I thought Han Rosling’s book (written with his son and daughter in law) ‘Factfulness‘ was wonderful. It was engagingly written but the real joy was the author’s ability to explain the world using data rather than hunches and pre-conceptions. It may come as a great surprise to many that Rosling’s take on the world is…
Category: Management Theory
Evolutionary Thinking in Business
Evolutionary thinking in business can be a fascinating topic. A key thing to bear in mind is that business evolution is a little different from biological evolution. Market competition is not the same as competition in nature. This is, not least, because business has much more rapid timeframes. Business changes regularly. On the other hand,…
A Defense Of Enlightenment Thinking
Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now is a wonderful book. Pinker’s work is precisely the sort of thing that we need more of. I.e. writing from knowledgeable people able to see the big picture. The big picture in Enlightenment Now is about the biggest picture one can have. It is a defense of enlightenment thinking. The Enlightenment:…
The Science Of Spotting BS
The authors clearly had a lot of fun writing their paper on the reception and detection of BS. They use the term “bullshit” more in the first few paragraphs than most people use their core term in the whole of any paper. That said, why not? It is an interesting and important topic. Do people…
Testing Psychic Powers
One of the most ‘interesting’ academic papers of recent times is Daryl Bem’s paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (a reputable journal) on psi. (Yes, psychic phenomenon, he was interested in testing psychic powers). He purported to show that people had the ability to ‘feel’ the future and so predict it better…
The Impact Of Conformity And The Need For Uniqueness
Analytical models are fascinating ways to look at what happens in markets. They can look a bit odd from the outside. These models tend to have a ton of strong assumptions which might lead to questions about their value. They can, however, help us think through some commonly observed phenomenon in markets. What then can…
Improving Measurement With Big Data
The data being used by managers is becoming increasing messy. Unstructured data lacks the nice organization of traditional data. Of course, the profusion of such unstructured data (text, videos, music) makes analysis complex but also brings considerable opportunities. Big data brings big headaches and big possibilities. We have some advice on improving measurement with big…
Linking Biology To Behavior
Many people buy into the idea that we shouldn’t have the bright line between biology and psychology that we do. That said it is challenging to try linking biology and behavior. Here consumer behavior. Not least because we have few scholars who have enough knowledge of both domains. Hormones To Help Linking Biology To Behavior?…
The Endowment Effect For Renting And Borrowing
Charan Bagga, a former Phd student now a professor at Calgary, June Cotte, an Ivey colleague, and myself, have a recent paper in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science on the Endowment effect. Specifically what happens to the endowment effect when you rent or borrow. What then is the endowment effect for renting…
Transformative Innovations, An Important Part of the Puzzle
I value grand intellectual sweeps. if you are a tenured professor it seems wrong not to try and give the world your grand vision. So what can we say about transformative innovations? Transformative Innovations Tellis and Rosenzweig take a grand sweep in examining the role of transformative innovations in world history. The book moves from…
