I recently published an article in the Journal of Sustainable Marketing. This discussed the intersection between politics and better business. What is happening as better business meets politics? Should Business Stay Out Of Politics? There are two ways to look at this question. Firstly, there is a wider question. This can be seen as an…
Category: Marketing Concept
Discussions of marketing concept
Math And The Presidency
2020 was a US Presidential election like no other. Covid was a major factor both in policy terms but also in how it impacted the very act of campaigning. Still, what didn’t change was that looking at some basic numbers can help us understand what happened. What then can we say about Math and the…
Don’t Expect Perfect, Go For Better
I have written before about B Corp. Today I am looking at the B Corp Handbook. This is a how-to (and why-to) guide to getting registered as a B Corporation. The authors have a number of suggestions that could prove useful. One of the most important should be shown in big lights whenever people discuss…
Regulation And Business Responsibility
What can business history tell us about regulation and business responsibility? The Purpose Of Business Looking at business history gives an interesting perspective. The idea that businesses are only there for the benefit of shareholders (see here) is not the only view that exists by a long way. One set of people who had a…
Gaining And Using Power
Jeffrey Pfeffer’s Power is a classy version of a self-help book. I know self-help book sounds a bit insulting but I don’t mean it to be. The idea of giving practical advice that is informed by good research is central to what academics should be doing. There are enough complete nonsense self-help books to show…
Using A Pie-Growing Mindset
Alex Edmans’ Grow The Piece is a useful book trying to refocus business on being beneficial for society. I have noted the key points on this before, see here. Here I’ll tackle a grab bag of points related to Edmans’ book and using a pie-growing mindset. Maximizing Shareholder Value Is Nebulous Often people like the…
Three Principles To Guide Decision-Making
Alex Edmans, a finance professor, is having a bit of a moment at the moment. His book Grow The Pie that I’m discussing in two posts is a very useful addition to the field. This post will outline the core points of Edmans’ work. The other post will get into a few more finicky points…
The Problem Of Noise
Three major names in the field of decision-making teamed up to write about the problem of noise. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel prize in economics despite not being an economist, Oliver Sibony, apparently a knight in the French Order of the Légion d’Honneur, and Cass Sunstein of Barack Obama’s White House and Nudge fame,…
Numbers Don’t Lie, But People Frame Decisions
Vaclav Smil’s book — Numbers Don’t Lie — is a helpful approach to understanding the world. He is able to layout what numbers mean answering a number of important questions around transportation, food, energy etc… The numbers are very helpful. That said, even though he mostly just outlines numbers you can see his perspective coming…
Valuing Customers As Investments
I think of Sunil Gupta and Don Lehmann’s 2005 book, Managing Customers As Investments, as the third of the valuing customers books. (After Rust and colleagues Driving Customer Equity and Blattberg and colleagues, Customer Equity). It was written a few years after the others and I think that probably helps it read more cleanly. It…
