...popularity as a practical and strategic method for communication and organization among wider group of people, making it an ideal platform for popular use. This paper attempts to stress the role of social media in shaping opinions and motivating collective actions. It draws example from the recent Arab revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. In this regard, the paper will debate the arguments made by Malcolm T. Gladwell, is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, peaker and a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. Malcolm was critisized by many Arab activists because of his contradictory views regarding the role of social media in the Arab Springas he made it clearly that he doesn’t think such tools amount to much. In an online chat that Malcolm Gladwell did for the New Yorker's website , he explicitly stated that the internet can be an effective tool for political change when used by grassroots organisations as opposed to a core crop of activated individuals. Thus, simply showing that the internet was used to publicize, and even organise protests in the Middle East does nothing to counter his argument. The paper would argue that social media could be very strong and powerful communications tool for a particular group of audiences as well as the general public. One value of using social media is that it is simple and can easily be used by various channels to deliver messages that are unique to the audiences who use these channels frequently. The key areas where social media...
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...really about the money” but tomorrow things may appear quite a bit different. Equity theory is based on cognitive dissonance theory (where two contradictory ideas are held simultaneously resulting in feelings of discomfort) developed by social psychologist Leon Festinge. When a person feels that they are being treated unfairly, when they perceive that their work is rewarded differently when compared with others, they experience a form of cognitive dissonance. The theory suggests that he/she will take corrective action in order to return to a state of balance. When the perceived inequity is negative (when a person is doing more work for less pay than peers for example) these actions, which can be either overt or subtle, will result in counter productive work behaviors. The corrective action may not be conscious but it will be there regardless. Even if a person enjoys his/her job, work behaviors will begin to shift. If the inequity is negative these changes will likely take the form of subtle actions - tardiness, less enthusiasm, slower work, etc. - which will tend to reduce the inequity by lowering the reward to work, or outcome to income, ratio. Over time, these behaviors can do far more harm to a company than might have resulted had the inequity been resolved earlier. Eventually the changes will likely become noticeable and the employee will either resign or be forced to leave. Perhaps surprisingly, companies are often unaware of these inequities. Since the inequities...
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...COLLECTED VIEWS ON COMPLEXITY IN SYSTEMS JOSEPH M. SUSSMAN JR East Professor Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts April 30, 2002 The term “complexity” is used in many different ways in the systems domain. The different uses of this term may depend upon the kind of system being characterized, or perhaps the disciplinary perspective being brought to bear. The purpose of this paper is to gather and organize different views of complexity, as espoused by different authors. The purpose of the paper is not to make judgments among various complexity definitions, but rather to draw together the richness of various intellectual perspectives about this concept, in order to understand better how complexity relates to the concept of engineering systems. I have either quoted directly or done my best to properly paraphrase these ideas, apologizing for when I have done so incorrectly or in a misleading fashion. I hope that this paper will be useful as we begin to think through the field of engineering systems. The paper concludes with some “short takes” -- pungent observations on complexity by various scholars -- and some overarching questions for subsequent discussion. AUTHOR A THEORY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS Edward O. Wilson Herbert Simon SOURCE Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge “The Architecture of Complexity”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 106, No. 6, December...
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...SECRET LANGUAGE of • HOW LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION THROUGH NARRATIVE The LEADERSHIP STEPHEN DENNING John Wiley & Sons, Inc. More Praise for The Secret Language of Leadership “Out of the morass of strategies leaders are given to transform organizations, Denning plucks a powerful one—storytelling— and shows how and why it works.” —Dorothy Leonard, William J. Abernathy Professor of Business, Emerita, Harvard Business School, and author, Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom “The Secret Language of Leadership shows why narrative intelligence is central to transformational leadership and how to harness its power.” —Carol Pearson, director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, and coauthor, The Hero and the Outlaw “The Secret Language of Leadership is not only the best analysis I have seen of how and why leaders succeed or fail, it’s highly readable, as well as downright practical. It should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in engaging a company with big ideas who understands that leaders live and die by the quality of what they say.” —Richard Stone, story analytics master, i.d.e.a.s “A primary role of leaders is to create and maintain meaning for their organizations. Denning clearly demonstrates that meaningmaking comes from stories well told.” —Thomas Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of I.T. and Management, Babson College, and author, The Attention Economy “Steve...
