An accessible and lively strategy book that’s well suited to business novices.
A concise marketing guide for ambitious small-business owners.
RenzlerMedia CEO Irvine’s stated goal in this book is to “help small-business owners and new entrepreneurs narrow their focus and grow their reach,” which immediately gives the work a welcoming tone. It opens with brief personal and biographical notes that present Irvine not as an exemplary real estate wunderkind but rather a relatable figure making his way in the world. The author then lays out his strategies, revealing how his initial focus was not on casting a wide net when it came to marketing outreach but rather to “go deeper” with a targeted approach: “You don’t need to learn more about dozens of social media marketing platforms,” he notes. “You just need to learn about one platform that’s right for you, your business, your skills, and your customer.” He recommends focusing on three niches: business (“selling your product or service to a subcategory of people with low competition”); original, specific marketing content; and “the specific social media platform where you post your content.” Later chapters help to demystify social media, noting how major advances in technology, such as radio, raised familiar questions about marketing in the early 20th century. Irvine’s frequent, direct use of second person is welcome; he also eschews excessive jargon, and his addition of brief summaries at the end of each chapter helps to effectively crystallize his philosophy. Although his use of specific examples throughout is beneficial, more consideration of issues such as race and sexuality, which play undeniable roles in marketing, would have further strengthened the work. In a few instances, Irvine’s references move beyond the business world; for instance, his declaration to “Be like Malcolm Gladwell,” referring to the bestselling author’s successful move to podcasting, rings hollow compared to more specific instructions in other sections. Most references are helpful, though, as are appendices with “niche charts” to help organize strategies and a list of 24 social media platforms with succinct write-ups.
An accessible and lively strategy book that’s well suited to business novices.Pub Date: July 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2174-9
Page Count: 196
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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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
BOOK REVIEW
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