N

You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

March, 2012

Upgrading

A different perspective on free agency in the NFL and its possible applications to business.
I thought this was a really interesting way to look at free agency in the NFL from Grantlant:
The bigger problem is the idea that upgrading at that position, or in that facet of the game, requires a team to throw money at acquiring a talented player, even if it means that the team overspends in the process. Teams approach the problem of having below-average output at a position by saying, "We need to upgrade to something better here, even if it costs us too much." Instead, they should approach it from the equally compelling, alternative viewpoint of, "We're already so bad here that we can't be much worse next season, so upgrading to a superior player is incredibly easy!" Rather than seeing the free-agent pool as being full of players who would provide superior production to the guys on your roster, bad organizations insist on picking one player from that pool and spending more money than they should to obtain an upgrade they can get from just about anyone.
I know you're not all football fans, but it's an interesting way to think about how business is run generally (I'm sure there's a behavioral economics fallacy for this).
March 19, 2012
©
Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.