Hi Reader

I keep coming back to one idea this Sunday: owning a thing and having an edge from it are not the same. Anyone can buy the tool, agree the price, sign the deal or take the title. The advantage shows up later, in what you actually do with it. Almost every story I read this week was really about that gap between having and using well.

Enjoy!

Everyone has adopted AI, almost nobody has an edge yet

A new MIT-led study of the S&P 500 found that only about 11 per cent of large firms have AI genuinely built into how they operate, even though nearly everyone has adopted something. The firms in that top band show fatter margins. For the rest, there is no clear sign that all the buying has moved the needle on productivity. Access to AI is now cheap and common, while the advantage from it stays rare. The tool was never the hard part. Rebuilding the work around it is. Read the article here.

Raising your price is easy, keeping the customer is the skill

Chargebee surveyed more than 1,400 subscribers and found that 90 per cent noticed a price rise, but 58 per cent accepted it when the value was explained clearly. The split by segment is sharper still: enthusiastic upgraders accepted increases at 71 per cent, wavering customers at just 36 per cent. Price rises do not cause churn on their own. Poor explanation does. Anyone can move a number up in a billing system. The earned part is knowing which customers you can ask, and giving them a reason they believe before the invoice lands. Read more here.

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Kroger learned that the deal you can close beats the one that dazzles

Kroger agreed to buy Giant Eagle for 1.65 billion dollars, ending nearly a century of family ownership of the Pittsburgh grocer. What struck me is the context. This is Kroger's first real move since its 25 billion dollar merger with Albertsons collapsed in 2024 under regulatory weight. The lesson for any owner watching is that ambition on paper is worthless if you cannot get it over the line. A smaller deal that completes builds more than a grand one that dies in review. Get the story here.

A brand is rented, not owned

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has fresh work on what happens when brands stop advertising, and the numbers are humbling. Awareness starts to decay within three months, and roughly half of the brands they tested saw sales slip within a year of going dark. I find this clarifying rather than depressing. A brand is not a trophy you win once and keep on the shelf. It is closer to a rented asset that starts costing you the day you stop paying. The advantage was never in having the name. It is in the consistency of showing up. Find out more here.

Handing over the title is the easy part

There is a sharp piece in Harvard Business Review on leading a company after the founder leaves. The figure that stayed with me: founder transitions fail at two to three times the rate of ordinary CEO changes. The fix the authors land on is counter-intuitive: move the real authority before you move the title, and let the successor make visible calls while you are still there to absorb the heat. Giving someone the job is a single day's work. Making them able to do it is years of it. Read the article here (paywalled, Archive).

The founders who last separate themselves from the scoreboard

A thoughtful Psychology Today piece argues that the very traits which make founders successful, intensity and total ownership, are also what burn them out. The trap it names is identity fusion: when you are the company, a bad week for the business feels like a bad week for you as a person. Founders who go the distance treat the company as something they build, not something they are. That boundary is what lets you make a clear decision on a bad day, and it is exactly the discipline a buyer or a successor is looking for. Read more here.

The real AI fortune is being made in the plumbing

Ecolab is paying 4.75 billion dollars for CoolIT Systems, a Canadian firm that makes the liquid cooling kit for AI data centres. The detail I love is that KKR bought CoolIT for around 270 million in 2023. While everyone argued about which model would win, the money compounded in the unglamorous layer underneath. In any boom the durable returns often sit in the picks and shovels, not the gold. For founders, the boring, essential thing you supply may be worth more than the exciting thing everyone chases. Get the story here.

Gen Z is hedging its bets with more than one job

Fortune has been tracking the rise of polyemployment: younger workers holding several part-time roles at once rather than betting everything on one employer. It is easy to read this as disloyalty. I read it as risk management. A generation that watched entry-level roles get squeezed by automation is building a portfolio instead of a career ladder. The old deal of security in exchange for loyalty has thinned, and the workers who feel it most are rewriting the terms for themselves. Find out more here (paywalled, Archive).

Your team is already using AI you never approved

CIO reports that roughly half of employees now use AI tools their employer has not sanctioned, and that senior leaders are among the worst offenders. The gap that should worry any owner is confidence: most executives believe they can see what their people use, while the reality on the ground says otherwise. Banning it does not work, because the tools are too useful to ignore. The businesses handling this well give staff approved tools and clear guidance, rather than pretending the habit is not already there. Read the article here.

Proof that creativity still pays its way

At The Drum's marketing awards this year, the grand prix went to a Network Rail and British Transport Police campaign that cut rail trespass by 23 per cent and returned 120 per cent on its spend. I mention it because creative work is forever asked to justify itself against a spreadsheet, and here is a clean answer. The idea was the cheap part. The result came from executing it with enough craft that people actually changed their behaviour. Good creative is not decoration on a budget. Done properly it is one of the few things that still moves a hard number. Read more here.

AI prompt of the week: the adoption-to-advantage audit

Most of us have bought AI tools that have not yet changed anything. This prompt helps you find where an adopted tool is sitting idle and turn it into a real edge. Paste it into your assistant of choice.

Help me run an adoption-to-advantage audit for my business. Context: [business type], [team size], [the AI or software tools we currently pay for], and [the outcomes I actually want to improve, for example margin, speed, retention or quality].

Create:

A short table listing each tool we pay for, what it was bought to do, and an honest estimate of how much of its value we are actually capturing today.

For each underused tool, the single biggest reason it is not producing an edge, chosen from: no change to the underlying workflow, no owner responsible, no training, or no measurement.

One concrete experiment per tool to close that gap over the next 30 days, phrased as a specific change to how a task gets done, not a vague intention.

A ranking of which one change would produce the largest improvement in my chosen outcome, with your reasoning.

Base this on how disciplined operators treat technology: the tool is a cost until the work is rebuilt around it, so push me to name the behaviour that has to change, not just the software we own. Ask me for any missing detail before you answer.

Framework: the earn-out, or why the headline price is not the banked price

Earn-outs are where the gap between having and keeping gets expensive. This week's infographic breaks down how they work and why they so often cause pain. An earn-out ties part of your sale price to future performance, which lets a buyer bridge a valuation gap and lets you lift the headline number. The trouble is that once the deal closes, the buyer controls the operations your targets depend on, and priorities shift. The reality check is the one to remember: many earn-outs never pay in full. Treat the deferred portion as upside, not certainty. Define the metrics precisely, cap the period, and negotiate the buyer's obligation to support the numbers before you sign, not after.

Drop me a line

The thread through all of this is that acquiring something is the easy half; the advantage is in what you do next. I would love to know where you have seen that play out, whether a tool, a hire or a deal. Just hit reply. I read every one, and the disagreements are usually the best part.

Cheers!

Adam