thank you all

I want to thank Mr.Melih Arat and everyone of my class mates your posts were very useful for me
you are - in fact - very extra ordinary

yours
Karam Aly

Predictably Irrational

In this book, the author tries to help you reshape the concept of what makes you and the people around you make the choices. Describing several experiments, the phenomenon of people making the same mistakes time and again in predictable ways is explored, such as buying warranties they do not need, succumbing to peer pressure, and spending more money on expensive indulgences than they budget for. So the main underlying idea throughout the book is that people behave irrationally, but in a predictable manner.

Each of the chapters of the book focuses on one particular irrational way in which people make decisions, describing the experiments that Ariely and his colleagues constructed and carried out to demonstrate the predictability of this behavior. For example, in the first chapter, the author describes how his test subjects could be driven to prefer product A over product B if they were given the choice between A, B, and a similar but inferior version of product A instead of a choice between just A and B. In another chapter on the mysterious power of “free” products, he describes how test subjects who preferred Lindt chocolates to Hershey’s Kisses by roughly 3-to-1 when they were priced at 15 cents and 1 cent respectively, changed their preferences to 1-to-2 when each was discounted by 1 cent. In other words, when priced at 14 cents and 0 cents respectively, people disproportionately changed their preference to the free Hershey’s Kiss, disregarding their preference and the fact that the cost difference in each case—14 cents—is exactly the same. These results lead Ariely to suggest that “free” is a price that causes people to behave irrationally.

The “one main lesson from the research described in this book,” Ariely informs us, “is that we are pawns in a game whose forces we largely fail to comprehend”. Although we may think we are in control of how we make market calculations and economic decisions, he argues, we are actually driven by perceptual reactions, ingrained habits, and “decision illusions” (such as the mysterious power of “free” products) much more than we realize.

The Spirit Level

This virtuous book describes in a very convincing manner that economic equality is good for society. It exposes the falsity of the belief that massive inequalities are a necessary condition for improving the quality of life in contemporary developed societies.

The authors argue that very skewed distributions of income influence in the rise of a large range of social anomalies, with the result that everyone suffers. Inequality in their view is not just bad for the poor, it’s also bad for the rich. Analyzing data from many developed countries it is observed a close relation between the level of inequality in each country (or state) and a range of outcomes: levels of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, infant mortality, obesity, children’s educational performance, number of teenage births, murders, imprisonment rates and social mobility. The higher inequality is, the lower is the trust, the more the mental illnesses are present, the higher are the murder rates and so on.

The main theme in the book is that rather than securing further economic growth, inequality is now the big challenge facing developed societies: for the vast majority of people in affluent countries the difficulties of life are no longer about filling our stomachs, having clear water and keeping warm. Most of us now wish we could eat less rather than more. And, for the first time in history, the poor are generally fatter than the rich.”

The book has many virtues, the chief of which is to provide a mass of empirical evidence that societies with greater equality of income almost always do better than societies with more inequality, on a wide range of indicators.

Made to stick

The book made to stick is written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. This book suggests empoying the stck approaches in order to create ideas that are sticky  and long lasting. The expains in detail 6 charachteristics of sticky ideas.

• Simple - find the core of any idea. This permits the message to be conveyed and reach the maximum of the target focus group. This because simplification makes the clarification of complexity and consequently makes it easily understood for an unlimited number of people. Once the information arrives to the reader, he should also understand the message conveyed.
• Unexpected — grab people's attention by surprising them.
• Concrete — make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later.
• Credible — give idea believability.
• Emotional — help people see the importance of an idea. His speech was a personal one, it was not formal justification to protect him from the bad results, and people could feel it.
• Stories — empower people to use an idea through narrative.

All these elements appropriately used, help ideas to be sticky.

The Meatball Sundae

The Meatball Sundae

The author Seth Godin in the Meatball Sundae book talks about the importance of new internet (Social Network) marketing strategies and how these tactics should be applied to a modern,and also growing business model.
The book, however talks at of the new rules of marketing and the fourteen trends that are shaping the way products and ideas are communicated and sold:
• Direct communication and commerce between producers and consumers
• Amplification of the voice of the consumer and independent authorities
• The need for an authentic story as the number of sources increases
• Extremely short attention spans due to clutter
• The Long Tail
• Outsourcing
• Google and the dicing of everything
• Infinite channels of communication
• Direct communication and commerce between consumers and consumers
• The shifts in scarcity and abundance
• The triumph of big ideas
• The shift from “how many” to “who”
• The wealthy are like us
The author in the book talks also about the importance of that social media have the power to amplify word of mouth like never before, and that a product or idea is only going to spread in social networks is if it is truly remarkable (a Purple Cow). Press releases of boring products will never show up.

