Greg Bunch

May 13, 2023

Sexual and asexual bicycles

AI can be quite weird. I asked Google’s Bard to compare bikes to slime mold. It included rows for “reproduction” and “diet.” Apparently bikes have a varied diet and are both sexual and asexual 🤣 When I challenged its first response, it apologized, corrected itself, then gave an excuse and promised to try harder in the future. I apologi...
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May 11, 2023

AI, Lava, Staring Contests and Queen Bees

Can AI dream up a corporate memo more surreal than the ones that come from the bowels of BigCos? Ethan Mollick recommends the following prompt. When I dropped it into ChatGPT 4, it resulted in something that gives corporate jabberwocky a run for the money; Write a corporate memo in a serious style explaining and justifying the followin...
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April 11, 2022

What's your earliest memory of computers or software?

My father worked for a very engineering–focused, petro-chemical company. Almost all the managers there were chemists or chemical engineers or engineers of some sort. Once a year they had a family day in which children were invited to tour the offices. I don’t remember anything about my father‘s office, as such. What I remember so clear...
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April 10, 2022

True, Good, Beautiful and Simple: which one is most important to your customer?

How would you rank order this series: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Simplicity? How would your customer rank them? Yesterday morning when I finally got Nicolas Rougier's beautiful UI for the emacs text-editor to work, I felt happier! (Check it out here https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs ) It’s been easier for me to read and learn the ema...
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March 1, 2022

Downside risk to profits; Upside opportunity for human flourishing

Class: Thanks to each of you who have demonstrated support for Ukraine! This weekend I asked a friend why so few business leaders have supported Ukraine on social media. He said two words. "Downside risk..." The actual quote was, “They only see downside risk; no upside for them in commenting.” After we hung up, I thought of a three wor...
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February 22, 2022

What's your risk tolerance for entrepreneurship and innovation? A fairytale

Once upon a time long, long ago in a land far, far away an explorer discovered an uncharted island. The explorer circumnavigated the island scanning for opportunities and threats. After sailing completely around the newly discovered land, the explorer brought the ship into a safe harbor. Then rowed ashore with a few intrepid crew membe...
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February 21, 2022

How to get paid $75,000 for a talk.

20 years ago Ken Blanchard regularly got $75,000 to give keynote speeches around the world. One day I asked him, “What do I have to do to get paid $75,000?“ He didn't miss a beat in answering. “Write a book that sells 10 million copies!” Then he laughed a very Ken chuckle. He was also serious. That's how it had happened for him after T...
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February 19, 2022

How do we end up in the careers we're in? the career roller coaster, part 3 of a series

Chapter 4. Time to put away "childish things": moments that determine careers Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood • Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken "In our last session, we went to an early memory of 'heaven.'" Dr Virgil is sitting in a chair across from CW. "This ti...
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February 12, 2022

A Memory of Heaven: the career roller coaster, part 2 of a series

Chapter 3 Memory of Heaven What’s past is prologue. • William Shakespeare, The Tempest Dr Virgil began the session with this short lesson. “CW, before we can move forward in life, we often need to look backwards. "To rediscover the past events that shaped us. "Unfortunately, too many people are amnesiacs. They have forgotten their hist...
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February 10, 2022

The career roller coaster: from heaven to hell in four weeks (Part 1 of a series)

• Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita… Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood. - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (John Ciardi, translator) Chapter 1 Our hero sees the summit "Nailed it!” CW fist p...
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January 31, 2022

If you want your team to function well together, words matter; definitions matter even more

A former student of mine is CEO of a large company. She’s a visionary leader and wants to inspire her colleagues to band together to accomplish great things. She set a clear goal for the business: “Our goal is to grow. To grow profitably. To grow sustainably.” Simple words. Everyone understands the words. So, everyone is moving in lock...
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January 30, 2022

Dealing with Conflict at Work

A friend of mine is dealing with a power struggle at work. During my workout this morning I crafted this parable. You'll recognize the source: A long time ago in a land far far away a wealthy uncle and his wealthy nephew came into conflict over pasture land and water rights. The uncle was richer and more powerful. He could have driven ...
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January 29, 2022

Ruby on Rails, Lisp, Digital Literacy and Boyish Pranks

I wrote the letter below to my students this morning. I hope it will inspire you! We all know that educated people need to be able to read and write language well. It's important to be numerate, too. As business people we have to be financially literate. It's why we teach accounting and finance at Booth. Digital literacy is increasingl...
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January 29, 2022

Alphaville and "je vous aime"

Have you ever watched Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard? If so, you're ahead of me. I'm late to the party--like 57 years late! If not, it's a story about a secret agent sent to Alphaville to destroy the dictatorial computer that turns humanity into tranquilized logicians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaville_(film) I strongly advise wa...
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January 5, 2022

Benefactors of NFT art. Not just speculators.

