Caroline Criado Perez’s book focuses on the challenges facing women in a world where the primary gatherers of data have been/usually still are men. It highlights the problem of data heavy systems not being as fair as the idea of impartial ‘math’ might imply. (See also here). The problem of what Perez calls the data…
Thinking Differently About Business School Cases
Bridgman, Cummings, and McLaughlin in their 2016 paper about the case method tell us that the conventional history of the development of business case teaching is missing some vital elements. Cases nowadays come from the perspective of management. There exists a management objective that the students are trying to deliver. This excessively managerial perspective is…
What Caused The Classic Polling Disaster?
In presidential election polling 1936 stands out as a uniquely bad disaster. What caused the classic polling pisaster? 1936, The Worst Ever Polling Disaster? In 1936 The Literary Digest made a prediction that Republican Alf Landon would beat the incumbent Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a landslide. This rates as arguably the biggest disaster…
Leadership In Politics
Real-world examples often provide concepts that apply in business. I worked in politics for many years and I think that there are lessons for educational and commercial leadership. Good political leaders try and seize temporary opportunities. Their dramatic actions make for exciting highs when successful and dramatic lows when not. So what can we learn…
Improving How We See The World
Today I’ll share some advice from Hans Rosling’s wonderful book Factfulness. (He founded the Gapminder educational not-for-profit, see here). This advocates that the world is getting better. Despite the obvious challenges remaining we need to understand this to see what is working and do more of it. Rosling shows a positive view from the data…
A Positive View Of The World Using Facts
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…
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,…
Net Promoter And Lessons For Academic Research
I value academic work that speaks to the issues of managers and others outside of academia. The Net Promoter Score/System (NPS) is widely used by managers and so it can be valuable when academics look into this metric. What then can we say about Net Promoter and the lessons for academic research? Reviewing The Literature…
The Influence Of Marketing On Managers
The history of business, especially marketing, thought is an interesting topic to me. Modern text analytics techniques can help us get a better understanding of what has happened. If I understand correctly historians seem to be increasing using such techniques. What then can this tell use about the influence of marketing on managers? Changing Topics…
Colleges And Universities
Andrew Delbanco’s discussion of college in the US is at its most interesting discussing the origins of college. He is keen to emphasize that colleges and universities are not the same things. He suggests that college, a place for undergraduate education, developed from early American Puritan ideals. This was a place for moral and intellectual…
