which of these patterns applies before making changes.