The best business books are the ones your competitors aren't...
Anil Patel@anilpatel
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Dec 17, 2025
~2 min read
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The best business books are the ones your competitors aren't reading.
LESSONS FROM ANDREW CARNEGIE
1. One throat to choke: "Upon no account could two men be in the same works with equal authority. An Army with two commanders-in-chief, a ship with two captains, could not fare more disastrously.."
2. Expensive initially, cheaper eventually: "Piper showed Carnegie an iron bridge being assembled to replace a burned wooden one and convinced him that iron bridges would supplant wood. Beyond a certain load factor, iron bridges became cheaper than wood."
3. Ride an adjacent wave: "The key to profitable telegraph operation lay in railroad franchises. For telegraph companies to construct their own rights-of-way across the country would have been ruinously expensive." Promote from within: "As Carnegie said, 'Mr. Morgan buys his partners, I raise my own.'"
4. Control costs like a maniac: "Carnegie's watch on costs never let up in his twenty-five years in the steel business. 'Carnegie never wanted to know the profits,' Charles Schwab related. 'He always wanted to know the costs.'"
5. Question conventions: "fire insurance on the buildings was so expensive that it would be cheaper to replace all wooden structures with iron. He ordered it done forthwith, then cancelled all insurance policies and never carried another."
6. One man's trash is another's treasure: "As the steel passed through the rollers, tiny pieces were scoured off and accumulated on the floor. Phipps had it tested and found it was high-grade steel. [Carnegie] instructed his agents to buy up this 'waste' from competitors."
7. Capital as a force multiplier: "The first dividend check opened a new world. As Carnegie recalled, 'I shall remember that check for as long as I live...It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital—something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow.' He also learned the important corollary that it made no difference whose money was invested. If the return exceeded the cost, it made sense to invest borrowed money."
LESSONS FROM ANDREW CARNEGIE
1. One throat to choke: "Upon no account could two men be in the same works with equal authority. An Army with two commanders-in-chief, a ship with two captains, could not fare more disastrously.."
2. Expensive initially, cheaper eventually: "Piper showed Carnegie an iron bridge being assembled to replace a burned wooden one and convinced him that iron bridges would supplant wood. Beyond a certain load factor, iron bridges became cheaper than wood."
3. Ride an adjacent wave: "The key to profitable telegraph operation lay in railroad franchises. For telegraph companies to construct their own rights-of-way across the country would have been ruinously expensive." Promote from within: "As Carnegie said, 'Mr. Morgan buys his partners, I raise my own.'"
4. Control costs like a maniac: "Carnegie's watch on costs never let up in his twenty-five years in the steel business. 'Carnegie never wanted to know the profits,' Charles Schwab related. 'He always wanted to know the costs.'"
5. Question conventions: "fire insurance on the buildings was so expensive that it would be cheaper to replace all wooden structures with iron. He ordered it done forthwith, then cancelled all insurance policies and never carried another."
6. One man's trash is another's treasure: "As the steel passed through the rollers, tiny pieces were scoured off and accumulated on the floor. Phipps had it tested and found it was high-grade steel. [Carnegie] instructed his agents to buy up this 'waste' from competitors."
7. Capital as a force multiplier: "The first dividend check opened a new world. As Carnegie recalled, 'I shall remember that check for as long as I live...It gave me the first penny of revenue from capital—something that I had not worked for with the sweat of my brow.' He also learned the important corollary that it made no difference whose money was invested. If the return exceeded the cost, it made sense to invest borrowed money."