While Internet stocks are ballooning, so are books about the players. Here’s a strong entry in the genre, savvy and clever.
The growing subspecialty of business books that deals with the brainiac talents and picaresque entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley is upgraded to version 2.0 with this knowledgeable communiqué from cyberspace.
Just as Hollywood is said to have done, Silicon Valley lures mature talent and young folk bright or attractive enough to cast hundreds of sitcoms. Novelist and Wired contributor Bronson (Bombardiers, 1995; The First $20 Million Is Always the Hardest, 1997) presents the wildcatters of the valley, from the seller of used cubicles to the multimillionaire who bedded down each night under his desk, from the devious headhunters to the young CEOs of software firms with killer apps. In a series of profiles, he probes their minds and hearts. We witness the closing days of an IPO (more dramatic than the preceding scutwork). Here, among the processors, terminals, modems, and servers are the individual progrananers, salespeople, venture capitalists, visionaries who build financial empires on vapor, and the new generation of studly geniuses who truly want to change the way the world operates. It just takes being first with one big idea. Here are the superachievers who risk all for exponential dollars. And here’s the nude guy, who is no urban legend. It’s all quite bizarre, of course, especially the money, which is “puppylike, untrained,” i.e., “it doesn’t behave commonsensically…People give money out here just to be part of the excitement of the deal.” The stories are told with vitality and more than a touch of gonzo. Though basic familiarity with the terminology might be nice, after reading this entertainment, you’ll think you understand the slang, the jargon, the gibberish, and the buzzwords of the valley.
While Internet stocks are ballooning, so are books about the players. Here’s a strong entry in the genre, savvy and clever.Pub Date: July 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-375-50277-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1999
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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