There have been a lot of books written since Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's Nobel Prize winning work on the limits of human decision-making, the problems such drawbacks cause, and the steps that people can take to overcome such limits.  Max Bazerman's  Judgment in Managerial  Decision Making is still among the best, and although it is textbook-like, I find it engaging and useful. But there is a new champ in this space. I am just about done with Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions.  Ariely not leads us through one fascinating study after another -- such as research that shows why a 1 cent aspirin won't get rid of a headache but a 50 cent aspirin will and a host of other studies that show why we waste money, underestimate risks, and procrastinate.  He also shows throughout the book how to overcome or avoid these biases, and for me, the real clincher is that his writing style and charming personality kept me turning pages quickly and smiling throughout.  He takes study after study and translates them in an engaging manner, but never distorts the message.  This is one of those books that is on par with the Heath Brothers Made to Stick, Robert Cialdini's Influence, and Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point.  If you want to learn about behavioral economics, Predictably Irrational is the best place I know to start -- although Bazerman's book is a more useful reference it is more systematic and comprehensive (and it is well-written).

P.S. A lot of people seem to have a similar opinion of Ariely's new book -- it is currently #13 overall at Amazon.

I don't usually post the same quote twice in a row, but the strong reaction I am getting to my arguments about "Why Creativity and Innovation Suck" have convinced me that ought to put up Jim March's quote one more time.  I urge anyone interested in innovation to read it carefully, as it is perhaps the most wise thing I've ever read on the subject. I am also repeating the quote because I fear that I've not made my main point clear enough: Yes, we need innovation and creativity; organizations can't survive without it, and life would be far too dull without a constant influx of new idea and the associated hope of a better future. BUT just as doctors are obligated to tell patients about the risks and side effects of treatments, people who "sell" innovation ought to tell their "customers" about the hazards of living in a creative organization or the financial risks of launching a new product or company. The evidence about such drawbacks is, after all, quite clear -- it helps the system, but many individual innovators suffer in the process. Similarly, I think that people who sell management ideas like Six Sigma and forced-ranking incentive schemes are under a similar obligation to talk about downsides and risks, and few of them talk about the drawbacks --so this isn't just about creativity and innovation.

Back to Jim March. He is arguably the most prestigious living organizational theorist, and as you can see, quite eloquent. Note that what he is saying is supported by a large body of research, and that he does talk about "gains" from imagination -- and there many gains and advantages.  But unlike most people who write about innovation and creativity in organizations, he talks about the risks and delusions too. Again, the quote: 

"Unfortunately, the gains for imagination are not free. The protections for imagination are indiscriminate. They shield bad ideas as well as good ones, and there are many more of the former than the latter. Most fantasies lead us astray, and most of the consequences of imagination for individuals and individual organizations are disastrous. Most deviants end up on the scrap pile of failed mutations, not as heroes of organizational transformation. . . . There is, as a result, much that can be viewed as unjust in a system that induces imagination among individuals and individual organizations in order to allow a larger system to choose among alternative experiments. By glorifying imagination, we entice the innocent into unwitting self-destruction (or if you prefer, altruism)."

P.S The talk that this quote was taken from was originally given by Jim March at the Academy of Management Meetings in Vancouver in 1995. It was ultimately published as March. J. G., The Future, Disposable Organizations, and the Rigidities of Imagination', in The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence, ed. J. G. March, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999): 179-192. The above quote is somewhat different in the final version, but I prefer the original from his conference presentation.

My wife Marina and I will be in New York on Monday night to attend the Quill Awards, as The No Asshole Rule won in business book category.  The event is black tie (not exactly my style), but she talked me into buying a tux for the event.

I bought it at Men's Wearhouse after first going to Nordstrom -- it was not only a lot less money, I liked the customer service better because of their team selling approach. At Nordstrom, because of the incentive system and the norms, the people who aren't "your" salesperson never seem to lift a finger to help each other. At Men's Wearhouse, I was most impressed by how everyone at the store in Redwood City, California, worked together to help me pick what I wanted and to make the process quick and painless.

I am scheduled to be on Fox Business Network at some point between 7 and 8AM on Monday morning, and then am planning on visiting JetBlue to see one of my former students, who is now an executive. Meanwhile, Marina, my wife, is going to meet with people at Girl Scouts headquarters in connection with her new job.

Then we are off to the Quill Awards that night with my editor Rick Wolff, my literary agent Christy Fletcher, and Mark Fortier and Rob Nissen (who both have done a great job publicizing the book).  The ceremony itself is at Lincoln Center and takes about 90 minutes.  It  will be televised on the evening of Saturday, October 27th on NBC stations. Stephen Colbert opens, which should be fun.  And I believe that  The Road by Cormac McCarthy was selected by popular vote as the overall winner (a choice I applaud), what a book.  My speech is limited to 30 seconds..I am thinking about it, but haven't really written it down or started practicing it.  AL Gore also won an award for The Assault on Reason -- I hope that he shows up!

BNET has a new series called Book Briefs, and I recently was filmed for a segment on The No Asshole Rule, which you can find here.  I've done a lot of interviews by now on the book, but this one was especially fun because they took a bunch of film, edited it pretty heavily, and inserted all sorts of crazy graphics.  A big advantage of this level of editing is that A LOT of the ideas in the book are packed into just a few minutes, especially ideas from the chapter about how to implement the rule.