Hayek v Keynes rap

Tags: economics, hayek

Do you look good on the dance floor?

Girls, curse the clever things, apparently can detect how suitable we are by the way we dance. Not in the sense that men who dance like dads at weddings aren’t good mate material, but in the way we move and the testosterone this unconsciously signals to the ladies on the dance floor.

That is the findings of a study done by Peter Lovatt, a researcher from Hertfordshire University, anyway.

He went to the local nightclub and filmed various people dancing. He then showed silhouettes of these men to women and asked them to rate them in order of attractedness. The men that got the girls going were giving it large on the dance floor with big movements.

So let that be a lesson to any guys heading out on the town tonight.  If you want to get lucky, you have to give it a go on the dance floor.

Tags: Add new tag, Dance, Nightclub, Testosterone

Where do you sit in the cinema?

Apparently if you’re right handed you tend to sit to the right of the screen as this allows the right hemisphere of your brain to process the visual stimulus of the film.

I’m right handed but more often than not sit on the left hand side of the cinema.

How about you? Where do you sit in the cinema?

How ideas spread – Gladwell may be wrong

Malcom Gladwell shot to worldwide fame with The Tipping Point by suggesting that for ideas to spread you need to attract certain influential and well connected people to get your idea started and to send it viral. He used examples of shoe companies finding trendy kids in New York to start sowing the seeds and so on.

New research however suggests he may have been wrong. A guy called Duncan Watts did some research into how things spread.

Watts set the test in motion by randomly picking one person as a trendsetter, then sat back to see if the trend would spread. He did so thousands of times in a row.

The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion.

Why didn’t the Influentials wield more power? With 40 times the reach of a normal person, why couldn’t they kick-start a trend every time? Watts believes this is because a trend’s success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend–not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. And in fact, when Watts tweaked his model to increase everyone’s odds of being infected, the number of trends skyrocketed.

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one–and if it isn’t, then almost no one can,” Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it’s less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public’s mood. Sure, there’ll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts’s terminology, an “accidental Influential.”

So it would seem that far more important than whether you can get influential people to spread the word for you is whether society (or your target market) is open to new ideas in the first place. If they’re not then it doesn’t matter who you get to spread the word, it isn’t going to stick.

Tags: Add new tag, Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success, Tipping Point

The office Christmas party

‘Tis the season to be jolly (etc.) and it’s traditionally the time for the office Christmas party. True to tradition ours is tomorrow, with everyone decamping to head office for a talent show and dinner.

It’s a funny old thing isn’t it? Far be it from me to be all humbug and all, but I’ve never been a fan of ‘forced joviality’. You know what I mean? It’s like having to be romantic on Valentines Day because society (or Clintons) expects it of you. I’d much rather be romantic every day of the year than rubbish 364 days and mushy 1.

And it’s a similar thing with Christmas parties. There have obviously been lots of cases of these things going terribly wrong and the Beeb were asking this morning if the tradition is on the way out. Nevertheless though it seems many people like them, with recent research showing around 70% of workers like to have a Christmas bash.

Like I said, far be it for me to deny people a good time, but it seems to me that the purpose of these parties isn’t so much to celebrate the birth of Christ as to just get to people together and have some fun. In my eyes, this is something that should be done all year round and doesn’t require big set piece events.

Anyway, that’s my two penneth. Are you all having a party? What do you think of them?

Tags: Christmas, christmas party, parties

Poker and strategy

New article on The Management Blog about poker and strategy.

Tags: poker, strategy

‘Future of’ series from Singularity University

I’ve been a big fan of Ray Kurzweil ever since reading The Age of Spiritual Machines way back when.  So I’ve followed the launch of his Singularity University with great interest.  They’ve produced the following fascinating videos called The Future Of series.  Enjoy.

The Future of Nanotech

The Future of Energy

The Future of Robotics

The Future of Medicine

The Future of Synthetic Biology

Tags: Age of Spiritual Machines, Future, predictions, Ray Kurzweil, Raymond Kurzweil, Singularity, Singularity University

Big day tomorrow – Merseyside derby and the Gran Classico

As an Everton fan I normally approach the derby games with excitement but our awful form coupled with our injury list havn’t filled me with optimism this time round. Thankfully Liverpool don’t seem in any better form so we may well sneak a result and turn our season round.

