B+W Business 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.
Fewer Shops, More Services: What Changed on Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Corridors
Retail fell 5% in Philadelphia’s neighborhoods from 2019 to 2023 while personal care grew 11%. What changed on the city’s commercial corridors, and what it means for the people who run them.