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Viral PDFs and a Best-Selling Book: Go the F*** to Sleep
Now here's a Fast Company story that will surprise and delight! Adam Mansbach has written a humorous "children's book for adults" with the terrific title, "Go the F*** to Sleep." Mansbach wrote the...
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Depth of Analysis Inversely Related to Importance of Decision
On Monday, while teaching an executive leadership program, an executive made a terrific observation. He said, "Often, it seems that the rigor and depth of our analysis is inversely to the importance...
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Torre, Francona and the Importance of Soft Skills
An executive asked me the following question the other day: "How do I persuade the skeptics who continue to denigrate the importance of "soft skills" in management? Can you give me a concrete example...
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Banning Ronald McDonald?
Ronald McDonald made big news this week after a corporate watchdog group encouraged approximately 600 health-care professionals to sign a letter asking McDonald's to stop using Ronald to appeal to...
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Congratulations, Graduates!
Congratulations to the Class of 2011 graduates at Bryant University and beyond! May you never lose your thirst for knowledge, and may you enjoy much personal and professional success in the days and...
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Could Skechers Shape-Ups be what society really needs?
I highly recommend this blog post from my colleague, Keith Murray, regarding Skechers' marketing campaign for its new footwear line.
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Does Your Board Conduct After-Action Reviews for Acquisitions?
I learned yesterday that the Board of Directors of one major industrial firm in the US does regular after-action reviews on major acquisitions. What a great practice! What does this systematic...
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Why are you losing employees?
Have you lost some valuable employees in the past year? Does your firm understand why those employees are leaving? If you are like most companies, exit interviews serve as a mechanism for unearthing...
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Amazon Apologizes for Lady Gaga Error
Amazon moved quickly this week to rectify the problem that hindered customers from taking advantage of a terrific deal on the new Lady Gaga album. On Monday, when Amazon offered Lady Gaga's new album...
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Memorial Day & Louis Zamperini's Story (Unbroken)
For those who have not yet read the book, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, I recommend taking a look at this Fox News Report... and then reading the book. What a tremendous story of an American hero....
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Wisdom and Foolishness of Crowds
Jonah Lehrer had a nice column in the weekend Wall Street Journal about the "wisdom of crowds" - the notion that we can get the right answers to tough problems by marshaling the collective intellect...
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Creativity, How Ideas Must Ripen, and the Aha! Moment
Daniel Goleman has a good article for creativity over at Bloomberg.com. He describes research by Harvard's Teresa Amabile, which suggests that workers must have "periods of sustained focus" in order...
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Engaging Customers Through Gaming
Many firms have begun to use gaming technology to engage their customers. As an example, take the latest move by the wine website Snooth. The firm has created Wine Rack, a gaming layer to its site in...
View ArticleIBM, Ralph Gomory and Business Analytics
Had a post at the INFORMS Conference site on Ralph Gomory:read more...
View ArticleStatistics, Cell Phones, and Cancer
Today’s New York Times Magazine has a very nice article entitled “Do Cellphones Cause Brain Cancer”. The emphasis on the article is on the statistical and medical issues faced when trying to find such...
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Algorithmic Pricing
The Twitterverse is giggling over some of the absurd pricing for some used books at Amazon (Panos Ipeirotis and Golan Levin were two who tweeted on the subject). There are books at Amazon where the...
View ArticleMaybe Analytics is not the Future for Operations Research
There is a lot of discussion on the role the word “analytics” should play in operations research. As a field, we have always had a bit of an identity issue. Perhaps “analytics” is the way we should go....
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Recently on OR-Exchangeâ¦
OR-Exchange is a question and answer site on operations research (and analytics).  The concept couldn’t be simpler. People ask questions about operations research; people answer questions about...
View ArticleThatâs got to be true⦠doesnât it?
Back in 1996, Harvey Greenberg, longtime faculty member at the University of Colorado at Denver, began putting together a collection of myths and counterexamples in mathematical programming. While...
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