5 goodies from The Times

From Dan Pink:

Stuck on an airplane this morning, I had a chance to read today’s New York Times almost from cover to cover. (Ink on paper is a pretty good technology, no? — Ed.) Five stories, most of them small and easily overlooked, made me think, smile, or wince.

1. Person of the day. When retailer H&M couldn’t sell certain pieces of clothing, it mutilated the perfectly good garments and tossed them into a dumpster. Graduate student Cynthia Magnus found out, was appalled, and suggested to the company that this practice was wasteful. When her pleas went unanswered, she alerted the Times — and, lo and behold, H&M announced yesterday that it would donate unworn clothing to charity.

2. Obvious idea of the day. Maybe it makes more long-term sense to spend taxpayer dollars on schools and universities than on prisons and wars. The unlikely tag team of Schwarzenegger and Kristof make the case.

3. Dubious idea of the day. Instant coffee laced with skin-enhancing collagen?

4. Good hire of the day. The great Bill Moggridge is going to head the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum. Awesome choice.

5. Letter of the day. On Sunday, the Times’s David Carr wrote a long article about the countless virtues and inevitable staying power of Twitter. In today’s Letters section, Boomer Pinches (Love the name! -Ed.) of Northampton, Mass., offers his response: “I very much enjoyed the first 140 characters of David Carr’s article, ‘Why Twitter Will Endure.’”

2010 Social Media Predictions

From the Crative Class - Ricard Florida:

2010 Social Media Predictions:

Every year, Computerworld asks people in the geek community for their New Year’s predictions. The full article is here.

My responses included:

We will see social networking fatigue, but savvy users will continue to use platforms to build their personal brands. For most people, updating Facebook gets tedious, and your “friends” really don’t care which Hogwarts faculty member you are. Twitter takes a lot of work, although it can be a great personal brand-builder, with enough effort. LinkedIn is improving, mostly because of its Answers section; users can become well-regarded authorities in their subject areas by investing an hour or two per week posting thoughtful questions and responses. Plaxo? Please stop pestering me. You’re too far down my social networking depth chart for me to spend any time with you.

And

While the concept of a social networking guru might seem quaint by 2013 (do you have a photocopier guru in your office?), there is an opportunity in 2010 for people who really understand how to make social networking happen within the enterprise. While there are still a lot of carpetbaggers and “gee-whiz” cheerleaders playing in this market, I still find that there are a lot of people who don’t have a basic understanding of social networking and are reluctant to ask for help.

What are your thoughts? What will 2010 have in store for social networking?

Rockefeller Foundation's Push Toward Design and Innovation

Rockefeller Foundation's Push Toward Design and Innovation:

"Antony Bugg-Levine leads the 'Accelerating Innovation for Development' initiative at the Rockefeller Foundation. He discusses the focus on design and innovation"

Group Creativity

From IdeaConnection:

Group Creativity:

"Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process."

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine Offs Your Online Identity [Social Networking]

From lifehacker.com:
Web 2.0 Suicide Machine Offs Your Online Identity [Social Networking]:

Sure, joining Twitter and Facebook seemed like a good idea at the time, but maybe you've changed your mind and want your life back. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine erases your persona like you were never there.

Photo by jonsson.

If you're sick and tired of being beholden to the siren song of constantly updating your social networks, it might be time to get out. Trouble is, you can't just suddenly stop updating or your friends might harass—or worse, "poke" you—to find out if you're okay.

Simply deleting your accounts won't necessarily solve the problem because you'll still leave little traces of yourself all over the social networking sites that are as easily associated with you as a fingerprint. Web 2.0 Suicide Machine completely eradicates your entire existence from the servers of sites like Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. (Facebook currently blocks the webapp's IP address, so you're out of luck there for the time being.)

To use the tool you'll need to hand over your login credentials for the corresponding webapp (you won't need them anymore anyway, right) and let the the Suicide Machine do its thing. If you do decide to off yourself, be aware it can't be undone—so be sure you're serious.

Are you so over social networking that you're ready to disappear yourself, or do you want to stick around and enjoy the party a little longer? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Wired Science’s Most Popular Space Stories of 2009

Wired Science’s Most Popular Space Stories of 2009:

We love space, and so do you. This is a fact, well established by our Christmas-morning-level anticipation every time Hubble or Cassini or Spitzer release a new image, and your happy, clicky, tweety responses to virtually anything we post that has to do with space.
So we were surprised to find that there was just one space story among our most popular stories for 2009. Our “Earth from space” galleries and posts did well, but we don’t think those qualify as space stories. The sole celestial finalist was just a simple reminder that the annual Perseids meteor shower was peaking, with some viewing tips.
The Perseids are great and all, but we couldn’t let space be this underrepresented in our 2009 roundups, so here are the rest of our most popular spacey offerings of the year.
Image: NASA/JPL/CICLOPS

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009

Best of HBS Working Knowledge 2009:

What were the management trends in 2009? Fascination with social networking and rethinking common wisdom about goal setting. Here are the Top 10 articles and Top 5 working papers that appeared in HBS Working Knowledge in 2009. Enjoy!

