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…
Role Of Customer Equity
Daniel McCarthy and Fernando Pereda have a paper on the role of customer equity in corporate valuation. It is on SSRN so a working paper and yet to be formally published, see here. Still, it has been downloaded a lot. So, I think it reasonable to take a look and comment as many have already…
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…
Adaptive Market Hypothesis: Evolution And Financial Markets
Andrew Lo has a number of interesting works attempting to link evolutionary thinking and financial markets. See here for his 2006 piece in the Harvard Business Review, entitled Survival of the Richest. Lo shows how evolutionary thinking can be applied to financial markets and explains the idea of the Adaptive Market Hypothesis. Irrationality And Financial…
Curse Of Knowledge: Academic Edition
Nooshin Warren and her colleagues had the excellent idea to give advice to academics on making their writing intelligible. You may (or may not) be surprised to learn that a lot of academic research isn’t understood but you shouldn’t be shocked. One problem is the curse of knowledge. Academics Are Specialists: Which Makes Communication Hard…
Stopping Undervaluing Customers Through Measurement
Rob Markey at Bain has had an interesting career. He clearly has done a lot right. He is an advocate for the importance of marketing in the c-suite. As such it is welcome when he weighs in to support important ideas. In a 2020 piece in the Harvard Business Review he laid out a plan…
Lost For Good And Always A Share Markets
I found Barbara Bund Jackson’s book through a citation in an old article. The book seems to be now out of print. The book was published in 1985, so being out of print is understandable given it is a bit dated. The examples tend to be about what IBM did in the 60s and 70s…
Why B2B Pricing Is Interesting
This post will tell you why B2B pricing is interesting, at least to me. (B2B being business to business marketing). I’ll point to some useful advice. That said, the advice also illustrates the conceptual challenges with pricing in channels. The challenges are so significant that it is sometimes hard to keep clear what is being…
The Three Purposes Of A Purpose
One of the big excitements of business at the moment involves discussions of a company’s purpose. Lots of firms think they should have one but where do you find a purpose? How do you know if you have a good one? What if no one believes you when you say you have a purpose? Jonathan…
