TIM COHEN: Discovery’s balance of yin and yang is at the heart of its success
Along time ago when I had just been appointed the editor of Financial Mail, I decided to go and see some real businessmen about the magazine to try and get a sense of where the publication was hitting the mark and where it was not. One of my victims was Discovery CEO Adrian Gore, who very graciously gave me all kinds of advice. His perspective was so instructive about not only the FM but also his own business. It’s almost impossible not to be astounded by Gore’s achievement; he is the model of a modern entrepreneur and has been lauded everywhere, as we all know. But how this all happened is much less well known. He asked whether I had a clear vision of what I wanted to achieve. That seemed obvious enough to me at the time; I wanted a better publication. So I said, "yes", slightly dubiously because I suddenly became aware of the haziness and generality of my aims. And then he asked, "Have you written it down." Well, that kinda stumped me because, of course, I hadn’t. In retrospect, I...
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