Links: A new business environment?
+ college coaching, GLP-1s, car colors, and more
1 | A lot of business indicators went crazy when COVID-19 hit. Most of them have settled back to normal, but not all:
The "dispersion" of stock returns among big companies (the difference between the best and worst performers) went way up. This made sense in 2020 when social distancing changed behaviors in ways that especially advantaged some businesses, and perhaps in 2021-22 when many of those behaviors reverted. But more than three years later, dispersion between companies is still higher than before.
People started a lot more businesses than usual in 2020. This also made some sense: there were a lot of new opportunities, a lot of people were laid off, and even those who weren't may have had nothing better to do than start a side hustle. But new business creation is still 50% above the pre-pandemic trend.
If you believe these trends, they point to a permanently more dynamic economy, which I don’t think has been reflected in the zeitgeist yet.
2 | In the earliest days of college sports, coaches were often recent teammates who’d graduated just a year or two earlier. That archetype was replaced long ago by professional coaches who worked their way up the ranks for decades—except at the nation's best field hockey program, UNC, which is now coached by 2023 alumna Erin Matson. (She also happens to be perhaps the greatest college field hockey player of all time.)
3 | In business, 2023 has primarily been the year of "how will generative AI change everything?", but it's secondarily been the year of "how will Ozempic/Wegovy change everything?" Don’t take any single comment at face value amid all the hype, but still worth noting that Walmart—which knows who is taking the popular diabetes medications from its pharmacy business—now says it's seeing those customers purchase noticeably less food. (Related: although they may be bad for sellers of a few specific products, these drugs will be good for business in general.)
4 | How car colors have changed over three decades: green has nearly disappeared, and silver came and went, replaced by white and dark grey. (Coincidentally, my first car was a silver model from 2000, and now I drive a white 2023.)
5 | Nick Bloom makes an obvious-in-retrospect point: even with the Covid shock behind us, we should expect work-from-home to increase in the medium term, because younger companies are much more remote-friendly (the unstated corollary is that younger companies grow faster). If anything, those numbers might understate the future trend: the return on in-person work is arguably highest for new companies, which have the most ambiguous problems to solve and can afford to restrict their talent pool to one city. As those companies scale, they might become even more willing to offer remote work.
6 | Babel: An Arcane History is my favorite novel I've read so far this year—a neat combination of science fiction and historical fiction.
7 | If you want to see pandas in America, you’d better hurry: the Memphis and San Diego zoos have already returned theirs to China, Washington’s are leaving this year, and Atlanta’s are likely to follow next year.
8 | At least by one estimate, investment in solar power now accounts for 0.5% of global GDP.
9 | I need a motivational poster of this quote so I can put it on my daughter's wall:
