Seven Deadly Stupidities

By most measures, JP Morgan is the largest financial institution in the world. It has more than 250,000 employees and does business in almost every country on the planet. JPM acquired a small company called Frank Financial that was owned and operated by 31-year old Charlie Javice. For JPM, the rationale for the acquisition of Frank was that it provided JPM greater reach into the population of college-bound young adults that used Frank for help with financial aid. By acquiring this client base, JPM would have the opportunity to penetrate this Generation Z population and have them start using JPM’s credit cards, bank accounts, stock-trading functions, auto loans, home mortgages, and more. Seemed to make a lot of sense at the strategic level for JPM.In the case of Frank, JPM thought it was acquiring a profitable business with 4.2 million new accounts as targets for the menu of JPM services. These accounts were listed in a database and included name, address, and other personal information on each account. After the acquisition closed and $175 million changed hands, JPM discovered a disturbing fact about those 4.2 million accounts: more than 90% of them were fabricated. Oops.

A great businessman, yes. A great inventor, maybe.Until his death in 1931, Edison and his researchers were credited with more than 1,000 patents.However, his most important invention was one that couldn’t be patented: the process of modern invention itself. By applying the principles of mass production to the 19th-century model of the solitary inventor, Edison created a process in which skilled scientists, machinists, designers, and others collaborated at a single facility to research, develop, and manufacture new technologies. From the Menlo Park MuseumThere were more than 20 other inventors who created incandescent light bulbs before Edison. But Edison and his army at the Menlo Park lab kept experimenting with different materials for filaments, since the burn time, or the time light was created, was always too short. The Edison team tested thousands of materials to improve on existing light-bulb technology before settling on a type of carbon that would burn for 14 hours. Later improvements by Edison and his team included using bamboo instead of carbon, which burned for more than a thousand hours. One of the world’s most important inventions was not a moonshot after all but a series of incremental improvements of an existing technology.

It was halftime of the 2018 NCAA Football Championship and Alabama was trailing Georgia by a score of 13-0. As the second half started, the Alabama quarterback, Jalen Hurts, was on the bench. Going into the game, Hurts was 26-2 over the previous two seasons, with one of the losses being in the previous year’s championship game. The new quarterback to start the second half for Alabama was unknown freshman Tua Tagovailo.So, what was Coach Saban thinking? Let’s learn a little about Saban and Alabama football and you will realize the logic used by Saban to take such a risk to go for the upside despite the obvious downside.Saban understood the downside of “going for it.” If Alabama lost, Saban would never be forgiven for pulling Hurts. Forget about the wins and national championship trophies in the Alabama athletic center. He would have been run out of town and into a witness-protection program.

By most measures, JP Morgan is the largest financial institution in the world. It has more than 250,000 employees and does business in almost every country on the planet. JPM acquired a small company called Frank Financial that was owned and operated by 31-year old Charlie Javice. For JPM, the rationale for the acquisition of Frank was that it provided JPM greater reach into the population of college-bound young adults that used Frank for help with financial aid. By acquiring this client base, JPM would have the opportunity to penetrate this Generation Z population and have them start using JPM’s credit cards, bank accounts, stock-trading functions, auto loans, home mortgages, and more. Seemed to make a lot of sense at the strategic level for JPM.In the case of Frank, JPM thought it was acquiring a profitable business with 4.2 million new accounts as targets for the menu of JPM services. These accounts were listed in a database and included name, address, and other personal information on each account. After the acquisition closed and $175 million changed hands, JPM discovered a disturbing fact about those 4.2 million accounts: more than 90% of them were fabricated. Oops.RSSVERIFY