Barnes and Noble's surprising turnaround
It seems like the key insight is that <i>bookstores are no longer places to get books</i>.<p>If I want a specific book, I already know where to go: the internet. No physical store is ever going to compete on inventory ever again. Amazon will eat you alive.<p>I go to bookstores to discover <i>new</i> books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.<p>It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.<p>It's <i>very</i> hard to do good recommendations -- even for Amazon/Goodreads! -- without people who care about what they're recommending. Those recommendations are now a bookstore's real product.