Elton Dushku

PREDICTABLE IRRATIONAL

This book indicate us what is the effect while decision making and behavioral economics are manipulated by a hidden hand. As far as these two elements are closely related with the needs of people some smarter guys will play with them in order to realize their own ambitions. In order to do this, they shape a framework, create some spaces to leave people understand they are free to choose in a rational way. By other words:

When politics for its own interests will to manipulate the people organize a scenario and appeal them for keeping their eyes opened and oppose democratically or violently as it is the rational way to get rid of without taking into consideration the result of loosing the crowd's control.

In January 21 of 2011, as a response to a corruption affair tape were the Head of Integration Socialist Movement was included, the Head of Socialist party Edi Rama found an opportunity to act and decided to organize a big demonstration. As a result the crowd was left deliberately to get out of the control and the result of this was four innocent dead people. Here I dont want to show who burden the fault of this crime. I want to show why Edi Rama didnt react when taxes rose up, when retirement age was increased from 60 to 65? etc. So concluding ...people must act based on the force of rationality, not with the rational force.

Book 5: Billions of Entrepreneurs

This book analysis the characteristics of two big countries CHINA and INDIA, their potentials in the world economy And a possible collaboration of this two powers that will result into a new world power that will rule all the world. This two countries are havin almost 40% of all world population and a good managing to this two countries strengths will result to an unstoppable power that will grow and grow until infinity. As we may see also in nowadays everything is produced in China, all the technology innovation comes from India, so these two countries have strong position and today in the world but a collaboration of these two may get them faster and safer at the top of the world

Book 4: Predictable Irrational

The main idea of the book is talking about understanding people behavior in some specific situation. In all the time we think that we are making rational choices, but in most of the time without understanding it we are making irrational choices. It happens to all of us that we are changing our perception in fee seconds. It is well known the Chinas products, that all of us say that they are of low quality, and nowadays we buy IPhones that are smart phones of the highest prices that are assembled in china. I think also that all this big marketing world makes all of us do so many irrational choices, they blind us with all their strategies and at the end we are just victims of our irrational choices

BOOK 1: Changing Minds

This book explains the way that a NEW idea has to pass through in order to be implemented and accepted. It is well known that new ideas are very hard to be accepted, but in order to make useful our new idea we have to prepare the people and make them ready to accept it, this is the step that in my opinion is the hardest one and the most important one, because if you prepare people accepting the new idea than you just have to implement it and measure the results. The last to steps are very easy to achieve because they are into the managers hands and they can manage it but the very first one that was about making people ready to accept it, is a very hard job because here we are dealing with a culture that will be created

Book 8:What Got You Here Won't Get You There

This book gives a clear guide to the career development problems that everyone faces when they are taking the next leap in the career. The problems that everyone faces are almost the same because the new position is NEW for them and the problems that will occur will have the same end. In order not to have a bad end the author is giving solution to many of the problems that you will face in the next career leap. It’s a prepreparation of you for the coming critical situations in your career development.This book is useful for everyone not just for high level managers because is every case you see that it could be you in that situation

