Each study takes a company or business pattern and extracts the frameworks, evidence, and actionable insights that matter. Available individually or as a bundle.
Get every case study—current and future additions included. One purchase, lifetime access as the library grows.
Buy individually or grab the bundle above for everything.
How a trucking company escaped commoditization by partnering with railroads to pioneer intermodal freight—and built a $16.5 billion business with a 14% ROIC in an industry most dismiss as a commodity.
Forrest Mars Sr. started four businesses from scratch across two continents, pioneered scientific management in candy, and built a $50 billion private empire. A study in entrepreneurial capital allocation and assiduous reinvestment.
How Amazon used a deep understanding of its cost structure, business float from suppliers and Prime members, and relentless price reductions to build a dominant business—all while raising minimal external capital.
Costco never raises prices—it attacks its own cost structure instead, passing 89% of every cost reduction to its 137 million members. A study in how many small advantages compound into an unassailable position.
One company clung to high margins while its market changed beneath it; the other adapted repeatedly. A comparative study in how margin obsession became Circuit City’s undoing.
Circuit City had the cash, the assets, and the opportunity to fix its impaired store base. Instead, it bought back $1 billion in stock, spun off CarMax tax-free, and dithered on store remodels. A counterfactual analysis of what could have been.
How Circuit City’s obsession with high-margin sales tactics and extended service plans alienated the new self-service electronics customer and opened the door for Best Buy.
Circuit City’s internal credit bank was so profitable it masked the true economics of its stores—for years. A study in how non-core profit sources can create dangerous complacency.
Brian Jellison transformed a cyclical pump company into a $30 billion software conglomerate by acquiring niche, high-cashflow businesses that larger buyers ignored. A masterclass in contrarian M&A.
Big Lots had a windfall from a sale-leaseback and spent $418 million buying back stock instead of repositioning its business. It filed for bankruptcy three years later. A case in capital allocation failure.
How clean bathrooms, cheap gas, and beaver-branded merchandise turned a Texas convenience store chain into a cultural phenomenon generating an estimated $2 billion in revenue.
Convoy raised $828 million to “blitzscale” freight brokerage and shut down two years later. A study in what happens when a Silicon Valley playbook meets a fragmented, commodity market.
How RXO used shareholder backing and a rising stock price to acquire Coyote Logistics with equity instead of debt—a rare instance of having your cake and eating it too.
How Coke and Pepsi used advertising as an endogenous sunk cost to raise the minimum efficient scale of the soft drink industry—winning market share not from each other, but from everyone else.
Brand matters in CPG but not in automobiles. The difference comes down to cost structure: when R&D and advertising are a small share of total costs, brand can’t serve as an entry barrier.
How the software industry’s transition from on-premise to SaaS shifted the nature of scale benefits from demand-side to supply-side—and changed the source of competitive advantage.
A family-built machine tool company acquired by a conglomerate, then taken private in an LBO. A study in how arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency destroy a business from the inside.
Purchase frequency as a force for customer captivity. High-frequency businesses like Starbucks and CPG build habits; low-frequency ones like cars and mattresses struggle to retain customers.
How price deflation affects firms differently based on whether their costs are fixed or variable—and why appliance manufacturers responded with industry consolidation.
AOL, the smallest and poorest-funded online network, let users entertain themselves because it had no money for content. Capital constraints can force creative breakthroughs.