Consolation For Replicators

Brand-name replicators like KIPP, SFA, Edison, and Gates will take comfort in this NYT piece about how even something as "proven" (for better or worse) as Wal-Mart doesn't always succeed in a new place (Wal-Mart Formula Doesn’t Fit Every Culture).

Even the most successful replicators in education have failed pretty catastrophically at least once or twice in places like Denver (Gates) and Chicago (KIPP). In Wal-Mart's case, the locations include South Korea and Germany, where Wal-Mart recently announced it would withdraw, and the factors contributing to the failures include familiar-sounding issues such as incompatibility with local customs (the Wal-Mart smile doesn't work in Cologne, apparently), over-insistence on branding new ventures with the Wal-Mart name, and dumb moves (products stacked too high in countries with shorter customers).