The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. In this profound and essential Brief, we distill the single most important and often-overlooked principle from Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Our hosts quickly explain why the ultimate victory is the one that is won before the battle even begins, through superior positioning, strategy, and psychological advantage. You will learn why the most brilliant general—and the most brilliant business strategist—is the one who makes their victory look easy and inevitable. In just a few minutes, you’ll have a powerful, counter-intuitive principle to guide your thinking about competition and success.

We begin our multi-part series on Sun Tzu's ancient classic, The Art of War, by focusing on its first and most important principle: the crucial role of calculation and preparation before any conflict begins. Our hosts do a deep dive into the five fundamental factors that Sun Tzu argues must be assessed: The Way, Heaven, Earth, Command, and Discipline. The conversation explores how these ancient concepts can be translated into a modern business context, from understanding your company's moral purpose (The Way) to analyzing the competitive landscape (Earth). This is a lesson in the timeless wisdom of doing your homework before you ever make a strategic move.

What is the most useful model for understanding human economic behavior? This episode stages a foundational Debate between two opposing views of human nature. One host, channeling the ideas of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, argues for the model of the rational actor. They contend that while not perfect, a model of people as rational agents pursuing their own self-interest is the most powerful and predictive tool for understanding markets and economies. The other host, drawing on the research of Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow, argues that this model is fundamentally flawed. They believe that a model based on the predictable irrationality of human psychology provides a much more accurate and useful picture of how people actually behave.

Many of the most famous and fascinating ideas in business psychology—from priming to power poses—have come under fire in the "replication crisis." In this important Critique episode, we analyze the foundations of the pop psychology that fills our business bookshelves, using some of the concepts from Thinking, Fast and Slow as a starting point. Our hosts explore how the pressure to publish novel, surprising results can lead to studies that are not robust or replicable. We discuss the importance of intellectual humility and a healthy skepticism towards claims that are based on a single, small study. This is a look at the difficult but essential process of scientific self-correction.

Why does losing $100 feel so much worse than gaining $100 feels good? In this concise and powerful Brief, we distill the single most important concept from Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory: Loss Aversion. Our hosts quickly explain this fundamental asymmetry in our psychological experience of gains and losses. You will learn how this powerful bias affects our behavior in everything from financial markets and contract negotiations to marketing and personal decision-making. In just a few minutes, you’ll have a clear understanding of one of the most potent and predictable forces in human psychology.

In the final part of our series on Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, we explore the groundbreaking work that won him the Nobel Prize: Prospect Theory. Our hosts do a deep dive into this descriptive model of how people actually make decisions under risk. The conversation unpacks the key concepts of loss aversion—our tendency to feel the pain of a loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain—and the certainty effect. We analyze why this theory was a revolutionary challenge to the classical economic idea of the rational, utility-maximizing actor. This is a look at a powerful theory that has profound implications for economics, finance, and marketing.

Where should a company focus its improvement efforts: on making its individual executives more effective, or on improving the overall system in which they work? This episode presents a classic Debate between two giants of management thought. One host, drawing on the ideas of Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive, argues that the key to performance is the discipline and effectiveness of the individual knowledge worker. The other host, channeling the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming's Out of the Crisis, argues that individual performance is largely determined by the system, and that any effort to improve results must start with improving the process itself.

Peter Drucker is the undisputed father of modern management, but are his ideas, many of them developed in the mid-20th century, still relevant in today's fast-paced, digital, and globalized world? In this Critique episode, we analyze the legacy of Drucker's work. Our hosts acknowledge the timeless and profound nature of his core principles on effectiveness, purpose, and the customer. However, we also offer a constructive critique. We question whether his model of the large, stable, hierarchical corporation is a sufficient guide for the more agile, networked, and entrepreneurial organizations that dominate today's economy.