business, finance and markets

ucl seminar: longshots and prediction markets

16Oct07

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” Yogi Berra famously used to say. If you’re an English rugby fan, there can be no truer words to reflect your recent experience. I normally don’t follow rugby very closely, for various family reasons, but have a habit of walking in to watch the last 5 minutes of major [...]

Filed under: behaviour, business, finance and markets, coaching and teaching, competition and performance, failure, sports, what hacks off the hack? | Closed

self-tuning gibson guitar

03Oct07

I specifically asked for a cherry-red Gibson ES335 semi-acoustic guitar with a Vox AC-30 Amplifier for my 40th birthday. I can’t really play electric guitar, and had no real intention of taking it up. But the same genes that pushed me into marathon-running were finding expression; it was a pure materialism/mid-life crisis mashup. March 2005 [...]

Filed under: business, finance and markets, creativity, failure, music, what hacks off the hack?, what knackered the hack? | 5 Comments

arrogance is bad for business

01Oct07

The meek shall indeed inherit the earth — it’s official. Cockiness, conceit, brashness, presumption, brazenness, self-assertion, bumptiousness, flagrancy, haughtiness, brassiness, disdain. Call it what you will, arrogance isn’t just an unpleasant personality trait, it’s plain bad for business. A landmark study, Arrogance: A Formula for Failure? co-authored by Stanley B. Silverman, Dean of the University [...]

Filed under: behaviour, business, finance and markets, competition and performance, failure | 1 Comment

basketball lost in long tail

17Jul07

The subtitle of Chris Anderson‘s book The Long Tail is “How endless choice is creating unlimited demand.” Well, I’m a bit hacked off with Amazon — the poster child for long-tail economics. We use Amazon all the time. The problem is that — and not for the first time — something that their online catalogue promises will arrive in one to two weeks, is not coming any time soon. In fact, the size 5 basketball that should now be playing a crucial role in developing the hand-eye coordination and core stability of the Knackered brood, won’t be arriving until November. This, of course, means that in reality it won’t be arriving at all.

It would be nice if Amazon were to admit defeat, or have a slightly better explanation as to why this item is so much more esoteric than Elegance: Exquisite Doily Patterns Charted for Cross-Stitch (Paperback), currently number 986,204 in Amazon’s sales rank.

So, today I am mostly not buying the long-tail argument, unless I can find an alternative supply. Suggestions of UK suppliers would be most welcome.

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