Barnes and Noble's surprising turnaround
It seems like the key insight is that bookstores are no longer places to get books.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.I go to bookstores to discover new books, and to enjoy the feeling of being around books and the people who love them. The CEO realized this, and leaned in hard.It's a really, really smart recognition of when passion for the product is actually a business advantage, and not just a warm fuzzy.It's very 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.