How can business people become patrons of NFT art? Benefactors and not just speculators? Yesterday Jonathan Jones wrote, "The Bored Ape NFT craze is all about ego and money, not art." https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jan/04/bored-ape-nft-art-eminem Is the transformation of NFT art into "ego and money" an inevitable result ...
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December 31, 2021

A New Year's reflection: To bring out the sword and to kill the dragon is a dragon-like behavior

Dear Readers: You have made 2021 so much brighter for me. Have a Happy 2022! Here's a New Year's Eve reflection on the importance of creative thinking, literature and story as • travelers' aids on the human journey; • alternatives to the sword; • and why the work we are doing is so important. David Bentley Hart is one of my favorite au...
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November 19, 2021

No one ever told me that creativity is a skill

"No one ever told me that creativity is a skill." This comment by an executive who was taking our recent M&A course at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business really caught my attention. Combining Creative Thinking with Critical Thinking is a superpower. It leads to better M&A deals and outcomes. We are good at teaching crit...
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November 19, 2021

How will you get Tammy to buy your new product or service?

“How are you going to get your first customer to buy from you?” People come to me several times a week with ideas for a startup. They are usually focused on financials and product and TAM. I don’t care about TAM until I know how they are going to get “Tammy.” And, I don't mean psychographic "Tammy." I mean a real, living, breathing hum...
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September 19, 2021

Dreams do come true

When I moved back to Chicago in 1998 and started Masterplan International Corporation, I didn’t have any money or any clients. I didn’t even have enough money to subscribe to newspapers or magazines. One journal, in particular, interested me. Each week I eagerly went to the public library to read it for free. I poured over every editio...
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July 15, 2021

If you don’t sell, you won’t eat.

The first two questions I ask budding entrepreneurs are: “Who is your customer?“ “Why do they buy?” Actually the first two questions I'll ask you are: “What’s your idea?” “Why do you want to commit your life to it?” After you answer those introductory questions I want to know about your customers, about your go-to-market strategies, an...
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July 1, 2021

If you want some encouragement, let me know! It's a gift to me, too!

We all need more encouragement and praise. And, I love to give it! When I hear from you, or read about you, I smile. Proud of what you've done. Pleased with who you've become. I want to tell you that I'm proud of you. That you are doing good work. Some of you may have noticed nice things I say about former students or current colleague...
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May 23, 2021

Who is happier?

I discovered this poem today in Mary Oliver‘s A Poetry Handbook. It’s called Salutation by the poet Ezra Pound. For some reason it struck me deeply and I decided to memorize it. Then I thought of you and wondered how you would respond to Pound’s poem.
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April 29, 2021

2 traits that distinguish entrepreneurs from executives

What is the difference between an entrepreneur and an executive? The same person can play both roles. But when they are in the specific role of entrepreneur/intrapreneur, they behave differently than the person executing strategy. The boolean equation and the attached x,y chart show “managers/executives” how we define entrepreneur/intr...
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April 25, 2021

If you skillfully follow the multidisciplinary path, you will never wish to come back.

"What I’ve urged is the use of a bigger multidisciplinary bag of tricks, mastered to fluency, to help economics and everything else. And I also urged that people not be discouraged by irremovable complexity and paradox. It just adds more fun to the problems. My inspiration again is Keynes: Better roughly right than precisely wrong. And...
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April 10, 2021

Quest for new strategy > concern about career risk?

This is an edited letter to a Naval officer that I correspond with: You flatter me by saying about my approach to strategy formulation, “such a model would improve our approach to military strategy.” Although I do think it would improve anyone’s approach ;-) But it has dangers. First, most people won’t take the career risks involved in...
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April 6, 2021

DHH says, "Stop talking about product."

"Stop talking about product." David Heinemeier Hansson has an important redirect for the way some business people refer to "products." Here are three excerpts. Business people just can't stop referring to whatever their company makes as "the product". It's the great tell of whether someone's in it for the business or the beat. "Product...
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April 6, 2021

Stop talking about “customers.” Start talking with Priya.*

If you are starting a business, don’t talk about “customers.” Talk about individuals. Customers are people. Customers are not abstractions. Many first-time entrepreneurs forget this basic point. This happens all the time during startup pitches in my class. Students refer to some abstract “customer.” It usually goes like this, “Our beac...
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March 28, 2021

Leadership is as confusing as hell

Leadership is as confusing as hell. This is the title of a Tom Peters article that I particularly like. The excerpt below is a great example. And, it's especially important to me because, Al McDonald, who he mentions, was an important mentor for me. I saw it at McKinsey & Co. when I went to work there. The firm had gotten offtrack oper...
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March 28, 2021

How is teaching entrepreneurs like teaching poets?

I have a theory that poetry is the art most like early-stage entrepreneurship. Studying poetry and how poets are taught gives clues to entrepreneurship and teaching entrepreneurs. Watch this short interview of Richard Wilbur talking about how to teach poetry to undergraduates. 1) Why did Wilbur try to winnow down the number of students...
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March 26, 2021

Entrepreneurs are poets

Entrepreneurs are poets Robinson Jeffers’ poem, The Beauty of Things, dazzles me. To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things — earth, stone and water, Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars — The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions, And unhuman nature its towering reality — For man’s half d...
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