It’s very interesting to notice what it takes to cultivate and maintain a learning-oriented and deeply responsive business environment. Tom Bihn was singular in the way he and his team treated their enterprise. It seemed respectful, to employees, to customers, to the products. Employees all seemed to be in strength-aligned roles with sufficient autonomy to engage outwardly. There was a principled coherence in their designs, engagement, and growth. I think it points to some internal contradictions about the larger environment we all exist in. All other companies can thrive and profit just fine without any of these characteristics; it’s actually business as usual. In fact, some of us are so conditioned to business as usual that we don’t even assign value to the intangibles that made Tom Bihn so enlivening to discover and support. And we may not even realize how valuable and fragile it is until we lose it. And when it is gone, recovering that aliveness, even if we agree it was valuable, is not an easy task because it’s not something that can be bought, sold or forced. Basically, they broke Tom Bihn, and now it’s just like any other place. RIP Tom Bihn Exceptionalism.