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...Unleashing the Ideavirus 1 www.ideavirus.com Unleashing the Ideavirus By Seth Godin Foreword by Malcolm Gladwell ©2000 by Do You Zoom, Inc. You have permission to post this, email this, print this and pass it along for free to anyone you like, as long as you make no changes or edits to its contents or digital format. In fact, I’d love it if you’d make lots and lots of copies. The right to bind this and sell it as a book, however, is strictly reserved. While we’re at it, I’d like to keep the movie rights too. Unless you can get Paul Newman to play me. Ideavirus™ is a trademark of Do You Zoom, Inc. So is ideavirus.com™. Designed by Red Maxwell You can find this entire manifesto, along with slides and notes and other good stuff, at www.ideavirus.com. This version of the manifesto is current until August 17, 2000. After that date, please go to www.ideavirus.com and get an updated version. You can buy this in book form on September 1, 2000. This book is dedicated to Alan Webber and Jerry Colonna. Of course. Unleashing the Ideavirus 2 www.ideavirus.com STEAL THIS IDEA! Here’s what you can do to spread the word about Unleashing the Ideavirus: 1. Send this file to a friend (it’s sort of big, so ask first). 2. Send them a link to www.ideavirus.com so they can download it themselves. 3. Visit www.fastcompany.com/ideavirus to read the Fast Company article. 4. Buy a copy of the hardcover book at www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970309902/permissionmarket. 5...
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...This book has been optimized for viewing at a monitor setting of 1024 x 768 pixels. MADE TO STICK random house a new york MADE TO STICK Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die • • • C H I P H E AT H & D A N H E AT H Copyright © 2007 by Chip Heath and Dan Heath All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Random House and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heath, Chip. Made to stick : why some ideas survive and others die / Chip Heath & Dan Heath p. cm. Includes index. eISBN: 978-1-58836-596-5 1. Social psychology. 2. Contagion (Social psychology). 3. Context effects (Psychology). I. Heath, Dan. II. Title. HM1033.H43 2007 302'.13—dc22 2006046467 www.atrandom.com Designed by Stephanie Huntwork v1.0 To Dad, for driving an old tan Chevette while putting us through college. To Mom, for making us breakfast every day for eighteen years. Each. C O N T E N T S INTRODUCTION WHAT STICKS? 3 Kidney heist. Movie popcorn. Sticky = understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior. Halloween candy. Six principles: SUCCESs. The villain: Curse of Knowledge. It’s hard to be a tapper. Creativity starts with templates. CHAPTER 1 SIMPLE 25 Commander’s Intent. THE low-fare airline. Burying the lead and the inverted pyramid. It’s the...
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...Economist readings 1. It pays to give Allowing consumers to set their own prices can be good for business; even better if the firms give some of it to charity http://www.economist.com/whichmba/it-pays-to-give?fsrc=nlw|mgt|01-12-2011|management_thinking [pic]IN OCTOBER 2007 Radiohead, a British rock group, released its first album in four years, “In Rainbows”, as a direct digital download. The move drew a fair bit of attention (including from this newspaper) not only because it represented a technological thumb in the eye to the traditional music industry, but also because the band allowed listeners to pay whatever they wished for it. Some 60% of those who seized the opportunity paid nothing at all, but the band seemed pleased with the result; one estimate had it earning nearly $3m from the experiment. One group outside the music industry taking an interest was a trio of professors then at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego: Ayelet Gneezy, Uri Gneezy and Leif Nelson (who is now at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley). Inspired, they designed a series of experiments to gauge whether pay-what-you-want pricing would work for other businesses. Their most recent experiment, co-authored with Amber Brown of Disney Research and published in Science, also stirred in a new element: would it make any difference if firms donated some of the pay-what-you-want fee to charity? The authors set up their pricing experiment...
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...thomas a . meyer How Great companies Get Started in terrible times Innovate! Innovate! How Great Companies Get Started in Terrible Times THOMAS A. MEYER John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Copyright © 2010 by Thomas A. Meyer. All rights reserved. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose...
