http://decision-quality.com/blog Thoughts and comments on the why, how, and what the @#$% of decision making Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:02:56 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Crowdsourcing, opening the design and marketing of a product to a social network (my definition) has found a new proponent in a hot new shoe company called Ryz. Anyone can play. If you have an idea for a visual design, you download a template, do your cleverest, and post it ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/07/03/crowdsourcing-a-newold-model-of-decision-making/ I've known about Stanley Milgram's breakthrough work on obedience for some time. The classic study involved participants administering progressively greater electrical shocks to a learner at the instruction of a researcher. As the shocks increased in intensity, the learner became increasingly uncomfortable and vocal. At some point, and participants had ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/07/01/stanley-milgram-revisited/ One of the chestnuts of neo-liberal thought is the pre-eminence of the idea of free markets and the "creative destruction" that goes along with them (as if any of the ardent believers has ever even read Schumpter or actually looked at economic data to check their assumptions). Ha-Joon Chang, an ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/30/maybe-free-trade-isnt-such-a-good-idea/ Green-washing is the new word for the hot new trend in marketing . . . painting what you sell and do "green." I found this list by TerraChoice while reading an article in the Seattle Times. I think it relates nicely to the topic we like to yammer about, "decision ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/28/terrachoice-on-the-six-sins-of-green-washing/ I had a fascinating conversation with best-selling author and observer of life, Malcolm Gladwell not long ago during which I asked him about what was next for him. It's his thunder, and I don't want to steal it, but the gist of it is he's concerned that the collective "we" ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/25/thinking-about-talent/ All the jawboning about the "real cause" of the high price of oil points out one of the common pitfalls of decision making: the use of information. On the front end of a decision, information is useful to help define the issue and frame the problem. Later, information is needed ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/24/no-solution-to-137-oil-until-there-is-agreement-on-the-problem/ My colleague, Clint Korver blogged the other day on the pickle Senator Kent Conrad finds himself in due to the appearance of favorable treatment at the hands of Countrywide Mortgage . . . The Washington Post today showed this morning how it worked. Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. upon advice from an ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/23/senator-contrads-mortgage-pickle/ [amtap book:isbn=1400043581] I'm a fan of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a study in decision making and leadership. A new book by Michael Dobbs adds some new insight according to a review in the New York Times. Dobbs, a reporter for The Washington Post, states his central thesis concisely in a description ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/22/new-book-on-cuban-missile-crisis/ Just in case this thought didn't occur to you, that new fangled phone you're carrying around holds the key to the next round of stripping away what little privacy you have left in the name of better understanding your actions and preferences, presumably for the benefit of tailoring even better ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/22/marketers-know-us-better-than-we-know-ourselves/ When values change, when problem definitions change, options that were not longer part of the consideration set now become viable. What seemed like a bad trade-off yesterday, becomes a really good idea today. The new story line is that the combination of high fuel costs, high food costs, general economic gloom, ... http://decision-quality.com/blog/2008/06/17/are-spending-patterns-really-changing-forever/