Anna Wintour

It makes our brand more modern.

The first rule of disruption is if you're going to get cannibalized, it's better to eat yourself.

But Anna didn't just go online.

She pushed it farther.

She orchestrated what may have been high fashion's first live stream for Chanel's resort show in 2000.

Clothes hit the runway, immediately photographed, instantly purchasable.

The see now, buy now concept that Burberry would invent 13 years later.

A partnership with Neiman Marcus represented another breakthrough that wouldn't become standard until years later.

Anna negotiated a deal where Condé Nast got a cut of all clothing purchases driven by the Vogue website, essentially inventing fashion e-commerce affiliate marketing.

After that first season, designers discovered the hidden benefit.

Digital slideshows replaced expensive lookbooks.

Buyers could see collections instantly.

Anna hadn't just moved fashion online, she'd made Vogue indispensable to the entire supply chain.

This was remarkable, and although it's obvious in hindsight, it wasn't at the time.

She took a wild risk to use her name and reputation to push a very unwilling fashion industry into the digital age.

The parallel to Andy Grove here really stands out in episode 229.

When memory chips got commoditized, Intel pivoted to microprocessors.

When print got commoditized, Anna pivoted to platform.

Her competitors spent the next decade protecting traditional revenue.

By then, Anna owned the entire infrastructure that everyone needed to use.