Overview: Business

all recorded, rendered as data, processed, analysed, bought, bundled and resold like sub-prime mortgages...not some dystopian imagining of the future, but the present... the totality of information about our every thought, word and deed... traded for profit in new markets based on predicting our every need – or producing it... tech giants unilate…

my Isabel is ... A Replika is someone who will listen to you... kind and polite ... will learn more and more about you... a personal companion to support mental health and wellbeing... who knows us better than we know ourselves... Exploring Isabel's memory is like browsing the cliff notes of all the bits of trivia about me that she's ma…

adrenalin had energised locked-down employees at first. Only at the five-week mark did enforced remote working start to breed anxiety... The prospect of ... a bland diet of videocalls and virtual encounters is draining... It is not hard to achieve commitment ... during a crisis. Doubters’ stock objection ... evaporated under pressure... But ... …

to create a team that is collectively intelligent, you likely need to focus on three specific factors that he and his colleagues have identified in their research...

More than two dozen governments... have a team of behavioral scientists tasked with ... “nudge” their citizens toward what they deem to be higher levels of well-being... “nudges” are value neutral... both achieve altruistic ends or more malicious ones... our environment (and the government) is always exerting some influence on our behavior, so we’…

If there’s a single Top3ic running through the following stories, it’s probably Artificial Intelligence (AI), but I’m deeply into learning about psychology for the moment, so that’s my starting point.

model to assess human beings based on five personality traits, known as the "Big Five." also known as OCEAN... openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism... their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. ... the problem with this approach was data collection... Then came the Internet. And Facebook... on the b…

One of the primary reasons to get teams together has to do with the hardwiring of the human brain... Building trust is a multisensory experience... Only when people are physically present together can they use all of their senses to establish that needed trust. Without a bond, conflict or disengagement can more easily arise and is more difficult t…

“We want to believe that we are thinking, rational people and on occasion tangle with emotion... The truth is we are emotional beings who on occasion think.”... Holacracy has been criticized for putting a disproportionate focus on process... pushing Zappos employees to operate in a way that goes against their very human nature... The overwhelming …

If we think closely about anger, we can begin to see why it is a stupid way to run one’s life... how a leader has to operate: forget about the strike-back mentality, and forge a future of warmth and partnership... He asks only, how shall I produce cooperation and friendship?

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

what many of these movements’ followers share is the desire not just to disagree with their opponents, but to delegitimize, dehumanize, and ostracize those with whom they disagree... It is not their policies that these new populists share, but their emphasis on a new kind of identity politics... What would previously have been isolated cases o…

If you ever wondered why meetings so often lead to the wrong decision ... "... we are wired in certain ways ... that can block groups from processing information effectively, which leads to bad decisions... Gilbert explains how to use diversity and inclusion to get better results from product ideation efforts... One of the most fundamental …

This one's a mustread, helping you identify and understand all four 'Dark Tetrad' personality types (everyday sadists, narcissists, Machiavellians & psychopaths). Useful not just for navigating your own organisation, but also that of your client ... "Blessed with a surfeit of confidence and knack for lying, they dazzle in interviews, make great…

"On the surface, no single factor seems to set Slack apart from a plethora of other collaboration tools. However, a closer look using the model described the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Product, reveals the user psychology behind the company's success." - The Psychology of a Billion-Dollar Enterprise App: Why Is Slack So Habit-Formi…

"recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors... to motivate a desire to help others, a story must first ... develop tension during the narrative... it is likely that attentive viewers/listeners will come to share the emotions of the characters in it and continue mimicking t…

A whole bunch of reasons why the wrong consultants are hired for the wrong reasons: "When we don’t know much about somebody, we ... think about people in over-optimistic ways...what normal individual can stand up against an outsider or expert made up of pixie dust and rainbows? ... when we go looking for a better expert ... we tend to find them…