Critical Business School

New York City

1:1 Coaching Subscribe
2 min read

Meta Design, Announcing CBS 2026

Nitzan Hermon
Cyanotype of a library interior with tall bookshelves
Source

In a world of abundant utility, all we have is self-leadership.

All value exists in movement. Any stationary comfort is a leaking boat—creativity drowning in the false belief that the world stays the same.

We all know the world is changing, yet we somehow neglect to keep our practice in motion. We drift instead toward sameness (utility), prioritizing other people’s preferences (market fit) over subjective leadership (/what we know to be true).

There is no creativity in production. Creativity exists before language; anything after language is production. You can just type anything into your favorite algorithm to experience this firsthand.

We live in a world where the books themselves are not as valuable as how we organize them.

When we operate from a place of expertise, we necessarily operate within scarcity—a zero-sum model of knowledge. These are the days of encyclopedic thinking.

Newsletter

Critical Business School, by email: essays, prompts, and new podcast episodes.

RSS Sign in
More
Essays
Craft is a Conversation
Value is utility plus aesthetics. Craft is how the specific enters it.
There's No Such Thing as a General Audience
"General audience" is a comforting fiction. It promises you can make something valuable without it meaning anything to anyone in particular. You can't. We
Side Projects Are Killing Your Practice
Side projects are killing your practice. They make you discount yourself and your ideas and get in the way of self-authorship. When you move with conviction but
AI Literacy
How I built the new Critical Business School site with Claude
One week, one conversation, and a site that brings the school, the writing, the podcast and the library together. A list of everything that went into it.