Number of words: 1,660 When 61 people met for a choir practice in a church in Mount Vernon, Washington, on 10 March, everything seemed normal. For 2.5 hours the chorists sang, snacked on cookies and oranges, and sang some more. But one of them had been suffering for 3 days from what felt like a … Read more
Number of words: 631 It is hard for me to remember now, but when I joined Ogilvy in 1988, to perform almost any kind of work, you had to be in an office. This was where your post and faxes arrived. Your desk phone was where people called you. The office was also home to … Read more
Number of words: 868 Forget the new year’s resolution: September, not January, is the time for new starts. College freshers are preparing to leave home, graduates are ironing shirts and blouses and dressing up for their first day in the office. Recruiters and admissions tutors are hoping they made the right choices. So how do … Read more
Number of words: 9,544 The strange thing about academics, which always fascinates me, is that they believe they’re completely immune to status considerations and consider themselves to be more or less monks. In reality, of course, academics are the most status-conscious people in the world. Take away a parking space from an academic and see … Read more
Number of words: 1,617 Let me briefly explain what business and behavioral science have in common. They both do experiments. Apart from that, everything is slightly different. Business does not always perform experiments consciously. Sometimes, a business or a product is an experiment in itself. When the iPhone was introduced it represented a huge bet … Read more
Number of words: 1,420 Whenever I wish to scandalise people, I have a sentence which works every time: “I would prefer my daughters took up smoking than started cycling in London.” My argument is as follows. If my daughters take up smoking and find it impossible to quit, there is a fairly high chance of … Read more
Number of words: 593 I love anything open late at night. Never mind ‘the sigh of midnight trains in empty stations’; even mundane activities like filling up with petrol become enjoyably Edward Hopperish after midnight. Often the places are so quiet you wonder why they bother opening at all. But it is a strange psychological … Read more
Number of words: 6,464 On a list of ten things that matter in terms of how you look at the world, satisficing would be number one, along with the whole business of decision making under uncertainty. This opens up the idea that something which may seem at first glance to be completely irrational may in … Read more
Number of words: 587 The behavioural scientist Dan Ariely once found himself chatting to a locksmith with a curious problem. The better he became at replacing locks, the less he got paid. In the early days, he explained, he might wrestle for hours with a jammed lock, but because his inexperience made his job look … Read more
Number of words: 1,207 One of the many aspects of Uber which often surprises people is that not only does the passenger rate the driver, but the driver also rates the passenger. Recently, I was surprised to learn from an Uber driver that my own current passenger rating (4.9 out of 5) is, in the … Read more
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