You’ll have to forgive me for being less than partisan but the game I’m really looking forward to is the Gran Classico between Barca and Real Madrid. For me its the biggest match of the year between the biggest teams in the world. Hopefully Messi and Ronaldo will both be passed fit for what should be a belter. Can’t wait.

Tags: barca, everton, Football

LinkedIn gets 3 million UK members

I read with interest the discussion over at TechCrunch this morning about business networking site LinkedIn surpassing 3 million UK members recently.  Many commenters mentioned how they have accounts but never use the site, therefore casting doubt on the worth of the 3 million number.

It strikes me though that this is the same issue regardless of what social media site you mention because I hear exactly the same arguments used when people discuss Twitter.  “Oh I’ve signed up but can’t see the point so have never used it” they will say.

Of course if people have no reason for using a service then it will be very difficult for them to ever gain any value from it.  It’s no different in the social media world than it is in any other activity.  If you have no goal in mind and no strategy for achieving this goal then how can you possibly get value from the activity?

So the moral of the story for me is don’t do something just for fashions sake or to keep up with the Jones.  If you’re going to use LinkedIn go in with a clear goal in mind for what you want to get out of it.

Tags: LinkedIn, social media, Twitter

What would get employees talking to each other?

SalesForce released a new enterprise social networking service today called Chatter with the aim of encouraging people to do what they do on Facebook et al with their colleagues.

It’s one of those issues that’s considerably easier to suggest than to implement as the two environments are very, very different. In community building there is an oft used rule of thumb that for every 100 people looking at a social community, 90 will just read, 9 will reply to topics and just 1 will start new discussions. As with all rules of thumb this isn’t going to be the case every time but it’s worth considering that whereas Facebook, LinkedIn et al have the numbers to make this work, in your own internal network your numbers will likely be much less.

As with most things in life, it’s worth investigating what you wish to get out of this before you get started.

If it’s gaining a more social understanding of your employees then it’s probably safe to say that use of existing platforms such as Facebook is likely to yield better results. There are already many ‘I work at …’ style groups on Facebook so that would seem a good opportunity to mingle with your employees in their natural habitat.

If however you’re looking to improve your corporate knowledge base and encourage knowledge sharing then this offers much more potential. Of course building a platform does not mean people will come, so here are a few steps you can take to encourage knowledge sharing within your company.

Tips for encouraging knowledge sharing

1. Outline your vision for this.  You first need to create a culture of knowledge sharing so need to communicate the vision that this is a positive thing both for the individual and the company.
2. Reinforce through actions.  You then need to reinforce this vision through actions.  Reward positive behaviour, not just financially but through praise and recognition.
3. Start with the natives.  There will inevitably be people who will take to this like a duck to water.  Start with these people and get them sharing knowledge extensively.
4. Use success stories to cross the chasm.  Use any success stories that these early adaptors achieve to help sell it to the rest of your employees.
5. Lead by example.  You have to do what you’re asking people to do so you should be one of the main users of your internal network.
6. Embed into human processes.  If you can get these positive behaviours included within inductions for instance it will help reinforce behaviour and create the right kind of knowledge sharing culture.

Don’t forget to look outside as well as inside

If you can get that far then you’ve done very well, but don’t restrict yourself to improving the knowledge sharing within your company walls.  There is a whole load of knowledge outside of your company.  Communities of practice exist in a vast array of areas that can see your employees tapping into the knowledge base of thousands of peers from around the world.  The CMI for instance is soon to launch a management community that will be a great place for managers to learn from others.  Look out for these kind of opportunities and encourage staff to learn from these communities.  This kind of social media is miles from the waste of time that Facebook et al can appear to be.

I’m a great believer in the power of communities and getting employees to talk to one another is a great thing.  It would be interesting to hear from people that have done this successfully.

Tags: Community, Facebook, km, Knowledge Management, LinkedIn, Online Communities, Social network, Social network service, Twitter