28 Mayıs 2011 Cumartesi
Predictably Irrational
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
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
- 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.
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
Book 8:What Got You Here Won't Get You There
The Spirit Level
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.
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
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:
- How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.
- How a situation occurs, arises in language.
- 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
1.focus on a single goal,
2.grab attention,
3.engage people in a cause and
4.empower them to take action.
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
BOUNCE
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.
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
- Focus
- Grab attention
- Engage in the activity
- Take action
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
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
27 Mayıs 2011 Cuma
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.
The 3 laws of Performance
The 3 laws of Performance –The science of Success
A extraordinary book that provides 3 laws of performance to help individuals in leadership roles facilitate the group relationship and to bring an outstanding performance.By utilizing the application of “The Three Laws of Performance,” we can rewrite the future of our company and the future of our life too .
The three laws are that affect the performance are :
1.How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them
2.How a situation occurs arises in languages
3.Future based language transforms how situations occur to people
The aim is to revive people’s passion for accomplishment .In this way we have created a pathway to organizational and personal success.