An intriguing mixture of challenging ideas and Utopian solutions to the broader issues regarding social welfare currently...
Former BusinessWeek assistant managing editor Nussbaum (Innovation and Design/Parson School of Design; Good Intentions: How Big Business and the Medical Establishment Are Corrupting the Fight Against Aids, 1990, etc.) makes the case that the future of American capitalism lies in unleashing creativity.
The author believes that students can be trained to become creative and that it is a skill that can be assessed. He combines lessons from the “personal growth movement of the 1960s and ’70s” and observations about how successful enterprises harness creativity and team effort (e.g., Google, Apple and Facebook). Nussbaum also proposes supplementing the standard IQ measure with what he calls a creativity quotient. In the author's view, today's dominant model of capitalism, based on the hegemony of “efficient market theory” (which makes short-term profit the main criteria for investment), was responsible for the recent recession and has “taken a devastating toll on innovation.” The author compares this to the period from 1933 to 1976, “a time when business leaders were responsible not simply to shareholders, but to many stakeholders.” The author believes that in order to compete globally, American business must pick up from the 1990s, when U.S. global hegemony was based on the inventiveness of Silicon Valley and futurists predicted major advances in biotechnology and nanotechnology. He offers a radical model for investment in technology startups based on local sources of financing and the possibilities of broad-based online social networking. Such an economy would embrace risk-taking, see uncertainty as opportunity and require minimal government intervention. Education would be transformed to emphasize hands-on creative activity, and students would be encouraged to wed ideas to their implementation.
An intriguing mixture of challenging ideas and Utopian solutions to the broader issues regarding social welfare currently under debate.Pub Date: March 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-0062088420
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Business
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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