What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us About Economics

(By the way, the experiment described in this article--involving struggles over fruit bars and chocolate--works on three-year-old humans and management consultants, too.)

clipped from www.vanderbilt.edu In a long standing enigma of economics and psychology, humans tend to immediately value an item they’ve just received more than the maximum amount they would have paid to get it to begin with. This tendency, known as the endowment effect, is something some economists consider a fluke, but new research finds that humans aren’t the only ones exhibiting an endowment effect. A new study co-authored by Vanderbilt professor Owen Jones, who is one of the nation’s few professors of both law and biology, uncovered the first evidence that chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect similar to people. Specifically, the study showed that chimpanzees favor items they just received more than items they normally prefer that they could get through exchange. “Our results support the conclusion that the frequent failure to exchange a less-favored food for a more-preferred food was an active choice and is similar to the endowment effect behavior seen in humans,” said Jones.

The Metacognitive Anti-Complaint Campaign

Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister recognized that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions.designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining.

See an interview with Rev. Bowen on ABC Today

Each time one of them complained, they had to switch the bracelet to their other wrist and start again from day 0. It was simple but effective metacognitive awareness training.

clipped from www.fourhourworkweek.com Here are a few of the changes I noticed then and am noticing again now: 1) My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking. Each description of a problem forced me to ask and answer: What policy can I create to avoid this in the future? 2) I was able to turn off negative events—because the tentative solution had be offered—instead of giving them indefinite mental shelf-life (and “open loop” in GTD parlance), resulting in better sleep and more pleasant conversations with both friends and business partners. 3) People want to be around action-oriented problem solvers. Training yourself to offer solutions on-the-spot attracts people and resources.

Unplanned Obsolescence

Grameen's famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty-- and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It's not working anymore.

clipped from www.fastcompany.com On March 26, 1997--chosen because that day was the anniversary of Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan--Begum became the first participant in GrameenPhone's Village Phone Program. Now widely known, the plan offers small loans, or microcredit, that enable people in one of the world's most impoverished countries to buy cell phones and rent them, call by call, to neighbors who can't afford telephones of their own. A decade later, instead of begging on the streets and sleeping with cattle as she once had done, Begum shares a two-room brick house with her husband, two sons, a daughter, a television set, and a refrigerator. Next door, she has built a barn, shops, and temporary housing that she rents to five poor families. Today, her banker estimates her net worth at $145,000, which may be more than everyone else in her village combined. In Bangladesh today, the only one making real money on GrameenPhone's wireless service is … GrameenPhone.

Sale on Rain Forests, Aisle 24

Oh what an strange turn of events looking back over the last 5 years of sustainability and the board room.

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Environmental Activist Adam Werbach Used To Call Wal-Mart Toxic, But Now He Works For Them Once the youngest president of the Sierra Club, Adam Werbach used to call Wal-Mart toxic. Now the company is his biggest client. Does the path to a greener future run through Bentonville? By Danielle Sacks How Green is Wal-Mart? In October 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott outlined audacious environmental and sustainability goals for the company. Here's the status of some of the company's major initiatives. By Charles Fishman Wal-Mart's Personal Sustainability Project The Personal Sustainability Project, or PSP, that Werbach and his firm, Act Now, are running for Wal-Mart is intended to help the company's 1.3 million employees see how sustainability--defined very broadly as "having enough for now, while not harming the future"--relates to their own lives. Here's the strategy. By Fast Company Staff

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

clipped from www.kk.org Leave it to the Japanese to create a brush pen. This pocketable pen has a super fine brush tip of actual bristles, perfect for tiny Kanji characters, or of course, doodling in your journal, or sketching in your Moleskine. While it's hugely popular with comic book folks and cartoonists, artists of all stripes have picked one up for their paper work. The feel is incredibly tactile and lovely. It works like a fountain pen, with replaceable rich ink cartridges. Once capped it doesn't leak as far as I can tell. (There's a moment of panic when you first assemble it since the instructions are 100% in Japanese, but just insert the ball-bearing end of the ink capsule into the tip.) You can purchase other color inks as well. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen $18 Available from Wet Paint Artists' Materials

Reading Comics

More on the most universal of art forms.

clipped from www.kk.org Comic books, comics, graphic novels, or whatever you call them are not a genre, they're a medium. Wolk emphasizes this from the outset of this vivid examination of the form and many of the geniuses and misfits of the American mainstream and avante-garde. Always frank, always insightful, Wolk, a former comic book store clerk, covers a lot of ground: pregnant moments, metacomics, parallel Earths, disposable Sunday strips, and, of course, how the world of comics can be "annoyingly male." The first half of the book tackles history along with an overall assessment of what comics mean and how to read them. There are great bits about what makes a "superreader" and how the form blossomed despite the economics of limited shelf space. The second half is a series of precise essays on specific artists, including Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel, Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns and Steve Ditko.

