Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Kroger looked under the rocks
A&P had a significant footprint and by all rights should be Kroger today. The industry was moving toward larger stores and technologies such as scanning devices.
At A&P there was a lot of defense of why the model should keep working, despite what was in front of them. They explained away ugly facts and discounted the negative. At Kroger the reaction was that this was really scary, so they looked over the rocks to see all the ugly things underneath and went into the teeth of the facts to wrestle with what they might mean.
Studying companies that made the leap from good to great against direct comparisons at critical junctures turned up no evidence that the winners had better information, better data, or better analysis. The comparison companies often saw the same things. What differed was whether people paid attention to the really ugly facts or discounted them.
What happened to A&P?
A&P was the largest retailer in the United States for decades, with about 16,000 stores at its peak in the 1930s. Its share shrank as supermarkets got larger and rivals modernized. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2010, emerged in 2012, filed again in 2015, and then closed or sold its stores.
How did barcodes arrive in grocery stores?
The first retail barcode scan took place on June 26, 1974, at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, where a cashier scanned a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. The Universal Product Code that made it possible had been agreed on by grocery industry groups in 1973. Scanners spread slowly at first because stores had to buy equipment and manufacturers had to print codes on packages.
Why do organizations explain away bad facts?
The psychologist Peter Wason showed in a 1960 experiment that people tend to look for evidence that confirms their first hypothesis instead of evidence that could disprove it. This habit was later named confirmation bias. In organizations, it works on top of status and careers, since the people who built a model have the most to lose from evidence against it.
More from The Knowledge Project Podcast