TOP 10 ARTICLES OF 2009

1. Understanding Users of Social Networks
   
   Many business leaders are mystified about how to reach potential customers on social networks such as Facebook. HBS professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski provides a fresh look into the interpersonal dynamics of these sites and offers guidance for approaching these tantalizing markets.


2. Social Network Marketing: What Works?
   
   Purchase decisions are influenced differently in social networks than in the brick-and-mortar world, says Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta. The key: Marketers should tap into the networking aspect of sites such as Facebook.


3. Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times
   
   As companies batten down the hatches, we need leaders who don't compromise on standards and values that are essential in flush times. Fortunately, such leaders do exist. Their insights can help other organizations weather the current crisis, says HBS professor emeritus Michael Beer. Q&A.


4. Sharpening Your Skills: Managing Teams
   
   The ability to lead teams is fast becoming a critical skill for all managers in the 21st century. Here are four HBS Working Knowledge stories from the archives that address everything from how teams learn to turning individual performers into team players. Questions asked include: How does a team leader win the confidence of the group? What's the best method for developing team goals? How can individual performers be developed into team players? How do teams learn?


5. When Goal Setting Goes Bad
   
   If you ever wondered about the real value of goal setting in your organization, join the club. Despite the mantra that goals are good, the process of setting beneficial goals is harder than it looks. New research by HBS professor Max H. Bazerman and colleagues explores the hidden cost when stretch goals are misguided. Q&A.


6. Sharpening Your Skills: Career & Life Balance
   
   Achieving a life that balances the pleasures and demands of work and life has never been easy. Here are four HBS Working Knowledge stories from the vault that address everything from spirituality in leadership to understanding when 'just enough' is truly enough. Questions asked and answered include: How do I get past a feeling of being stuck in life or work? Can I resist the temptations of success? Am I working too hard? Is there room for spirituality at the office?


7. 10 Reasons to Design a Better Corporate Culture
   
   Organizations with strong, adaptive cultures enjoy labor cost advantages, great employee and customer loyalty, and a smoother on-ramp in leadership succession. A book excerpt from The Ownership Quotient: Putting the Service Profit Chain to Work for Unbeatable Competitive Advantage by HBS professor emeritus James L. Heskett, professor W. Earl Sasser, and Joe Wheeler.


8. Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting (Working Paper)
   
   A working paper made the Top 10! For decades, goal setting has been promoted as a halcyon pill for improving employee motivation and performance in organizations. Advocates of goal setting argue that for goals to be successful, they should be specific and challenging, and countless studies find that specific, challenging goals motivate performance far better than 'do your best' exhortations. Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and HBS professor Max H. Bazerman argue that it is often these same characteristics of goals that cause them to 'go wild.'


9. High Commitment, High Performance Management
   
   High commitment, high performance organizations such as Southwest Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey, and Toyota effectively manage three paradoxical goals, says HBS professor emeritus Michael Beer. His new book explains what all companies can learn. Q&A.


10. Can Entrepreneurs Drive 'People Movers' to Success?
    
    Call them next-generation driverless taxis or people movers, the age of personal rapid transport is just around the bend. Could PRT change the face of public transportation in cities and smaller communities? HBS professor Benjamin G. Edelman weighs the benefits and opportunities for entrepreneurs and for society. 'Right now, the field is wide open,' he says.

TOP 5 WORKING PAPERS OF 2009

1. Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting
   
   Download the PDF. For decades, goal setting has been promoted as a halcyon pill for improving employee motivation and performance in organizations. Advocates of goal setting argue that for goals to be successful, they should be specific and challenging, and countless studies find that specific, challenging goals motivate performance far better than 'do your best' exhortations. Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D. Galinsky, and HBS professor Max H. Bazerman argue that it is often these same characteristics of goals that cause them to 'go wild.' Key concepts include:
   
   
   
   • The harmful side effects of goal setting are far more serious and systematic than prior work has acknowledged.
   
   
   • Goal setting harms organizations in systematic and predictable ways.
   
   
   • The use of goal setting can degrade employee performance, shift focus away from important but non-specified goals, harm interpersonal relationships, corrode organizational culture, and motivate risky and unethical behaviors.
   
