Short, direct books about how business works, and how it actually fails. Each primer takes one subject, explains it in plain language.
I also write them to learn. It works better than taking notes. Notes let you collect facts without ever testing whether you understood them. A book does not: it forces you to give the subject a shape, chapters, a beginning and an end, and to explain it to someone else. And it is exactly when you try to explain how something works that you catch yourself asking: is that really how it works? That question is where the real learning happens. These primers are what remains once it has been answered.
They are free to download. If you leave your email, I will let you know when the next one is out.
The Mirror
How FDA Approval Really Works, and How Companies Fail It
Between a drug and its patients stands an agency that cannot be charmed, outspent, or rushed. This primer explains the FDA in plain language: what it regulates, how approval really works from molecule to market, which shortcuts exist, and why companies with perfectly good products still fail at the gate.
The Fire That Never Started
Quality, and Why It Only Gets Noticed When It Fails
When quality works, you see nothing. No recalls, no angry customers, no batch thrown in the bin. Nobody gives a medal to the person who prevented a fire that never happened, which is why the whole field is undervalued until the day it is desperately missed. This primer covers quality as a working reality, from the two ends of a production line to the alphabet soup of NCRs and CAPAs, then the part where it meets the outside world: ISO standards, and the difference between saying you meet one, being certified, and being accredited.
