8 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2024
    1. in 1864, Webster’s Unabridged was published and it marked animportant moment in modern lexicography: no longer the idiosyncratic workof one man, this dictionary was the product of a collaborative team withNoah Porter as Chief Editor and the German scholar Carl A. F. Mahn asetymologist
  2. Dec 2021
    1. The idea of the great books emerged at the same time as the modern university. It was promoted by works like Noah Porter’s “Books and Reading: Or What Books Shall I Read and How Shall I Read Them?” (1877) and projects like Charles William Eliot’s fifty-volume Harvard Classics (1909-10). (Porter was president of Yale; Eliot was president of Harvard.) British counterparts included Sir John Lubbock’s “One Hundred Best Books” (1895) and Frederic Farrar’s “Great Books” (1898). None of these was intended for students or scholars. They were for adults who wanted to know what to read for edification and enlightenment, or who wanted to acquire some cultural capital.

      Brief history of the "great books".

  3. Jul 2021
    1. Powerful suppliers, including suppliers of labor, can squeeze profi tability out of an industry that is unable to pass on cost increases in its own prices.

      Suppliers with bargaining power can squeeze the profitability out of an industry by raising prices on industry participants that cannot pass on cost increases in their own prices.

    2. It is the threat of entry, not whether entry actually occurs, that holds down profi tability.
    3. The threat of entry in an industry depends on the height of entry barriers that are present and on the reaction en-trants can expect from incumbents. If entry barriers are low and newcomers expect little retaliation from the entrenched competitors, the threat of entry is high and industry profi t-ability is moderated.

      The threat of entry depends on the barriers (i.e. moat) that are present and the reaction entrants can expect from incumbents. If both are low, the threat of new entrants is high.

    4. Particularly when new entrants are diversifying from other markets, they can leverage exist-ing capabilities and cash fl ows to shake up competition, as Pepsi did when it entered the bottled water industry, Micro-soft did when it began to offer internet browsers, and Apple did when it entered the music distribution business.

      When new entrants enter a market, they can often leverage existing cash flows and capabilities e.g. Apple when it entered the music distribution business.

    5. Industry structure drives competition and profi tability, not whether an industry produces a product or service, is emerging or mature, high tech or low tech, regulated or unregulated.

      Profitability is not driven by market maturation but by industry structure carved out by the five forces.

  4. Jul 2019