   


2. Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network?
   
   Download the PDF. In spite of the cultural and social revolution in the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (and in South Korea, Cyworld), the business viability of these sites remains in question. While many sites are attempting to follow Google and generate revenues from advertising, will advertising be effective? If friends influence the purchases of a user in a social network, it could potentially be a significant source of revenue for the sites and their corporate sponsors. Using a unique data set from Cyworld, Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and HBS professor Sunil Gupta empirically assess if friends indeed influence purchases. The answer: It depends. Findings are relevant for social networking sites and large advertisers. Key concepts include:
   
   
   
   • There is a significant and positive impact of friends' purchases on the purchase probability of a user.
   
   
   • However, there are significant differences across users. Specifically, this social effect is zero for 48 percent of the users, negative for 12 percent of the users, and positive for 40 percent of the users.
   
   
   • 'Moderately connected' users exhibit 'keeping up with the Joneses' behavior. On average, this social influence translates into a 5 percent increase in revenues.
   
   
   • Highly connected users tend to reduce their purchases of items when they see their friends buying them. This negative social effect reduces the revenue for this group by more than 14 percent. This finding is consistent with the typical fashion cycle wherein opinion leaders or the elite in the fashion industry tend to abandon one type of fashion and adopt the next in order to differentiate themselves from the masses.
   
   


3. 'I read Playboy for the articles': Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences
   
   Download the PDF. We want others to find us good, fair, responsible, and logical; and we place even more importance on thinking of ourselves this way. Therefore, when people behave in ways that might appear selfish, prejudiced, or perverted, they tend to engage a host of strategies designed to justify questionable behavior with rational excuses: 'I hired my son because he's more qualified.' 'I promoted Ashley because she does a better job than Aisha.' Or, 'I read Playboy for the articles.' In this chapter from a forthcoming book, HBS doctoral student Zoë Chance and professor Michael I. Norton describe various means of coping with one's own questionable behavior: through preemptive actions and concurrent strategies for reframing uncomfortable situations, forgoing decisions, and forgetting those decisions altogether. Key concepts include:
   
   
   
   • Because people do not want to be perceived as (or feel) unethical or immoral, they make excuses for their shameful behavior—even to themselves.
   
   
   • People cope with their own questionable actions in a number of ways, from forgoing certain experiences to rationalizing, justifying, and forgetting-a remarkable range of strategies allowing them to maintain a clear conscience even under dubious circumstances.
   
   


4. Corporate Social Entrepreneurship
   
   Download the PDF. Accelerated organizational transformation faces a host of obstacles well-documented in the change management literature, according to HBS professor emeritus James E. Austin and Ezequiel Reficco. Because corporate social entrepreneurship (CSE) expands the core purpose of corporations and their organizational values, it constitutes fundamental change that can be particularly threatening and resisted. Furthermore, it pushes the corporation's actions more broadly and deeply into the area of social value creation where the firm's experiences and skill sets are less developed. The disruptive social innovations intrinsic to the CSE approach amplify this zone of discomfort. Fortunately, the experiences of innovative companies such as Timberland and Starbucks show how these challenges may be overcome. Key concepts include:
   
   
   
   • Values-based leadership, the synergistic generation of social and economic value, and strategic cross-sector alliances are key ingredients to achieving a sustainably successful business.
   
   
   • For companies to move their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities to the next level, they need to rethink their current approaches to CSR, tapping into the creativity of each individual.
   
   
   
   



5. The Devil Wears Prada? Effects of Exposure to Luxury Goods on Cognition and Decision Making
   
   Download the PDF. Gandhi once wrote that 'a certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help.' This observation raises interesting questions for psychologists regarding the effects of luxury. What psychological consequences do luxury goods have on people? In this paper, the authors argue that luxury goods can activate the concept of self-interest and affect subsequent cognition. The argument involves two key premises: Luxury is intrinsically linked to self-interest, and exposure to luxury can activate related mental representations affecting cognition and decision-making. HBS professor Roy Y.J. Chua and Xi Zou show that exposure to luxury led people to think more about themselves than others. Key concepts include:
   
   
   
   • Luxury does not necessarily induce people to be 'nasty' toward others but rather causes them to be less concerned about or considerate toward others.
   
   
   • Exposure to luxury goods may activate a social norm that it is appropriate to pursue interests beyond a basic comfort level, even at the expense of others. It may be this activated social norm that affects people's judgment and decision-making.
   
   
   • Alternatively, exposure to luxury may directly increase people's personal desire, causing them to focus on their own benefits such as prioritizing profits over social responsibilities.