I’m interested in how to explain tricky ideas in simple language. (This was the intention of Behavioural Economics For Kids). Julia Donaldson is an useful place to start looking for ideas to help with this. She, an exceptionally successful children’s author, is excellent at conveying engaging stories with interesting messages in few words. There is…
Category: Management Theory
David, Goliath And Malcolm
It seems fashionable to denigrate Malcolm Gladwell. Academics moan; “he is conceptually loose and borrows ideas from other people”. It reminds me of Louis in Casablanca. People seem shocked to hear that gambling is going on. What were the critics expecting? Of course, Gladwell popularizes other people’s ideas. (For the record he can borrow and…
Valuing Not-For-Profit Brands
Valuing a for-profit brand is a significant challenge. This is despite the fact that there exists a stream of profits you can use as the basis for the valuation. Valuing not-for-profit brands takes the challenge to a whole new level. As such it is not surprising that most people might instinctively reject putting a financial…
Engaging With Other Disciplines
Has the way we think changed recently (on an evolutionary timescale)? Marlene Zuk suggests that as change is constant, the way we think will also have changed. This conflicts with evolutionary psychologists. They assume human brains are products of adaptation to the distant past. In one sense the evolutionary psychologists’ assumption is wrong. Like any…
Natural Does Not Equal Right
New year’s resolution time so I’ll discuss Marlene Zuk on our adaptation to diets. Zuk’s book was interesting and entertaining. I do have some issues which I’ll discuss next post. For now, I’ll note she enjoyed herself critiquing evolutionarily inspired diets and made useful criticisms. The headline is natural does not equal right. Just because…
The Deadweight Loss Of Christmas
In a holiday theme I’m discussing the Deadweight Loss of christmas. The basic idea is that gift-giving destroys value for society. The Deadweight Loss Of Christmas When buying for myself I get what I most value with the money. When you buy something for me you don’t know what I want so probably buy something…
A Year of Marketing Thought
On 13th of December 2012 I launched this Marketing Thought blog. Over 50 articles later I hope it has proved useful to students and colleagues alike. The greatest success has been “Behavioral Economics For Kids“. Thanks to Phil Chen’s cartoons many found it a helpful way to understand decision-making. A year of marketing thought has…
Shopping For Votes
Susan Delacourt’s Shopping For Votes is an enjoyable read. Lots of nice detail helps illustrate some interesting events in Canadian politics. The Political Marketing Literature I, of course, have a couple of quibbles. 1) Firstly I feel that her main thesis wasn’t well developed or supported. She has clearly become familiar with the political marketing…
US Individualism And A US Collective Identity
When I first moved to the US I couldn’t get over the flags. (It was summer of 2002 and flags were at their apex.) There were all sorts of flags, small flags, big flags, really big flags and blocks out the sun size. This very visible adherence to the country, the collective group, was startling….
Razorblades In Apples: Halloween Sadism Isn’t Real
One of my favorite academic articles is “The Razor Blade In The Apple” by Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi. This fascinating piece investigates the idea of Halloween Sadism. Did the authors find extensive evidence of random strangers sadistically harming children? At the risk of spoiling the story; no of course they didn’t. Searching For…