The Spirit Level

The books is based in a research for many years, from where the author finds out the problems that occur to an unequal society, a society where everything is separated unequally. This phenomena creates a lot of problems not only for poor people but also for the rich ones, because it is clear all of them are living in the same country and the affect on the society can not be neglected by no one. Accept the results of the research the author directs us to solving this problem, in a more friendly way with each other and also a very good plan for the governments to organize a better future solution for this problem.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
The author in his book addresses a particular audience, successful people who need to make a change to continue to be successful.In his book, Goldsmith lists twenty-one common harmful habits in interpersonal relations. He explains that the higher you go in executive management, the more your problems are behavioral. Some of these behavioral problems are as follows:
1. The need to win to much
2. Making destructive comments
3. Starting sentences with “No,” “But,” or “However”
4. Telling the world how smart you are
5. Speaking when angry
6. Withholding information
7. Clinging to the past
8. Playing favorites among direct-reports
9. An excessive need to be “Me” (or, “I can’t change, that’s just how I am”)
10. Goal obsession
The author writes about challenges tha are also getting executives to understand how they are perceived by others in their work environments, and at home. He separates our personal “perception” into four categories:
1. Public Knowledge (Traits known to others and self)
2. Private Knowledge (Traits known to self but not to others)
3. Blind Spots (Traits known to others but not to self)
4. Unknowable (Traits unknown to others, and not know to self)
Goldsmith says that the most interesting traits to examine and study are 3, the blind spots known to others but not to ourselves. He provides a formula for detecting these traits, examining them, and fixing any negative discoveries. The formula is:
1. Collect feedback from everyone around us, using both deliberate and subtle tactics.
2. Apologize to everyone for any negative traits.
3. Advertise that you are beginning a personal campaign to improve and that you would like their feedback periodically as you work on improvement.
4. Listen to feedback in terms of “what can I do in the future to improve” and not “what did I do wrong in the past” (one is positive, one is negative)
5. Thank people for their suggestions, and don’t disagree with them.
6. Follow-up relentlessly. This is the key to the improvement process taking shape.
Goldsmith also discuss about several topics in his book. One interesting aside is a list of common reasons why goal setting can fail:
1. Time: It takes longer than expected, so it couldn’t be completed.
2. Effort: It’s harder than was expected.
3. Distractions: Nobody expected a “crisis” to emerge that took resources or time away.
4. Lack of Rewards: After they see some improvement, they don’t get enough positive response from others, so they give up.
5. Maintenance: Once a goal is met, there is no fortitude to stick with the pattern that brought success.
I found the most valuable part of Goldsmith’s book to be his formula for collecting feedback about others’ perceptions of us, and how we can affect change within ourselves where needed.

Elton Dushku

Book 9: Meatball Sundae

The book is relating the new technology (Social Network) spread and importance of it and the wrong use of it, by illustrating it with examples. His main idea is that if you want to adapt your self to the last technology, you should not take the technology and make it useful for your product but you should have firstly your product in your focus, understand its need in details and then take action on using the social media for marketing it. So it is seen that it is a very critical point that you shouldn’t pass, because it will be very dangerous, it will be MEANINFULLNESS.

Book 11:The Three Laws of Performance

In this book are presented three steps that in my opinion are understood like......

1, How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them- Here in this point we may prove the theory of relativeness, from where everything that is seen by everyone is understood differently from each of us, this gets us to the result of different actions that are takken from differen point of views.

2.How a situation occurs, arises in language Words are what gives color to a picture, words are what make an action valuable to the way that you want it and also to the level that you want to arise it.

3.Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people. In this step it is explained the wayyou will create the scenario, the new scenario will drive your understanding, so the understanding of the situation determines your position.

All the true stories told in the book makes all the 3 LAWs more understandable and more useful for all of us that are in managing levels or will be in the future....

Book 9 - Future Agenda

This book is a very interesting one, because it makes all of us thing deeper and deeper of the future changes that will appear and how we should deal with them, how will be our solution to them. Its very interesting because it involves us in that particular indicator and makes us think of what could be the solution to that problem.In some case for me it is like Dreaming, because we are building the future according to their predictions and putting ourself in that project and trying to find solutions that will survive us and make us profit from all those situations, Its a very interesting book because make you thing more in long terms rather than just thinking of tomorrow

THE THREE LAWS OF PERFORMANCE

This book is considered to be one of the most important written in many years. The ideas are much larger than we normally see in business books. They aren't tips, tools, or steps, but are in fact laws that govern individual, group and organizational behavior. The case studies are illustrations of organizations bringing out the best in people and in communities. These aren't just companies making a profit, but companies doing well in the world, by any measure. Leaders would be well served to think about these laws and find ways to apply their insights.

This book filled with insights, real-life encounters and experiences shows us how we may do the work of transformation. The authors have written an inspiring, practical book, applicable in the corporate, labor, political, and civil society sectors, that will assist all who seek to rewrite the future of our world.

The Three Laws of Performance are:

1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.
2. How a situation occurs, arises in language.
3. Future-based language transforms how situations occur to people.

Implementing their three "invariable laws" will help you and others perform beyond limits and with integrity. The reasoning is sound, the language is clear, the illustrations are compelling. Seems to be a delightful, informative book for all the readers.

Book 6: The Dragonfly Effect

The books main topic in on the way that people can gain from all this worldwide spread of Social networks, that a lot of people are connected to each other. Here 4 steps are discussed

1.focus on a single goal,

2.grab attention,

3.engage people in a cause and

4.empower them to take action.

