Starbucks and studying don't mix.

Earlier I decided that tonight I needed to spend some time on my note for law journal. Because the library closed at 5 p.m. today, I decided I would go to Starbucks. A decaf cappucino sounded nice, and I assumed the place would be fairly empty considering 1) Btown seems to have slowed down considerably since finals ended; and 2) it was Friday night - surely on a Friday night people would be at the bars, or hanging with friends, or at least not hanging out at a coffee shop. Wrong. Starbucks was quite crowded. The crowd in and of itself was not really much of a problem though; I quickly located a table with outlet access. The real problem was that while half of the people were studying, reading, or otherwise focusing intently, the other half were chattering quite loudly. The din was so loud, in fact, that my Bose noise-canceling headphones could not drown it out. This led to an only semi-productive reading session, which was somewhat disappointing considering I set aside my Friday night to get some work done. Oh well.

To be honest, the transition of most Starbucks from quiet, intellectual havens to noisy, crowded establishments is a phenomenon I have seen developing for some time, however. While all of my evidence is admittedly anecdotal, and drawn from a small sample of stores, this observed change has paralleled Starbucks' transition from a domestic, customer-focused business to a global, volume focused corporation with something like 30,000 stores worldwide. Interestingly, this strategy change does not seem to be working all that well for the Seattle coffee giant. Suffering sales and a declining stock price have led to recent experiments like the move away from the traditional cup design, with the green logo, to one with a new brown logo. Rather than such a simple product packaging switch, perhaps the more appropriate path to stock-price stardom is a return to the company's quiet coffee shop roots, with fewer stores and more focus on the customer. While I do pick up the occasional cup of joe or breakfast sandwich from Starbucks, I would certainly spend more time, and consequently more money, there if I could actually enjoy the Norah Jones playing in the background while reading a novel, the newspaper, or even a casebook.

Moving up yet another level of abstraction (thank you, Don Gjerdingen), this Starbucks story represents a struggle many businesses face as they make the move from local to national to global. How do you encourage innovation and foster growth while still embracing the things that made your business a success in the first place? Many a company has failed to adequately balance these interests (read: Under Armor and Crocs). I don't presume to have the answer to this question, but one day, I would love to run one of these companies and try my hand at the growth-versus-basics balancing act.