A businessman often convinces himself that he is completely logical in his behavior when in fact the critical factor is his emotional bias compared to the emotional bias of his opposition. Unfortunately, some businessmen and students take the attitude that competition is some kind of impersonal, objective, colorless affair.

Editor's Note: written in 1968...

The profit equation has three variables: price, volume, and cost. Of these, price is the most common candidate for manipulation since nothing else need change to produce profits for everyone, provided everyone changes prices together.

Editor's Note: written in 1970...

Whenever real (deflated) prices fail to parallel real (deflated) cost trends, then market shares will shift. When market share shifts, then relative costs of competitors will shift also.

Editor's Note: written in 1974...

The use of cash is proportional to the rate of growth of any product. The generation of cash is sa function of market share because of the experience curve effect. The BCG growth share matrix is a diagram of the normal relationship of cash use and cash generation.

Editor's Note: written in 1973...

The whole history of increased productivity and industrialization is based on specialization of effort and investment in tools. So is the experience curve. It is a measure of the potential effect of specialization and investment.

Editor's Note: written in 1974...

Experience curve is the name applied in 1966 to overall cost behavior by The Boston Consulting Group. The name was selected to distinguish this phenomenon from the well known and well documented learning curve effect. The two are related, but quite different. Read on for background on the development of this concept.

Editor's Note: written in 1974...

A short introduction to the concepts involved in the BCG experience curve which holds that the cost of value added declines approximately 20-30 percent each time accumulated experience is doubled..

Editor's Note: written in 1974...

A stable competitive market never has more than three significant competitors, the largest of which has no more than four times the market share of the smallest.

The first objective of corporate strategy is protection of the cash generators. In almost every company a few products and market sectors are the principal source of net cash generated.

Business thinking starts with an intuitive choice of assumptions. Its progress as analysis is intertwined with intuition.