Sam Walton was found on the floor in Brazil measuring aisle width by hand, obsessed with the operational details that separate efficient stores from ones customers actually want to shop in. Walmart didn't innovate for its first twenty years, copying Sears and Kmart instead, then outcompeting them. Walton called himself a learning machine.
They find this older guy flat on the ground. They call the paramedics. It turns out it's Sam Walton. And what he was doing is he was measuring the space between the aisles and he didn't have a tape, so he laid down. The space between the aisles is a very important data point for a retailer because you're going to either waste square footage or be too narrow and the people won't enjoy the experience. So you have to get that right, right? And so he was in Brazil, thing, how are they doing it? Am I 3 inches too wide in Walmart? Am I 3 inches too narrow? That's who Sam Walton was. And in fact, Walmart has not innovated at all, at least for the first 20, 25 years that Walmart ran. Everything came from somebody else who was already a competitor. They took a lot from Sears, they took a lot from Kmart, and then they killed them. And they kept learning from one competitor after another. Sam Walton actually used to say, I'm not the smartest tool in the toolbox. I'm not a smart guy, but I'm a learning machine. I'm gonna keep at this.