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...P A R T I Discovering Momentum 1 1 The Power of Momentum Where’s the Impetus? Momentum. Most businesses get it at some point: the impression that everything they undertake succeeds effortlessly, as if they’re being carried along by a tailwind that increases their efficiency and propels them on to exceptional growth.1 Some hold on to it. Most don’t. Slowly, imperceptibly, the tailwind turns around and the momentum disappears, without anyone quite realizing what has happened. The company is still growing, but not as strongly as before, not as efficiently. Everyone’s maxing out, but it seems like there’s molasses in the works. Sound familiar? Sooner or later, it hits you in the face. Imagine you are meeting up with a senior analyst whose opinion counts with some of your company’s biggest investors. You think you’re on safe ground—after all, your company is doing better than the competition. But the analyst is in full gimlet-eyed, illusion-killing mode. “That’s nothing to crow about,” she says. “Yeah, you’ve got reasonable growth, but it’s nothing exceptional. You’re a safe bet, nothing more. Okay, I might tell my mom to buy, but 3 The Momentum Effect then she’s happy with inflation plus one. The way we see it, you’re really grinding it out. We reckon the strain’s getting harder, too. There’s no impetus—no momentum.” Words like that can really take the gloss off a day. The next time you gather your team, you don’t congratulate them on beating their targets—you...
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...Cultural diversity in Britain A toolkit for cross-cultural co-operation Phil Wood, Charles Landry and Jude Bloomfield With the current debate about ‘multiculturalism’, this study sets out a new approach to cultural diversity. It explores ways of unlocking the potential in diversity and identifies strategies to aid greater exchange between different cultural groups. The authors examine the connections between cultural diversity, innovation and thriving, prosperous urban communities, in relation to the economic, social and cultural mix of Britain’s population. They developed tools to harness the potential of diverse communities, and their powers of innovation, for use by policymakers, planners and practitioners. These include a set of indicators of openness to check the readiness of a city to take advantage of diversity, and the intercultural lens through which professionals can examine the familiar in a new light. The study evaluated six aspects of local activity: public consultation and engagement urban planning and development business and entrepreneurship schools the arts and creative industries sport. The project went further by helping participating cities to develop specific economic, social, cultural and planning policies and so to become role models for others. The study draws on local case studies and in-depth interviews with 33 intercultural innovators in seven UK cities, with comparative analysis also conducted in Europe, North America and Australasia. It is aimed...
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...animal Books by Elliot Aronson Theories of Cognitive Consistency (with R. Abelson et al.), 1968 Voices of Modern Psychology, 1969 The Social Animal, 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Readings About the Social Animal, 1973, 1977, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1995, 1999, 2004; (with J. Aronson), 2008 Social Psychology (with R. Helmreich), 1973 Research Methods in Social Psychology (with J. M. Carlsmith & P. Ellsworth), 1976 The Jigsaw Classroom (with C. Stephan et al.), 1978 Burnout: From Tedium to Personal Growth (with A. Pines & D. Kafry), 1981 Energy Use: The Human Dimension (with P. C. Stern), 1984 The Handbook of Social Psychology (with G. Lindzey), 3rd ed., 1985 Career Burnout (with A. Pines), 1988 Methods of Research in Social Psychology (with P. Ellsworth, J. M. Carlsmith, & M. H. Gonzales), 1990 Age of Propaganda (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992, 2000 Social Psychology, Vols. 1–3 (with A. R. Pratkanis), 1992 Social Psychology: The Heart and the Mind (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 1994 Cooperation in the Classroom: The Jigsaw Method (with S. Patnoe), 1997 Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine, 2000 Social Psychology: An Introduction (with T. D. Wilson & R. M. Akert), 2002, 2005, 2007 The Adventures of Ruthie and a Little Boy Named Grandpa (with R. Aronson), 2006 Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) (with C. Tavris), 2007 Books by Joshua Aronson Improving Academic Achievement, 2002 The Social Animal To...