Making Comics: How to communicate visually

clipped from www.kk.org Magnificent! A work of genius. The best how-to manual ever published. I could keep piling on the superlatives because this book is simply a masterpiece. At one level, it is a comic book about how to make comics, and for that it is supreme; the best. It will walk you through every step of making a comic, including how to make them on the web, digitally, or in pen and ink. I've been working on a near-completed graphic novel, and every page has told me something important and spot on. With brilliant graphics, Scott McCloud combines the most profound insights from his two previous books, Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. But in this book he raises your understanding of graphic communication further by making every lesson utterly practical and useful for both novice and expert. I can't imagine anyone ever doing a comic manual better.

Stinky? It's Not His Sweat, It's Your Nose

Dang. Finally, some support for the big, sweaty feller! I remember that, starting at age 13, I received the Brut or Olde English cologne seasonal gift box throughout my college years.

clipped from www.reuters.com CHICAGO (Reuters) - When it comes to a man's body odor, the fragrance -- or stench -- is in the nose of the beholder, according to U.S. researchers who suggest a single gene may determine how people perceive body odor. The study, published online on Sunday in the journal Nature, helps explain why the same sweaty man can smell like vanilla to some, like urine to others and for about a third of adults, have no smell at all. Matsunami and colleagues at Duke and Rockefeller University in New York focused on the chemical androstenone, which is created when the body breaks down the male sex hormone testosterone.

Themes How the Mind Works

A fantastic collection of video presentation by the best thinkers and presenters on the planet.

clipped from www.ted.com If you're going to hold a conference about ideas, from time to time you need to step back and look at the mysterious engine that creates them: the human mind. What goes on in there anyway? How can our strange, gray, gooey brains create inspired inventions, the feeling of hunger, the experience of beauty, the sense of self? And how reliable are they? Might there be strange quirks in the ways our minds work, given that they were optimized for the needs of a savannah-roaming hunter-gatherer? Our speakers offer numerous insights. Dan Dennett argues that brains are the ecosystem in which a new form of life, the meme or idea, can flourish. Meanwhile Peter Donnelly, Al Seckel and Dan Gilbert, in three very different ways, highlight bizarre quirks in the way we think, perceive and experience. Yes, it turns out our mental programs are a little buggy. These talks will help you take countermeasures!

A big corporate thumbs-up for Google

I admit it: I am a iGoogle junkie. I have been experimenting with Google Docs, but tend to use the writeboard feature in Basecamp for collaborative draft documents. Plus, OpenOffice, the free open source equivalent to MS Office, can be installed on my laptop for off-road writing and spreadsheeting.

But this endorsement could mean billions of dollars in savings for global firms who have to dish out for installation and support of every knowledge worker at a terminal (anybody still using Office 2003?).

clipped from www.publicradio.org You may not have heard of Capgemini, but the technology consulting firm has some big-name clients, like drug maker Eli Lilly and the accountants PriceWaterhouseCoopers — big corporations that spend big money on office software and technology. So it's no small deal that Capgemini is endorsing Google's suite of office software. Capgemini will continue to support business software made by other vendors, including Microsoft and IBM, but this is the first time one of the world's top technology consulting services will recommend Google Apps to its corporate customers.

Japan eyes robots to support older population

Researchers racing against time to build humanoid workforce.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com TOKYO - It looks like a washing machine on wheels, but the bulky contraption vacuuming the hallways of a Tokyo high-rise is a robot. Japanese researchers hope that robots like this one will be the answer to a pressing question hanging over the country -- how to cope with an aging population and a declining labor force. The vacuuming machine developed by Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd is already cleaning floors in about 10 buildings around the country, including a 54-floor skyscraper in central Tokyo.

Staying awake difficult for workers

clipped from www.cnn.com Asleep on the job Speaking of nodding off, turns out American's aren't so good at keeping their eyes open in the workplace. A whopping 50 percent of those surveyed say they've caught someone sleeping at work, not to mention the 28 percent who admit they've fallen asleep at work themselves. Little-known-fact: Auto mechanics (65 percent) have the highest rate of self-admitted snoozing on the job, followed by 51 percent of government workers. Having trouble staying awake? Follow these pointers from "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Work," by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht, on how to cover if you're caught sleeping at your desk. Blame work. Say, "I'm so exhausted; I was here until midnight last night!" Do not attempt this if your boss works late and you do not.

