It is hard to spend any time at a business school without hearing the phrase best practice. We teach students best practice. Junior professors seek hints from senior folk on best practice. Even schools regularly go through bouts of benchmarking to see if they are adopting best practice. Best practice essentially is something that gets the most…
Category: Management Theory
A Secret To Being Productive?
Charles Duhigg’s book are always entertaining. The central thesis make me dubious. That isn’t important though as the stories are full of interesting observations. This is true of Smarter, Faster, Better. Duhigg shares a secret to being productive. Great Stories I’m not a fan of some of the literature at the basis of the book. As such, it…
Academics And Political Conclusions
We all have political opinions. (Having no opinion is a stance in itself). What can we say about academics and political conclusions? Academics Have A Role In Political Discourse Academics have an important role to play in political discourse. Yet, we have to try to rid ourselves of bias and use appropriate evidence. It is therefore disappointing…
True But Useless
The Heath brothers, Chip and Dan, have an entertaining style and together they have generated a number of readable, informative popular psychology/business books. I enjoy the books and generally agree with a lot of what they say. A nice addition to the language is True But Useless. The Problem Of Certainty The brothers do run into the problem facing a lot…
You’re An Original
The study of creativity seems worthwhile but challenging. Creativity seems hard to consistently measure. Given it is hard to assess what is actually creative, it must be even harder to work out what drives creativity. Adam Grant tries this in Originals. I doubt his is the last word on the topic but it is worth a read. What is the message: You’re An Original. The…
The Facts About Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are an interesting marketing tactic. On the one hand, they have the potential to encourage consumers to stick with a provider. On the other hand, they can end up rewarding those who would have purchased anyway. At their worst one might say that the programs don’t so much create loyalty as feed consumers…
How Sexy is Working With Big Data?
I think that academics should share their opinions widely. Some academics may believe that they have no opinions, they just relate what the data says. This is might be true for extremely empirical scholars, those who typically see themselves working with big data. Such scholars are kidding themselves. We must be willing to change with data but our experience helps…
Nudges Are Not Magical (Just in Case Someone Thought They Were)
The idea of nudging, designing choices to help people make better choices, has become popular for good reason. Yet, nudges aren’t magical, which some people seem disappointed about when they find this out. Nudges Or What? A nudge is a well-designed attempt to guide the decision-maker towards a beneficial outcome. The alternative seems to be random,…
Predictive Analytics And Vast Search
Eric Siegel has an excellent book on predictive analytics and vast search. As his title suggests these involve lying, buying and dying as well as a few things that don’t rhyme. Applying Analytics The center of his book is a table of applications of predictive analytics. The marketing examples (Table 2) give a number of interesting…
Understanding What A Fallacy Is
Formal logic makes for elegant research. It can help us in understanding what a fallacy is. Formal And Informal Logic With formal logic there is a right answer and so researchers can be confident that some choices are simply wrong. Unfortunately, formal logic has relatively limited application in the real world. Gerd Gigerenzer has argued that some flaws in…
