B+W Insights
Notes on strategy, leadership, and the businesses rooted in the places they serve.
Let's begin with the word itself. Strategy, at its root, is the art of leadership — making decisions, planning, and problem solving. Tracing back to ancient Greece, strategia — or generalship — referred to the art of leading an army. That same work — making consequential decisions with limited information and finite resources — sits at the heart of running any business.
And yet the tools and frameworks built around this work have mostly served large corporations. Brown + Wheaten Strategy Lab serves a different audience — the small and mid-sized businesses, the founder-led firms, the community-rooted organizations where decisions get made directly and the consequences are personal.
The Lab's founding principles come from a career spent in corporate strategy and management consulting, working alongside leaders on enterprise-scale initiatives. The thinking shared here isn't separate from the work — it's where the work begins.
The Job You Know Too Well to Describe
You've been doing this job for years. Turns out that makes it harder to describe, not easier.
The Tariff Squeeze: Why Small Businesses Are Getting Pressed From Both Sides
If you've been following the conversations around tariffs, the pattern is familiar by now: costs go up, businesses pay more, more is coming. That's accurate. It's just not the whole story.
The 66% Problem: AI Adoption Without a Strategy
Three years into mass AI adoption, most businesses using it aren't getting anywhere. The gap isn't about tools — it's about strategy.
The K-Economy and Your Local Market
A "K-shaped economy" pulls businesses in opposite directions from the same starting point — and even strong businesses aren't immune, they just feel it later. Here's how to spot the shift before it reaches you.
The Human Side of Building Something from Scratch
Entrepreneurship rarely begins with a clean plan — more often, it starts when life shifts and a "maybe someday" idea suddenly feels like the right next step. The work is personal, and it changes you as much as you shape it.
Leading Through Uncertainty: Lessons for Small Businesses
Volatility is the new normal — and the small businesses that thrive aren't the ones trying to predict what's next. They're the ones making small, steady improvements that add up over time.