Category: Innovation

Latest Read: The Talent Code

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date July 10, 2022

The Talent Code Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How by Daniel Coyle. Daniel is the author of The Culture Code, a New York Times bestseller. He is also a contributing editor for Outside Magazine.

Is there a secret formula to gaining talent? Daniel is sharing with readers and probably more specifically parents, coaches, and companies insights to maximize talent.

In fact, the lessons include future MLB players developed in the Caribbean, and even a music academy in upstate New York. Daniel’s story outlines how these key elements can work within your brain. However there is an element that you must have a gift and certainly the grit to achieve new levels of performance.

Myelin, is a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movement and thought. However, this is no miracle cure, take a pill solution. In fact, scientists have are beginning to view myelin as type of ‘holy grail’ and foundation for various types of success.

Daniel also identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance. Daniel relays some the new research on neurology. Added to this is data from geographic locations to more accurately identify three elements that are driving success:

Tags Daniel Coyle, Myelin, performance, Talent code

Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Markets Fail

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 21, 2022

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy. John is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. This book was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction.

John has certainly written a very well structured book on economic markets divided into three parts: Utopian Economics, Reality-Based Economics, and The Great Crunch. This provides necessary insights to the very long history of economics. In addition, John shows how they have repeatedly failed from the 1700s to the the 2008 economic crisis.

I certainly enjoyed John sharing multiple points of historic economic failures via the insights of all economic experts at the time.

Utopian Economics

John places part one into a Utopian view. He reveals how attempts to link the macro and micro divisions of the economic model result in errors. At the same time it may not really apply across today’s COVID, gig economy.

Repeatedly the economic experts in the 1800s were very wrong. This view really cannot translate today across the globalized world. He also views the economic crisis of 2008 as a drastic market failure. The development and repair were excluded by the systems of the dominant economic paradigm of the past three decades.” John certainly illustrates how utopians believed in the infallible invisible hand of the market via Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.

Tags economics, gig economy, How Markets Fail, John Cassidy

Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Plenitude

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 24, 2022

Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth by Juliet B. Schor. Juliet is an economist and sociologist at Boston College with research focusing on work, consumption, and climate change.

Juliet is offering in 2010 a new approach to economics and sociology, and ecological decline. Plenitude is suggesting change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live are needed. I would be less than enthusiastic if one is reading this when published in 2010.

Plenitude is in fact, addressing the impact of the 2008 economic crash and a new view of capitalism was necessary. In addition, the idea of a spending spree to fix the world economy was no longer sustainable according to Juliet in 2010. Juliet produces data how the impact of technology and humans are degrading the planet at a faster pace that we can replenish it. The downstream impacts include food, energy, transport, and consumer goods.

In fact, since the 2008 crash, these costs have been rising. Today in year three of the pandemic, the same costs increases have certainly accelerated. Yet, the commonly accepted catch phrase is that spending will fix the economy. Juliet views Business As Usual (BAU) as an outdated theme. As a result, 2022 is revealing incomes, good paying jobs, and credit are suddenly in short supply. However, as we are now in COVID’s third year, Juliet’s ideas are certainly more reasonable. Actually they will resonate with many more people as the impact of the pandemic will be felt for many years to come. including a new drive for sustainability.

Tags economics, Juliet Schor, Plenitude, Sustainability

Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Contagious

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 24, 2022

Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger. I was really looking forward to Contagious as my followup to his excellent book The Catalyst. Jonah is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

However, I found this does not hold the same spark. Actually, Contagious is really about common sense that most already understand. Many suggest a Malcolm Gladwell book which can share these ideas in his more impactful style. Perhaps they are correct.

But the world is much different for college students still facing COVID in 2022. For example, the quick use of Discord by college classes.

Here is a sample of how attempting to create an idea that will certainly catch on with college students meets hacking in 2022. In skipping the well established LMS for the cool features that appeals to students, it is only then that FERPA data has leaked across Discord servers. In addition, those same servers are running malware including drive by attacks on browsers. The malware is proving to also steal student’s data including their personal identifiable data and in many cases digital money used across Discord.

Tags Contagious, Jonah Berger, STEPPS

Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: Conformity

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 20, 2022

Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass Sunstein. He is currently a professor at Harvard and was a professor at the University of Chicago Law School for 27 years. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School.

Conformity: The Power of Social Influences by Cass R. Sunstein

From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and after that, he served on the President’s Review Board on Intelligence and Communications Technologies and on the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Board.

In 2018, he received the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway. Furthermore in 2020, the World Health Organization appointed him as Chair of its technical advisory group on Behavioral Insights and Sciences for Health.

In fact, his previous books Nudge and Noise are all best sellers and provide wonderful insights to human behavior. The focus of this book is addressing decisions influenced by social pressure.

Similarly, this can be for the better (logic, facts, and even experiments) or worse. So, it is very easy today to witness irrational social media posts influencing decisions.

Conformity has two faces

Cass begins by sharing a baseline that conformity is be positive or negative. As we know, conformity is a basic requirement and is proving to be necessary today. However, the focus is to understand the larger circumstances and become aware of the effects of conformity upon your decision making process. In addition, there is a real drive to understand the full impact of social media placing new pressures upon individuals to make decisions:

On social media, that happens all the time. The result can be to lead people to errors and even to illness and death. “Fake news” can spread like wildfire; informational cascades are the culprits. In 2017 and 2018, that was a particular concern for Facebook, whose platform has often been used as a basis for the rapid transmission of falsehoods.
pgs. 104-105.

Tags Cass Sunstein, Conformity, influence, Social Media