The Most Innovative Ways to Nap

My favorite activity synergized with funky furniture and gadgetry!

clipped from www.fastcompany.com With increasing awareness about the health benefits of sleep, napping is becoming both more popular and more acceptable -- not just on college campuses. The opportunity to cater to this trend has caught the attention of entrepreneurs, and in recent years, there has been a slew of new products and services that facilitate napping. Here are some of the most interesting ways to catch a few reinvigorating minutes of rest when you can’t just jump into bed.

One of the technologies, is a iTunes-like music streamer that uses an algorithm to combine music, words and rhythms.

pzizz is a mac and windows software application that generates random soundtracks which help you regain your energy. pzizz currently sports two modules: energizer and sleep. The service uses Neuro Linguistic Programming to achieve optimal brainwave action.

Neuro Linguistic Programming is defined as the influence of language patterns on the brain. It shows us how language patterns program our minds and form our views.

NLP is a system in which the brain is viewed as a computer that can be reprogrammed to think and feel in a way that helps people achieve specific goals.

The New Psychology of Leadership

clipped from www.sciam.com In recent years, however, a new picture of leadership has emerged, one that better accounts for leadership performance. In this alternative view, effective leaders must work to understand the values and opinions of their followers—rather than assuming absolute authority—to enable a productive dialogue with followers about what the group embodies and stands for and thus how it should act. By leadership, we mean the ability to shape what followers actually want to do, not the act of enforcing compliance using rewards and punishments.

Food vs. Service: Shift Labor Forces

See slideshow: "Life in Nanning"

clipped from news.yahoo.com For the first time in human history, more people are laboring in service trades than in food production, according to data gathered by the International Labor Organization (ILO), an agency affiliated with the United Nations. As recently as 1996, agriculture accounted for 42 percent of world employment, with another 21 percent of workers in goods-producing industries and 37 percent in services. By last year, the ILO says in a report released over the weekend, 42 percent were in services, 37 percent in agriculture, and 22 percent in industry.

FastCompany: Design Thinking... What is That?

by Mark Dziersk

The methodology commonly referred to as design thinking is a proven and repeatable problem-solving protocol that any business or profession can employ to achieve extraordinary results.

Although Design is most often used to describe an object or end result, Design in its most effective form is a process, an action, a verb not a noun. A protocol for solving problems and discovering new opportunities. Techniques and tools differ and their effectiveness are arguable but the core of the process stays the same. It's taken years of slogging through Design = high style to bring us full circle to the simple truth about design thinking. That it is a most powerful tool and when used effectively, can be the foundation for driving a brand or business forward.

Basically Design thinking consists of four key elements:

1: Define the problem
2: Create and consider many options
3: Refine selected directions
4: Pick the winner, execute

Read full article>>

Tiny Showcase Art Prints

From Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools:

Keeping tabs on the art world is tough and time-consuming. Being a collector is tougher -- and downright expensive. This site does all the work for you and allows you to amass your own hip, limited edition prints for cheap. Sign up for the newsletter and once a week you'll receive a heads up about the artist whose work will be available later that day for $20 a pop. They usually make only 100-200 prints and it's first come, first serve. The first piece I bought on a lark sold out in less than 15 minutes! I discovered the site nine months ago when a friend gave me a gift certificate.
Although I've already spent my gifted wad, I still check the newsletter religiously, almost obsessively. Stumbling on amazing art(ists) is wonderful. Decorating our home with little, unique prints is very satisfying. And part of every purchase is donated to a charity chosen by the artist, too. -- Steven Leckart

Tiny Showcase
$20/print
Available at TinyShowcase.com
http://tinyshowcase.com/

Radio Lab: Emergence

A great audio exploration of organization from chaos, order from the accidental: ants, cities, fireflies and life itself.

clipped from www.wnyc.org What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. How? We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains. Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.

U-S-A NUMBER ONE! (In guns.)

clipped from www.reuters.com GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said. U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said. "There is roughly one firearm for every seven people worldwide. Without the United States, though, this drops to about one firearm per 10 people," it said. On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

Iron Attitude

A good friend just completed, at age 47, his third Iron Man competition (way to go Ed!).

However, the NYC-based Hipster Olympics seems much more arduous and, well, uh, hip.

clipped from www.youtube.com