You might not have heard of MIT professor Gian-Carlo Rota but you should know Rota’s 10 Life Lessons. Rota was an internationally respected mathematician and philosopher, and an influential and admired teacher. He was credited with transforming the field of combinatorial logic into one with a wide range industrial applications – from computers to communications…
There are many frequently debated but ultimately unanswerable questions such as leader vs manager and strategy vs execution. One that gets less attention – but is just as important – is the question: rules or standards? In law, the distinction is clear and the choice is somewhat obvious. Rules differentiate legal from illegal behavior, hopefully…
Would you eat an Antarctic toothfish? Probably not. It’s an ugly-looking human-sized fish with an unappetizing sounding name. But chances are you have eaten it. That’s because the seafood industry has mastered the art of rebranding. In the 1970s, American seafood entrepreneur Lee Lantz realized a fish with buttery white flesh and a mild, non-fishy…
If you tell a brazen untruth, is it called a bald-faced lie or a bold-faced lie? 100 years ago, the answer might have been neither, as the phrase barefaced lie was in fashion. Barefaced literally means beardless but implied bold or even brazen, perhaps because it was unacceptable for a man not to have a…
I’m not gaslighting you. We’re at an inflection point of people quiet quitting irregardless if everything is amazing and moving forward. Does that make sense? Absolutely! Since 1976, Lake Superior State University (LSSU) has compiled an annual list of words to be banned. For years, it was described as words to be “banished from the…
After I watched Top Gun: Maverick, I called a Navy Pilot friend to ask what he thought about the movie. His response: “At the end of the film, there’s no way the F14 could have gotten airborne with such a short run. Without a catapult, it needs about half a mile (2500 feet) to take…
If branding is the art of differentiation, blanding might be the science of imitation. We’re witnessing the blanding of brands. Blanding, a term coined in 2018, happens when a challenger brand drafts on the brand recognition of a larger and more established competitor by using similar brand identification (fonts, colors, imagery). Blanding was popularized by…
One of the advantages of living in Silicon Valley is you get to meet some amazing people. A recent meet-up with a friend reminded me of the time we got to meet Robert Joss, Dean Emeritus of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. During his career, Professor Joss researched how people can be developed into…
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” On a recent video conference call, a speaker used the gift horse idiom, much to the confusion of many of the attendees. For those who may not be familiar with the expression, it suggests people should not find fault with something that has been received as a…
Not long after I wrote about humblebragging, a reader asked me if humblebragging was an example of countersignaling. My short answer is ‘no’ but it deserves a more nuanced explanation. Signaling is a biological concept in which information is implicitly conveyed to others. Red mushrooms signal to would-be predators that they are poisonous. Peacocks bare…