A Foundation Built on Great Ideas

Dimensional was founded around a set of ideas, and often we say these ideas are bigger than the firm itself. These are the people that came up with these ideas, and researched them, and created the opportunity for a firm like Dimensional to come along and implement those ideas. There are lots of people doing research in finance. There are lots of people looking for new ways to describe returns. What we have to do in our role at Dimensional is judge which of these are worth paying attention to. Dimensional, from the beginning, they apply the same type of rigor that you expect to see in scientific investigation. When people think about academic ideas they always have the other kind in mind, that big picture, eureka, that sort of moment. A lot of what we do is just incremental. What we're doing today follows naturally from what we're doing yesterday. Lots of people have ideas, but implementation ideas and really making it work and putting it together is much different from saying, "I can do that." We're all about the pursuit of truth. The right idea is the one that wins. Great research is research that you can structure strategies around. Great research solves problems for clients. I'm prone to say that I don't think any investment firm, at least that I know of, has the same commitment to the science.