In somehow this book reminds me of Made To Stick book, because also here you have to be in the center of peoples attention, you have to be STICKED to their minds, but before this you should have a clear idea, in order that in your way you will do everything to be focused on that and only on that point. In order to get their support after getting their attention you should have a real and a sensitive history that will touch their heart and take them where the problem is. After this comes the last one and form me the most important, EMPOWERING THEM TO TAKE ACTION, the power of words takes place here and in all the other steps, because you should better know how to sell a story rather then having the story.

BOUNCE

Bounce is a very interesting and thought provoking book. It basically argues that for any significantly complex human activity (especially sports like tennis, football and golf, and games like chess) natural talent is of pretty low importance because the wiring of the brain required to succeed can only be achieved through a massive amount of "purposeful" practice.

The end result of this practice is often mistaken for natural talent, but in fact the characteristic most high achievers have in common is a willingness to work harder than their peers and a belief that this hard work will drive greater improvement and success, not a belief in their fixed superiority.

There are a number of compelling and inspiring examples in the book, the most amazing of which is a family of Hungarian chess players whose story has changed the way I look at what is possible for any person to achieve. Woven into this argument are snippets of the author's own story as an internationally ranked table tennis player and Olympian.

There are also whole sections on additional factors behind sporting success such as confidence, faith, nerve and even race, so that the overall sweep of the book's arguments is truly unique, rigorously argued and highly thought provoking. Although anchored mostly in the world of sports, it is hard to define this as just a sports book, as the ideas apply to many other walks of life as well.

Book 10: Bounce

This Book is discussing about a very delicate and very powerful topic of life, in simple words this book is giving answer to the question if Talents are born like that or they are been made through long hard working hours. This interesting number, 10 000, is the number of hours that someone should complete in order to become a talent and a professional in that field. In my opinion practice is very important, but you should have also the Spirit to finish this long trip with approximately 10 000 practicing hours This is a very optimistic approach to all the people that dont believe in Build Talents, but what i could say that is a Talent is the power inside that person that will be with him in every step until end, WILLPOWER. For me this is very important because in a long run there may be a lot of upside downs and what will drive you to success will be the WillPower that you will find inside you and make you pass the bad situations, learn from them and go forward in completing your mission

BOUNCE

The book and purposeful practice remind me another real story:

Many people, most notably Sir Joseph Swan, had tried to invent an electric light using an incandescent filament, or wire, enclosed in aglassbulb, but not had been able to create a flament that could withstand intense heat over long enough periods of timeto be practical. Even Edison had tough time of it, going through a long , trial-and-error process in which he tested tousands of meterials. Undounted by failures, Edison finally found that ascorched cotton thread would work best.When heated in avacuum, it produced a while glow without melting , evaporating, or breaking. Although Swan came up with asimilar light bulb around the same time, Edison patented his idea....

The story goes that Edoson failed more than 1000 times when trying to create the light bulb. When asked about it, Edison allegedly said," I have not failed 1000 times.I have successfully discovered 1000 ways to NOT make a light bulb."

Book 7 - Made to stick

In order that something will be made to Stick to you, to make you remember of it and make you use it as many times as you get the opportunity, it has some crucial points from where it has to pass in order to bee STICKED to your mind.

It should be SIMPLE- this is very important because if the idea is not understandable by the others than they will loose the attention since the beginning, so the rest of the story has no value if the beginning isnt simple enough. In the same time it should have something Unexpected, in order to get peoples attention come after you and try to explore the unexpected. At the same time it should be TRUE. It should be CONCRETE, that means it should be related to the reality, something that everyone is part of , and everyone can put their self in that position and be more inside your IDEA. EMOTIONS are the part from where you get peoples heard, this is the part that comes after completing the mind. In this part you have to include strong emotions in order to make your story more human and more acceptable by human nature, that in fact is very sensitive. And the last one, that for me should be the one that includes all the above one, is STORY. In order to have all of this it should be a king of real story that goes parallel to you idea, it goes side by side with your idea, it should by something that finalizes you idea with a concrete example, an example that will make your idea unforgettable into the others mind

Made to stick

Made to stick

The Heaths' book tells us how to make our ideas sticky or how to present an idea in a way that leaves a lasting impression .They write the formula of stickiness using the acronym is “SUCCES”. The principles of stickiness are examined to have an unexpected outcome, lots of concrete details that we remember, emotion, simplicity, and credibility–all packaged in an easily told story format.

