Curiosity@Intelsense
Weekly dose of learning
Discussion of the investor letter for our PMS investors
1.
How to think about decisions in life - from Jeff Bezos
I have been a fan of Jeff Bezos for a long time, not only as a businessman, but as a brilliant thinker. I have tried to embrace two of his ideas in my own life. The first is about the “regret minimization framework” and the second is the “revolving door framework”. Here he talks about the second one.
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before. We can call these Type 1 decisions. But most decisions aren’t like that – they are changeable, reversible – they’re two-way doors. If you’ve made a suboptimal Type 2 decision, you don’t have to live with the consequences for that long. You can reopen the door and go back through. Type 2 decisions can and should be made quickly by high judgment individuals or small groups.
As organizations get larger, there seems to be a tendency to use the heavy-weight Type 1 decision-making process on most decisions, including many Type 2 decisions. The end result of this is slowness, unthoughtful risk aversion, failure to experiment sufficiently, and consequently diminished invention. We’ll have to figure out how to fight that tendency.
2.
Stem cells reverse woman’s diabetes — a world first
A 25-year-old woman with type 1 diabetes started producing her own insulin less than three months after receiving a transplant of reprogrammed stem cells1. She is the first person with the disease to be treated using cells that were extracted from her own body.
James Shapiro, a transplant surgeon and researcher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says the results of the surgery are stunning. “They’ve completely reversed diabetes in the patient, who was requiring substantial amounts of insulin beforehand.”
Islet transplants can treat the disease, but there aren’t enough donors to meet the growing demand, and recipients must use immune-suppressing drugs to prevent the body from rejecting the donor tissue.
Stem cells can be used to grow any tissue in the body and can be cultured indefinitely in the laboratory, which means they potentially offer a limitless source of pancreatic tissue. By using tissue made from a person’s own cells, researchers also hope to avoid the need for immunosuppressants.
Pic of the Week
Thought of the Week
I think the three things are liquidity, leverage, and concentration. Those are the three rules. If you're in illiquid stuff, that's a problem. If you're using too much leverage, that's a problem. And if you are too concentrated, that's a problem. So doesn't mean that if you have one of them, maybe it works, if you have two of them, uh oh. If you got three of them, you're whistling past the graveyard. ~ Steve Cohen
Video of the Week
DISCLAIMER:
Investments in the securities market are subject to market risks. Read all the related documents carefully before investing.
SEBI Registered Research Analyst - Cupressus Enterprises Pvt Ltd - INH000013828.
Registration granted by SEBI and certification from NISM does not guarantee the intermediary's performance or provide any assurance of returns to investors.