A tough-minded study that shows there’s gold in them there halls, but getting to it is a problem—or, an entrepreneur might...
Why can’t Johnny make a buck in the school game? Perhaps because, though the potential earnings are huge, the barriers to entry are formidable, as a former investment banker and current business professor charts.
“Some of the most respected minds of our generation have invested many billions of dollars in for-profit education enterprises,” writes Knee (Professional Practice/Columbia Business School; The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street, 2006, etc.). “And, with surprising regularity, they have lost their shirts.” One of the four case studies is that of Chris Whittle, the media maven–turned–educational entrepreneur: “What is surprising, even shocking, is that for over twenty years, in the educational arena, Chris Whittle has been able to continue to separate sophisticated investors from their money despite a plethora of red flags that in any other context might be viewed as disqualifying.” Even so, Whittle’s venture into the educational market had a solid basis, if you consider that the sector amounts to something like $1.3 trillion, mostly funded from government sources. That explains why sullied investor Michael Milken turned to the education market with an enterprise that, it seems, failed to recognize what to Knee seems obvious: that some markets, especially higher education, are tough to crack, such that only one school, Stanford, has managed to join the world’s elite institutions in the last half-century. The author’s dissections of various sectors of the market, from textbook publishing to child care centers, point to a common lesson, namely that most of it does not respond to the traditional economics of scale. School governance tends to be intensely local, for instance, and thus “a major textbook publisher must produce literally hundreds of thousands of SKUs of its core products to respond to local requirements.” It’s a hard arena even for a giant to make a living in, much less smaller players, no matter how good and noble the intentions.
A tough-minded study that shows there’s gold in them there halls, but getting to it is a problem—or, an entrepreneur might say, a challenge.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-231-17928-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2016
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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