Scientific management
It did not discover efficiency — it redefined who controls it.
Scientific method
The procedure for being wrong less often, imperfectly followed.
- 7
- in business
- 10:43
- average
- 75 min
- in total
- 186
- across the network
All briefs
Theranos
Theranos was not a startup that failed — it was a fraud that scaled.
Eli Lilly and Company
Eli Lilly · 1875
Eli Lilly and Company is a foundational case in how business infrastructure — not just discovery — creates pharmaceutical power. Its early bets on quality control, prescription gatekeeping, and regulation were deliberate, profitable, and durable. The sources confirm no modern financials or valuations, so analysis must stay anchored in its documented methods and milestones.
Elizabeth Holmes
A company that renamed itself to avoid the word 'cure' raised $700m selling a blood test that didn’t exist.
Johnson & Johnson
Robert Wood Johnson · 1886
Johnson & Johnson began as a vertically integrated supplier of standardised, sterile medical consumables — selling trust, training, and readiness, not cures.
Adolf Dassler
Adolf Dassler built Adidas not with slogans or stories — but with spikes, shark skin, and athletes’ feet.
Theranos
Elizabeth Holmes · 2003
Theranos was a health technology company founded in 2003 in Palo Alto, California, that falsely claimed to perform rapid, accurate blood tests using minimal blood volume via proprietary devices; investigations revealed it relied on conventional machines, produced inaccurate results, voided two years of Edison data, and misrepresented its capabilities to investors, partners, and regulators.