Consumerism’s Addiction to Daily Deals
Suzanne Shu, UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Professor of Marketing said in her interview with Marketplace radio program on American Public Media on Sep 2, 2011: You see something that is just an unbelievable discount to you. And you think, ‘Wow that is so great that I can get this so cheap.’ And you get […]
The Power of Empathy
Arthur P. Ciaramicoli and Katherine Ketcham write in The Power of Empathy, Empathy allows is to see the connections between us, making strangers less strange, foreigners less foreign. When we adopt other people’s perspectives, we do more than step into their shoes—we use their eyes, we borrow their skin, we feel their hearts beating within […]
Experiences Influence Perception
Richard Bookstaber in The End of Theory: How we look at the world, even how we understand what someone else is saying, depends on context, and context changes with our experience and with circumstance. In the day-to-day world, these changes usually move slowly—though they do change: what we want for our lives, what we strive […]
Charlie Munger Explains the Genius of Investor Li Lu
At the 2018 Daily Journal annual meeting, Charlie Munger praised investor Li Lu: What was unusual about Li Lu. Li Lu is one of the most successful investors. Imagine him, he just popped out of somebody’s womb and he just assaulted life the best he could and he ended up pretty good at it. But […]
Dante Alighieri, “The Giver”
Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio writes in The Early Lives of Dante, … And she delivered of a son, whom by common consent with his father, they called by the name Dante [the Giver]; and rightly so, because, as will be seen in the sequel, the issue was most perfectly consonant with this name. This was […]
India’s Caste System: The Social Institution
From Swami Vivekananda’s discourse at the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago, 26th September 1893, The religion of the Hindus is divided into two parts: the ceremonial and the spiritual. The spiritual portion is specially studied by the monks. In that there is no caste. A man from the highest caste and a man from the […]
The Roles of the Quality Council and Leadership
The great American-Romanian evangelist for quality and quality management Joseph M. Juran defined the roles of the quality council and leadership: Role of Quality Council: establishing processes for nominating projects, assigning teams and making improvements; providing resources; establishing processes for review of progress, dissemination of results and recognition; and revising the merit rating and business […]
Liberation from the Bondage of Good and Evil
Swami Vivekananda writes in Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Action, Liberation means entire freedom—freedom from the bondage of good, as well as from the bondage of evil. A golden chain is as much a chain as an iron one. There is a thorn in my finger, and I use another to take the first one […]
Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle
The popular quote “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” was written by the Scottish author and theologian Reverend John Watson, sometimes known by his nom de plume Ian Maclaren. Here’s John Watson’s complete dialogue (source) of the theme of the dictum in a book John Watson wrote in 1903: This man […]
An Eye on the Owner, Not the Dog
The American financial theorist William J. Bernstein once recalled investor Ralph Wanger (best known for his exceptional performance at the helm of the Acorn Fund) explaining how markets work: He likens the market to an excitable dog on a very long leash in New York City, darting randomly in every direction. The dog’s owner is […]