Real Case Stories

In his book " The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in Life and Business ", the author Charles Duhigg cites a peculiar case of an army major posted in Iraq who eliminated riots by implementing a small policy change. He analyzed video tapes of recent riots and identified a pattern. Violence was usually preceded by a crowd of Iraqis gathering in a plaza and growing in size over the course of several hours. Food vendors and spectators would show up. Then someone would throw a bottle and all hell would break loose. The major met the mayor and requested him to keep the food vendors out of the plaza which he agreed to. A few weeks later, a small crowd gathered near a Mosque, it grew in size through the afternoon. Some people started chanting slogans and by dusk people started getting restless and hungry. People looked for the kebab sellers normally filling the plaza but there were none to be found. The spectators left, the chanters became dispirited and everyone was gon...

Hotel Guptaji, a small restaurant in Palanpur India situated near a railway station started a food ordering service for trains passing by. Passengers traveling on this route would call the Hotel in advance to order lunch on dinner packets which would be promptly delivered to the passenger when the train stops at the station.The delivery boys keep the change ready and the entire transaction is completed within 30 seconds.   The Hotel has even received a mention in Philip Kotler's Marketing Management , A South Asian Perspective ver 14e. Other links Contact and reviews from Justdial Tripadvisor review Books

Traditionally schools tend to use Black and White printers for teaching material. Xerox wanted to find a way to sell color printers to these schools. Xerox came up with a smart marketing idea through an Infographic that highlighted how Color content would benefit students. Watch the interview with Leah Quesada, VP Marketing of Xerox

The book "Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World" talks about a peculiar case when economist Michael Housman was leading a project to study customer service agents' attrition behavior. With data from over 30,000 employees, he struggled to identify a pattern.  Hunting for other hints, he observed that employees' browser usage was also captured. On analysing further he came to the startling conclusion that Employees who used Firefox or Chrome (F&C) browser stayed in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who used Internet Explorer or Safari browser (IE&S).  Thinking it was a coincidence, he ran the same analysis for absenteeism. He was stunned; the same pattern emerged. F&C users were 19 percent less likely to miss work than IE&S users.  He then analysed performance. F&S users had higher sales and shorter call times. On further introspection, he came to the realization that 'How' users obtained their browsers was more importa...

In his book "I, The Citizen", Dr.R.Balasubramaniam talks about his experience when he worked with Tribal communities in South India's rural hinterland. During one interaction with women in a Tribal colony, he learnt that they trekked 8 - 10 kms everyday to fetch water. He was aghast on hearing this and disturbed at the plight of these women. He spoke to the local Administration and within a week had a Tube well with a hand pump installed at the colony. About 6 months later he visited the colony again expecting to receive adulation from a grateful community for reducing their workload and making their lives better. However, he was shocked to receive the choicest expletives from the women who were angry to see him. On probing further he found out that he had taken away from the women what was most valuable for them. Fetching water was the only time they had for themselves when they could get away from their homes, their family and their husbands. This was a time when...

The Overton window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept.  An idea's political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within the window, rather than on politicians' individual preferences.  According to Overton's description, his window includes a range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too extreme to gain or keep public office. src Wiki . Img src Chuck Scoggins In recent times, Donald Trump in his Election campaign has with his Vitriol has moved the Overton window on what's acceptable in Political discourse. However, with his popularity soaring, Donald Trump may have inadvertently identified the position of the Overton window in the minds of the Public.  Lawmakers who support policies outside the window are one of two kinds — true leaders who have the rare ability to shift the window by...

In his book Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics, the author Richard Thaler highlights an incident early in his teaching career when he gave an extremely tough test to his students. The average score for the test was 72/100 which resulted in a huge uproar by his students. To find a solution to this problem, instead of making the test easier he made the test harder but he increased the maximum score to 137. The average score was 96/137 which was 70% lower than the earlier average of 72%. However, the students were delighted with the absolute score of 96. This technique is also used by Marketers called Framing . The framing effect is an example of cognitive bias, in which people react to a particular choice in different ways depending on how it is presented; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. Buy the book at

In his book "  Power  :Why some people have it and other's dont", Jeffrey Pfeffer talks about how important it is to understand Politics and Organisation Dynamics. He cites a few examples on how high performers were forced to leave their organisations because of politics In 2004, the Miami-Dade county, Florida, school board hired former New York schools chancellor Rudy Crew as superintendent to help a struggling school district. During his tenure, the disctrict was a finalist in the board prize for urban education 3 years in a row. He was also awarded the National Superintendent of the year by the American Association of School Administrators. However, within 6 months of receiving the award, he was forced to quit by the School board. The book talks about how people live in the fallacy that we live in a Just-World and do not recognise the intrigues of the real world. In another case, Jim Walker who was hired to build Nomura Securities' Asian operations was a cha...

When Lou Gerstner joined IBM in 1993, he was depressed. In the first few weeks into the job he would sit through 8 hour presentations and understand nothing!  Source: Harvard Business Review One of the measures that he took was that the executive team abandon slide presentations and submit plans injargon-freee prose.   Source: Mckinsey, Leadership in Context  

The Decoy Effect or the Asymmetric Dominance effect is a phenomenon whereby consumers will have a specific change in preference between 2 options when also presented with a third option.  Source:  Wikipedia National Geographic conducted an experiment in a movie theater where consumers were presented with 2 Popcorn pricing options. A Small for $3 and a Large for $7. Consumers preferred the Small Popcorn. An additional variant Medium at $6.50 was added between the two. Buyers now had a distinct change in preference and opted for the Larger Popcorn. The Decoy effect is used extensively by Marketers in Pricing Strategy. Read more: How to use Decoy Effect to help buyers choose the right option Watch the Nat Geo video here: Also, watch how Economist used this effect to designed its subscription model: