Real Case Stories

In a study, 402 9th- and 10th-grade students from four New York City high schools in low-income areas  were divided into three groups.  Group 1 read an 800-word typical science textbook description about the great accomplishments of Einstein, Curie and Michael Faraday, an English scientist who made important discoveries about electromagnetism. Group 2 read about those scientists’ personal struggles, including Einstein’s flight from Nazi Germany to avoid persecution as a Jew.  The third group of students read about the scientists’ intellectual struggles, such as Curie’s persistence despite a string of failed experiments. The struggle stories included actions the scientists took to overcome these hurdles. At the end of a six-week grading period, students who learned about the scientists’ intellectual or personal struggles had significantly improved their science grades, with low-achievers benefiting the most. The students in the control group who only learne...

The dollar auction is a non-zero sum sequential game designed by economist Martin Shubik, a pioneer of game theory,  to illustrate a paradox brought about by traditional rational choice theory in which players are compelled to make an ultimately irrational decision based completely on a sequence of apparently rational choices made throughout the game, also known as "escalation of commitment" src wiki A one dollar bill is put up for auction with the following rule: the bill goes to the winner, however the second bidder also loses the amount that he bids. The winner can get a dollar for a mere 5 cents, but only if no one else enters into the bidding war. The second-highest bidder is the biggest loser by paying the top amount they bid without getting anything back. The game begins with one of the players bidding 5 cents (the minimum), hoping to make a 95-cent profit. They can be outbid by another player bidding 10 cents, as a 90-cent profit is still desirable. Similar...

The Pizza Principle, or the Pizza-Subway Connection, in New York City, is a humorous but generally historically accurate "economic law" proposed by native New Yorker Eric M. Bram. He noted, as reported by The New York Times in 1980, that from the early 1960s "the price of a slice of a plain, cheese or regular pizza has matched, with uncanny precision, the cost of a New York subway ride." In 1985, the late writer, historian, and film critic George Fasel learned of the correlation and wrote about it in an op-ed for The New York Times. The term "Pizza Connection" referring to this phenomenon was coined in 2002 by New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman, who commented on the two earlier publications of the theory in the Times, and predicted a rise in subway fare. In May 2003, The New Yorker magazine proclaimed the validity of the Pizza Connection (now called the pizza principle) in accurately predicting the rise of the subway (and bus) fare to $2.00 ...

In his book,  Breaking Bad Habits: Defy Industry Norms and Reinvigorate Your Business , author Frank Vermeulen cites a case where the good intentions of the government actually fell flat on its face. The UK government had mandated all IVF clinics to publish their success rates which went up on a Government website. People then started treating this database as a ranking. The website was the government's good intention to implement transparency to empower patients and help them in decision making. What the government failed to factor in was that a clinic's success rate wasn't just dependent on their competency but also affected by the quality of the women. Younger women would probably have a higher chance of getting pregnant over someone who is 40 plus. However, what this resulted in was that clinic's started favoring patients who were most likely to get pregnant and rejected difficult cases. On the other hand, clinics who had expertise in treating difficult cases...

Our sense of sound, sight, touch, taste, self-motion, and smell don't work independently. Professor Charles Spence  of Oxford University has conclusively proved the intimate connection between our senses. He is, in fact, a leader in the field of Senseploration - the investigation of how our senses mingle and interconnect.  Marketing departments and product-design agencies have increasingly started using Spence's findings. In 2006, the FMCG giant Unilever commissioned a study to find whether volume and pitch of the sound from an aerosol affected a person's perception of the pleasantness or forcefulness of the deodorant inside. Based on the findings, the company invested in a packaging redesign for Axe deodorant , complete with new nozzle technology. The underarm spray, which is targeted at young men, now sounds noticeably louder than the company’s gentler, female-targeted Dove brand See how you score on this sensory test ! Source: Accounting f...

Ray Kroc in the 1940s owned a successful Milkshake mixer distribution business. In the beginning of 1950s his business started to slow down. In the US there was an exodus from the cities to the suburbs and many neighborhood soda fountains were forced to close down. But one small restaurant in San Bernadino kept ordering more machines. He flew down and met the McDonald brothers who ran the restaurant. When Ray Kroc joined the McDonald brothers, he envisaged thousands of Mc Donalds outlets across the country. In trying to identify the best locations, he used to fly over towns looking for church steeples. He believed that good American families would live around churches and that's the kind of customers he was looking for. src Consumer Behavior by Schiffman/Kumar

Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, in his book Principles:Life and Work , he writes about learning Transcedental meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and how it has benefited him throughout his career because it produced a calm open mindedness that allowed him to think clearly and creatively. In this HBR article  ,  Alak Vasa, founder of Elements Truffles,  a trader at Goldman Sachs and ITG claims meditation helped her keep fear and panic at bay, even under duress.  She speaks of an instance where the market crashed causing panic on the desk. Thanks to her meditation practice she was able to keep my composure and propose solutions to reduce the impact of the market crash. Jonathan Tang, founder and CEO of VASTRM fashion, first introduced meditation to his staff after 9/11.  “In the aftermath of 9/11, the employees at my company were noticeably shaky and distracted.  I decided to bring in a m...

When Arthur T Demoulas, the CEO of Demoulas Supermarkets was sacked by the Board in June 2014, the company was stunned when the employees went on strike to demand his reinstatement. What was even more shocking was when even the customers started boycotting the store in support of the CEO and suppliers stopped restocking the stores. source: wiki Market Basket protests What then makes employees, customers and even suppliers so loyal to a CEO in an age when only money rules. The CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas was perceived as a father figure. He was known for his ability to remember his employees' names, birthdays and milestones. He is also known to check on ill employees and asking about spouses and children of his workers. In this Boston Globe article one employee recollects the time he received a call from Arthur when his daughter had a serious car accident and was in the hospital. Arthur enquired about his daughter, whether the hospital was doing a good job and if they needed...

Teenagers, ages 12–17, report using phones to text message in their daily lives more than any other form of communication, including face-to-face socializing. The extensive time that children and teenagers engage with media and communicate using screens may be taking time away from face-to-face communication and some in-person activities. A field experiment examined whether increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction while eliminating the use of screen-based media and communication tools improved nonverbal emotion–cue recognition in preteens. Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls (n = 54) that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed. Change scores for the t...

In his book " Reclaiming conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age ", author Sherry Turkle writes about how communication between youngsters is changing dramatically because of Technology. She cites an example of a short film where a girl does not have her phone for a day and she observes the behavior of people around her. Her boyfriend is busy texting in bed Her boyfriend chats about laughter at a comedy show without actually laughing. At a bowling alley her friends do not hi five her when she makes a strike

This Forbes Etiquette guide video shows you how to Work a Room and network with strangers Some key points being Talk to 3 new people Learn 2 new pieces of information Be a lone ranger comment on the venue/food/program

Ju do the gentle way. The philosophy is to redirecting rather than confronting the opponents energy. The similar tactic can be used in business or negotiation or confrontation when instead of confronting the opponents energy head on you redirect the energy

This HBR video speaks about a framework to lead a better and fulfilling life. It emphasizes that one should strive for excellence in all domains and not just in one. 1. Work 2. Home 3. Community 4. Self

This HBR video explains how Management teams can have a good productive debate and fight to get positive outcomes Teams that worked best embraced conflicts It highlights 6 points 1. Work with more rather than less information. A healthy supply of information can switch the focus from guesses & personal opinions to a debate on hard facts. 2.Enrich the debate with multiple options. Having only 2 options can split the groups into 2 teams. Teams that have multiple options can expend their energies then into coming up with creative solutions 3. Establish common goals 4. Inject Humour. It releases tension and promotes collaboration. 5. Maintain a balanced corporate power structure. 6. Resolve issues without forcing a consensus

Planning poker is a consensus-based, gamified technique mostly used to estimate effort or relative size of development goals in software development. In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates. src Wikipedia . It is also called Scrum poker. Planning poker is based on a list of features to be delivered, several copies of a deck of cards and optionally, an egg timer that can be used to limit time spent in discussion of each item. At the estimation meeting, each estimator is given one deck of the cards. All decks have identical sets of cards in them. The meeting proceeds as follows: A Moderator, who will not play, chairs the meeting. The Product Manager...

This story talks about how an Entrepreneur started a paint shop but nobody would buy from his store. In the evenings he used to hang out with mechanics and body shop owners and over the course of time figure out that their biggest problem was wasted paint in body touch-ups. As the minimum paint can was of 500ml a lot of it would get wasted during small touch up works. He then pioneered the concept of packaging paint in small cigarette tin boxes (125ml) and thus the CT (cigarette tin) measure was born in Mangalore.

In his book " The Honest Truth about Dishonesty ", author Dan Ariely writes about the Psychology of Dishonesty. Why are people dishonest? Why do people cheat? Is it for reward? He feels that most of us are inherently dishonest at some level and more than reward we weigh the pros and cons of getting caught. Weighing the cost benefit analysis is more important than the consideration of right or wrong. One simple example is about Parking in a no Parking zone. How often have all of us done this? If we have to rush for a meeting, we weigh the costs of getting a parking ticket versus costs of going late for a meeting. It's not about right or wrong. He created this model called SMORC - Simple model of Rational Crime. In some of the experiments that Dan conducted, he found that incentive for crime was not a motivation. However the risk of not getting caught was the real driver in such cases. In this video below, Dan speaks about his SMORC model and some case stu...

What is the effect of color on our Behavior? The Australian government hired a research agency to find out what is the world's ugliest color and they came up with Pantone 448C.  The purpose of this activity was to color cigarette products with this colour to dissuade people from smoking. Check this video below

Drunk Tank Pink is a tone of pink claimed to reduce hostile, violent or aggressive behavior. In the late 1960s, Alexander Schauss , Director of Life Sciences at the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Washington , did studies on psychological and physiological responses to the color pink . Schauss had read studies by the Swiss psychiatrist Max Luscher , who believed that color preferences provided clues about one's personality . Luscher noticed that color preferences shifted according to psychological and physiological fluctuations in his patients. Luscher asserted that color choice reflects emotional states. He theorized that one's color choices reflect corresponding changes in the endocrine system , which produces hormones . In early tests in 1978, Schauss observed that color, surprisingly, did affect muscle strength, either invigorating or enervating the subject, and even influenced the cardiovascular system . Schauss began to exper...

Social proof , also known as informational social influence, is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior for a given situation. This effect is prominent in ambiguous social situations where people are unable to determine the appropriate mode of behavior, and is driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation. src Wiki The most famous study of social proof is Muzafer Sherif's 1935 experiment.  In this experiment subjects were placed in a dark room and asked to look at a dot of light about 15 feet away. They were then asked how much, in inches, the dot of light was moving.  In reality it was not moving at all, but due to the autokinetic effect it appeared to move.  How much the light appears to move varies from person to person but is generally consistent over time for each individual. A few days later a second part of the expe...