Burton vs Pilsen - Why Your Imported Playbook Tastes Like Pond WaterThere is a version of business history in which two towns in the nineteenth century held a competition to see who could brew the better beer, and Burton upon Trent won, and then Pilsen won, and the lesson is that you should try harder. That version is wrong in an interesting way. Burton and Pilsen did not brew different beers because one of them was cleverer. They brewed different beers because they were standing on different rocks. And the rock, it turns out, was not a detail. The rock...