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...Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Introduction Chapter 1 - Priming Chapter 2 - Confabulation Chapter 3 - Confirmation Bias Chapter 4 - Hindsight Bias Chapter 5 - The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy Chapter 6 - Procrastination Chapter 7 - Normalcy Bias Chapter 8 - Introspection Chapter 9 - The Availability Heuristic Chapter 10 - The Bystander Effect Chapter 11 - The Dunning-Kruger Effect Chapter 12 - Apophenia Chapter 13 - Brand Loyalty Chapter 14 - The Argument from Authority Chapter 15 - The Argument from Ignorance Chapter 16 - The Straw Man Fallacy Chapter 17 - The Ad Hominem Fallacy Chapter 18 - The Just-World Fallacy Chapter 19 - The Public Goods Game Chapter 20 - The Ultimatum Game Chapter 21 - Subjective Validation Chapter 22 - Cult Indoctrination Chapter 23 - Groupthink Chapter 24 - Supernormal Releasers Chapter 25 - The Affect Heuristic Chapter 26 - Dunbar’s Number Chapter 27 - Selling Out Chapter 28 - Self-Serving Bias Chapter 29 - The Spotlight Effect Chapter 30 - The Third Person Effect Chapter 31 - Catharsis Chapter 32 - The Misinformation Effect Chapter 33 - Conformity Chapter 34 - Extinction Burst Chapter 35 - Social Loafing Chapter 36 - The Illusion of Transparency Chapter 37 - Learned Helplessness Chapter 38 - Embodied Cognition Chapter 39 - The Anchoring Effect Chapter 40 - Attention Chapter 41 - Self-Handicapping Chapter 42 - Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Chapter 43 - The Moment Chapter 44 - Consistency...
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...THE B L A C K SWAN The HIGHLY I mpact IM of the PROBABLE Nassim Nicholas Taleb U.S.A. $26.95 Canada $34.95 is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpre dictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9 / 1 1 . For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. A BLACK SWAN Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate oppor tunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the "impossible." For years, Taleb has studied how we fool our selves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this reve latory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don't know. He offers...
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...ALSO BY MALCOLM GLADWELL The Tipping Point To my parents, Joyce and Graham Gladwell Introduction The Statue That Didn’t Look Right In September of 1983, an art dealer by the name of Gianfranco Becchina approached the J. Paul Getty Museum in California. He had in his possession, he said, a marble statue dating from the sixth century BC. It was what is known as a kouros—a sculpture of a nude male youth standing with his left leg forward and his arms at his sides. There are only about two hundred kouroi in existence, and most have been recovered badly damaged or in fragments from grave sites or archeological digs. But this one was almost perfectly preserved. It stood close to seven feet tall. It had a kind of light-colored glow that set it apart from other ancient works. It was an extraordinary find. Becchina’s asking price was just under $10 million. The Getty moved cautiously. It took the kouros on loan and began a thorough investigation. Was the statue consistent with other known kouroi? The answer appeared to be yes. The style of the sculpture seemed reminiscent of the Anavyssos kouros in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, meaning that it seemed to fit with a particular time and place. Where and when had the statue been found? No one knew precisely, but Becchina gave the Getty’s legal department a sheaf of documents relating to its more recent history. The kouros, the records stated, had been in the private collection of a Swiss physician named Lauffenberger...
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...WRITING REFERENCES Citi: Oil Could Plunge to $20, and This Might Be 'the End of OPEC' "It looks exceedingly unlikely for OPEC to return to its old way of doing business," Morse wrote. Despite global declines in spending that have driven up oil prices in recent weeks, oil production in the U.S. is still rising, wrote Edward Morse, Citigroup's global head of commodity research. Brazil and Russia are pumping oil at record levels, and Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran have been fighting to maintain their market share by cutting prices to Asia. The market is oversupplied, and storage tanks are topping out. A pullback in production isn't likely until the third quarter, Morse said Vets fight to save hero dog who tried to shield owner from house fire "She's doing OK. Considering what Carmen has been through we think she's doing as well as can be expected," Dr. Daniel Carey, a vet at the hospital, told WCPO. "It's not unexpected that she's not ready to come off (the ventilator). It's just that in our best case scenario (we thought) maybe we could've hoped to get her off (Sunday) afternoon," Carey told WCPO The hospital is also providing updates on Carmen through social media, using Facebook to post pictures of the dog resting on a pink blanket and keeping company with a pair of stuffed animals. Your Resume Is Useless Unless It Answers This 1 Question If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know how keenly we believe there’s no such thing as a generic or one-size-fits-all resume ...
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