I must confess to being disappointed with Gad Saad’s The Parasitic Mind. Before purchasing the book I knew I would disagree with many of his points given his robust public profile. (For background, Saad is the sort of evolutionary psychologists your mother warned you about. Lots of sex differences in consumption). That I would disagree…
Category: Management Theory
Strategic Change And Stakeholders
A recent article in the MIT Sloan Management Review looks at how we can analyze strategic change. The model by Tom Hunsaker and Jonathan Knowles (a coauthor of mine) looks at the nature of change needed by firms. The model helps us focus on strategic change and how this fits with stakeholders. Specifically, the authors…
Are American Minds Coddled?
The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt‘s book, is a great read. It is full of interesting stories about where society, and universities in particular, are going wrong. I have a decent amount of sympathy with their arguments. It is important that we preserve free speech. The cost being that sometimes…
Frequency Dependence And Strategy
Here I’ll highlight an idea from evolutionary biology that has profond implications for strategy. This is the idea of frequency dependence. I think people overlook thais concept, a lot. Whenever you see, “10 tips for success”, or even stronger claims like “the five things you must do” remember whoever is saying this is either a)…
Catalysts And Persuasion: Changing Minds
I enjoy a nice book on persuasion and Jonah Berger‘s on catalysts and persuasion is certainly one of them. (They make excellent gifts at any time of the year). His prior books were enjoyable and generally illuminating. The Catalyst follows in that tradition. (Although I do think it is funny when writing one of these…
Do Generalists Triumph?
I am a marketing professor, who has been an accountant working in politics, and who was educated as an ancient historian. As such, it is perhaps no surprise that I am naturally drawn to the arguments in Range. In this David Epstein lays out his case for having a diverse range of skills. His argument…
Bayes’ Theorem And Common Sense
Today we look at Bayes’ theorem and common sense highlighting the role of prior beliefs. How Should We Think About Probabilities? There is a big rift in the way people think about probabilities. (This is in addition to he normal challenges doing the math). Events either happen or they don’t. We can think of probabilities…
Advice On Data Science, It Isn’t Too Hard to Understand
Marketers should understand the data science models that are increasingly being used in the discipline. We really need good advice on data science. As such it is helpful to find simple explanations of data science models. Numsence by Annalyn Ng and Kenneth Soo is an admirable attempt to clarify basic models used in data science….
Zombie Statistics & Other Advice on Dealing with Nonsense
A second post on Bergstrom and West’s enjoyable book, Calling Bullshit. They tackle the problems we face with the amount of nonsense around in the information age. The book contains much useful advice on spotting problems in black boxes and avoiding zombie statistics. You Can Spot Nonsense Even In Black Boxes I liked their advice…
Some Advice on Calling BS
There are lots of reasons to like Bergstrom and West’s book Calling Bullshit. There is just so much BS available to anyone who wants to consume it. Calling BS is a skill we all need. Calling BS BS can pose a threat to democracy if people choose their leaders based upon things that just aren’t…