The stories and case studies illustrates in a clear and concise way the above reasons , that make some ideas connect and stay with people.

Very helpful in my profession that’s why I will read it again to understand them better and to use their ideas in my everyday work.

THE DRAGON FLY EFFECT

This book explains the revolution of change the social network created in each person's aspect of life. The dragon fly effect has removed the concept of long distances because people get connected and communicate easily from every angle of the world. It is really wonderful how quick and almost for free personal information is spread and advertised through technological social media and the effective impressions it leave to audience. More over, it is a great opportunity to advertise your self, idea, product or company.

During our course, was very interesting how groups of amateur singers from Turkey and France became so popular only by a click on the Facebook. For them it was an advertising without paying any money which now is making them laying on a big pile of money.

Imagine...while in the previous year, Coca Cola spent more then 3 billions dollars to advertise it self, other companies, maybe not in the amount Coca Cola is earning, gained a lot of money just by sharing their information in most popular social networks available. Today merging international market is free thanks to this system. So people who have objectives what have to do is the following:

1. Focus
2. Grab attention
3. Engage in the activity
4. Take action

ENEA MYFTARI

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Meatball Sundae

We know there is lots of interest in social media right now from businesses. But there's also significant hesitation due to lack of case studies and measurement, as well as a general fear of change. Seth Godin tells them why they should be a part of the New Marketing. And he does it in his usual creative way: With the meatball allegory, plus 14 trends and a great group of refreshingly new case studies. This book will make it "safe" for many marketers to really begin actively experimenting with social media. And it is likely to trigger another wave of businesses moving into two-way conversations. For experienced social media marketers this book really has two intrinsic benefits.:

1) It's the perfect gift for the Doubting Thomas in your executive suite. If the reader is still saying, "I don't know" after reading this, then just mail it in. They are in for a long ride, and there's nothing you can do about it.

2) The case studies are new, refreshing and great. It's hard to argue that social media doesn't produce results after reading "Meatball Sundae."

In persuit of elegance

According to the author of this book the ingredients of elegance recipe are symmetry, seduction, subtraction and sustainability. It may sound easy but elegance is such a rare thing because it takes creativity to mix those elements in a balanced way. The key point is that all for elements blended together in the right proportion. So for instance elegant is simple, but simple isn't necessarily elegant. I found the idea of subtraction and seduction and examples provided in the book fascinating.
The book and real life examples are a good point to start with for those who seek elegance and especially useful for those who try to invent or create new products.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

A valuable book that identifies the 20 most common harmful habits in interpersonal relations . These are habits that obstacle successful executives from reaching the next level of achievement. Goldsmith offers a formula for transforming these bad traits into positive behavior. This formula includes : collect feedback, apologize, advertise, listen to the feedback , thank people and follow-up relentlessly.

A great help for everyone be more aware of own actions , to correct bad behaviors and to become even more successful .It’ a real career – changer and also a real life-changer too.

Future Agenda: The World in 2020

The Future Agenda talks about how to address the major challenges which society faces over the next ten years, offering the opportunity for all to share ideas and potential solutions so that ultimately we can together inspire change.

We may see that they point out some certainties  that will happen:

1) a continued imbalance in population growth, 

2) more key resource constraints,

3) an accelerating eastward shift of economic power to Asia, and 

4) pervasive global connectivity

Then it  explores some of the key insights we have gained into how the world and our lives will probably change over the next decade. These are the key changes  and are detailed by providing both the signals from today that give evidence to support the direction of change and the future implications over the next ten years.They are grouped into six clusters – health, wealth, happiness, mobility, security and locality. 

Future agenda: The world in 2020

This book provides an insight to the future for areas of interest for the modern people.Even the book is about the next decade, most of the points identified are also well known for the time being. But the book not only identifies the problems but it also suggests practical strategies to deal with the changes that will affect most important areas of business.

I'm not certain whether the numbers in the statistics are reliable, yet I believe the book captures the trends.But similarly there are different aspects of life that we can pretty well guarantee will change slightly, for example by being faster, slower, smaller or bigger than today: faster computers, bigger population, slower traffic, high pollution. All of these are relatively predictable – in fact, almost certain.

All these things make you think and get a vision of the future and for some this could be a tool for decisions making.In my opinion it is a very interesting book given that it is explaining the major problems the world will face in the future and consecutively to take further steps for avoiding or solving them.