Tag Archives: economics

Monday’s Top Links (6.12.2011)

In this week’s links learn more about common barriers of effective teamwork, the advent of DIY education, how preferences lead to choices, exploring the creative overlap, and the differences between how we can do work. Enjoy!

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Categories: Musings Sunday's Links
do-it-yourself

Sorry for the delay, was travelling and had some technical difficulties, but here’s this week’s top links!

1. Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork

This HBR articles acknowledges the importance of collaboration for success, but there are a number of misconceptions that can seriously derail productive teamwork. These include harmony, fluidity, size, communication methods, leadership, and talent.

2. DIY U: The Future Of Education

Education has been a hot topic this year and one trend that is apparent is the movement of learning into a digital format, accessible to all. In this video, we are introduced to DIY U and the future of education, based on the new book from Anya Kamenetz.

3. Preferences Leading To Choices

This article from behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the interesting situation in which we make many of our choices. More importantly he shows how we often alter our choices to match our underlying preferences, despite external pressures.

4. Exploring The Creative Overlap

In this Q&A with Janet Echelman from the TED Blog, we learn more about the creative overlap. She talks about the need for time to stumble upon the creative, the importance of collaboration across fields, and pushing the limits.

5. The Taskmaster Premium

Seth Godin does it again, as he compares and contrasts the work we do in two very different contexts. Either we can work for someone or we can work for ourselves, which do you think is more fulfilling?

And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.

Sunday’s Top Links (5.15.2011)

In this week’s links discover the true value of education, understand the benefits of smiling, practice self-control, interact with the latest HTML5 video, and learn to focus on process over passion. Enjoy!

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Categories: Sunday's Links
rome

Welcome to this week’s top links!

1. Buying an Education or Buying a Brand?

What exactly do students get with the ridiculous amounts of tuition they pay every semester? An important question as more and more students are facing ever increasing student loans. Seth Godin tries to clarify the real value of the money being spent.

2. The Hidden Power of Smiling

In a TED Talk by Ron Gutman, we get a high level overview of just how powerful smiling can be. Some surprising findings include its impact on longevity and how a smile can create positive emotions in others, very interesting stuff.

3. Wait for Another Cookie

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely shares some further insights into the area of self-control. He covers how our self-control is essentially challenged everyday and how we can develop the ability for our own benefit. Also, the marshmallow experiment video near the end is hilarious.

4. ROME

Another showcase of HTML5 is found in the interactive film ROME for the latest collaboration album between Danger Mouse, Jack White, and Norah Jones. Its really cool stuff, but as it says its experimental, so you should use Chrome to watch it.

5. Forget Passion, Focus on Process

A recent post from 37 Signals talks about how it is the process that is more important than the passion, when doing business. There are some great points in the article about the issues with following your passion and how to find meaning in your work. Also for more from 37 Signals, check out their book Rework, that rethinks the assumptions of business settings.

And if you missed last week’s links, check them out here.

The Truth About What Motivates Us

This video from RSA is based off of Dan Pink’s lecture on motivation, an adaptation on his book Drive. The focus is related to the ideas of rewards and punishment and how they aren’t as straightforward as we think.

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Categories: Media
rsa

The following video created by the RSA is based on a lecture from Dan Pink and his book Drive. In the book he basically explores what motivates us and how what we think we know about motivation is far from the truth. He covers topics such as incentives, rewards, growth, punishment, and more. In the lecture he focuses on the dynamics of rewards and punishment, which you can check out below.

A lot of interesting things to think about here. I’ve always found these topics fascinating and this in particular reminds me a lot about the area of behavioral economics, which is essentially about the irrationalities of our behavior. Check out Dan Ariely for more about behavioral economics and for more by Dan Pink, visit his blog.

Calvin & Hobbes: Corporate Business

A fantastic comic from Calvin & Hobbes, pointing out the ridiculousness of Corporate America. The funny thing is that it’s not even that extreme, this happens all the time in the business world – the system is broken, how do we fix it?

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Categories: Media

A fantastic comic from Calvin & Hobbes, pointing out the ridiculousness of Corporate America.

We may all laugh, but that really happens everyday, I mean we just bailed out all the banks, investment bankers are going along like nothing even happend, its a broken system, but how do we change it?