Business & Strategy
The Peter Principle
In hierarchical organizations, employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position where they can no longer perform competently.
The editorial team behind Theorypedia — The Why Behind the World.
Business & Strategy
In hierarchical organizations, employees tend to be promoted until they reach a position where they can no longer perform competently.
Technology & Innovation
Network effects occur when a product or service becomes more valuable as more people use it.
Economics & Decision-Making
Goodhart's Law explains why metrics lose their usefulness the moment you start optimizing for them directly.
Business & Strategy
First-mover advantage is the competitive edge companies gain by being the first to enter a new market or introduce a new product category.
Science & Systems
The butterfly effect describes how tiny initial changes in complex systems can lead to dramatically different outcomes.
Economics & Decisions
Black Swan Theory explains how rare, unpredictable events with massive impact shape our world far more than we realize.
Philosophy & Ethics
Occam's Razor is the principle that the simplest explanation that fits the facts is usually the correct one.
Science & Systems
Feedback loops occur when outputs of a system circle back as inputs, creating self-reinforcing or self-correcting patterns.
Economics & Decisions
The Cobra Effect occurs when an attempted solution to a problem makes the problem worse.
Economics & Decisions
Making something more efficient often leads to using more of it, not less, because efficiency makes it cheaper and more attractive to use.
Technology & Innovation
Moore's Law predicts that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles roughly every two years, driving exponential improvements in computing power.
Technology & Innovation
The Gartner Hype Cycle maps how new technologies move through predictable stages of inflated expectations, crushing disappointment, and eventual practical adoption.