An aggressively researched toy story on the “doll-eat-doll world of litigation over inspiration.”
Exploring the little-known battle for the Barbie doll empire.
Lobel (Law/Univ. of San Diego; Talent Wants to Be Free: Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding, 2013) bases much of her exposé on the arduous, decadelong copyright infringement litigation in which toy giant Mattel became embroiled in 2000. In 1998, creative artist Carter Bryant, who, after years of employment with Mattel, a company he believed to be “political, risk averse, and stuck in the past,” took time off hoping to reignite his inspiration. After seven months in his rural Missouri hometown, the idea for four sassy, edgy, urban dolls was born and then shelved in favor of the steady income Mattel provided. Bryant’s motivation returned, and using discarded doll parts and clothing scraps, he created rough doll mock-ups and pitched them to Mattel rival MGA Corporation and its competitive CEO and founder Isaac Larian, who immediately greenlighted the project. The massive success of the brazen Bratz line was enough to eventually dethrone the milquetoast Barbie doll. In her crisp narrative, the author pauses to ponder Mattel’s notorious litigiousness and Barbie’s iconic history, which is illuminating and contains some eyebrow-raising factoids—e.g., 1965’s Slumber Party Barbie came equipped with a diet book (first rule: “Don’t eat!”) and immovable scale set at 110 pounds. The epic trial between these two toy titans spanned a decade and became a dizzying, ego-driven melodrama. Lobel’s research is representative of how cutthroat the toy industry can be, a fact that may surprise readers unfamiliar with Mattel’s long struggle to recoup Barbie’s image (“ice queen doll”) as it became replaced by customer fascination with the “modern, voluptuous, multiethnic” Bratz dolls. The author, whose mother is a renowned psychology professor, recognizes the “toy world’s grip on society,” and she bolsters her investigation with interviews and testimonials from attorneys, jurors, esteemed Judge Alex Kozinski, executives at both Mattel and MGA, and a barrage of financial reports and court documents.
An aggressively researched toy story on the “doll-eat-doll world of litigation over inspiration.”Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-393-25407-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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