Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2010–2021years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The book "Burn Rate" by Michael Wolff is good.
- Two more that come to mind: Burn Rate by Michael Wolff and Lucky or Smart by Bo Peabody.
- A fair point, though there's more to it than that.
There are a lot of things which go into creating value for a company. Trade secrets are one of many factors. Execution, connections, business relationships, location (or locations for retail establishments), and more, all come into play.
Taking two well-known examples, the real value for both Coke and KFC is far less in the specific product forumulations of both companies -- those are effectively McGuffins. Rather it's in Coke's set of contracts with bottlers, distributers, retailers, and restaurants (many of which will carry _either_ Coke, _or_ Pepsi, but not both), etc. There are even "open source" colas whose recipies are published, but which don't have the market reach of the majors. For KFC, it's more a matter of retail outlets and supply chains -- having a global branding campaign, advertising and marketing, real estate in specified locations, and relationships with suppliers such that ingredients and product are supplied to these.
Yes, there are companies which do rely to a much greater extent on trade secrets, and there's some case to be made for some level of protection over these, particularly in tech. Michael Wolf's "Burn Rate" or ... I'm trying to remember the author and book, about the "Go" PDA who had their idea arguably poached by Microsoft. But in truth, execution and capitalization matter a tremendous amount, and exclusive knowledge of a specific concept, not so much.
