Bruce’s Blog

The term “platform” is increasingly popular among executives today. Platforms, and multi-sided platforms (MSPs) in particular, serve the needs of interdependent constituents. Although MSPs have existed for centuries in the form of matchmakers and village

The following questions determine the extent to which an individual has business literacy.

One of the key points in The No Asshole Rule is that one of the most effective ways to avoid being harmed by assholes — and becoming one yourself — is (to steal a phrase from Leonardo da Vinci) “to resist at the beginning,” to avoid working for an assho

Taleb, author of The Black Swan, contributes this thought-provoking essay on what we know about what we don’t know. A ‘black swan’ is an improbable, dynamic event that, once it occurs, we rationalize to make it seem predictable (e.g. 9/11). Taleb di

So, you’ve got an idea. A big idea. But will your idea take flight? Not if you let your concept be killed by all the usual excuses you hear from your managers, your bosses, your spouses—excuses motivated by fear or possessiveness. In this wide-ranging

Cherkoff and Moore present examples of open source marketing that prove engagement trumps control in maximizing customer experience and making meaning. It may be a platitude to say that two heads are better than one, but this manifesto features collaborat

After attending SuccessConnect User Conference last week (albeit briefly), I am convinced SuccessFactors is not only the hottest vendor in the HCM space but in the entire enterprise software sector. Not Netsuite…not Salesforce.com…but yes, SuccessFact

This paper explores three connected claims about the interrelation of psychology and neuroscience that occur in discussions within theoretical psychology. The first and second claims are that neuroscience cannot offer a complete account of human psycholog

In an American Psychologist article published in 1981, the author of the present contribution began a critique of the epistemic tenets of the traditional individual differences framework for personality research, which has long dominated the field.

Having enjoyed such fine purveyors of prodporn as Merlin Mann, Danny O’Brien, Gina Trapani, David Allen, and Tim Ferriss, I’d like to return the favor with the following: the Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity. The techniques that follow work together

The Times today reported on a research project at the University of Portsmouth which has established that the best way to catch a person telling a lie, is to get them to repeat their story backwards. The argument is that it is more stressful to tell a sto

The “Transform first, then outsource” myth is beginning to fade (but slowly). The common plea of “we can’t do this right now until we get our act together internally first” isn’t washing as well as it used to, with more and more companies fixi

“Intel has what’s called “constructive confrontation” that was instituted as part of the Intel culture under Andy Grove. As an ex-Intel employee who had worked there under Andy Grove and also under the two subsequent CEO’s (Barrett and Otellini), I can

Only some personality dimensions actually suit e-Learning, according to research by SHL, the leading psychometric testing provider. SHL’s investigations established that individual personalities greatly affect the ways that they learn most effectively

More and more we’ve been seeing increased interest in some “real” employee metrics. Instead of looking at things like employee satisfaction, I’ve been talking about profit per employee and the chain of linkages between the engagement score and the

87% of people believe that finding your weaknesses and fixing them is the best way to achieve outstanding performance.

Here are a bunch of conditions that you ought to take seriously before you invest the time and the energy to track down outside money for your great idea:

That’s twelve minutes of ads in between the Nicole Ritchie interview and the Artie Lange interview. Out of those 12 minutes of “programming,” 8:30 were commercials, 1:25 were in-house promotion, and 2:05 were Late Show. Of the 2:05 that was actually the L

Sunday’s New York Times had a mindbending article about the way drugs are tested in this country. Apparently, doctors who have been disciplined for fraud are finding second careers running clinical trials for drug companies. One such doctor, before being

I must say I am thoroughly enjoying the massive public response to the 2012 Olympic Logo. What a well-deserved pushback to the ludicrous hype with which the thing was launched. What a heartening demonstration that the great British public has a brain and

The trouble is that reductionist methods (of which Six Stigma is the exemplar) assume order, repeatable and stable relationships between cause and effect. For complex systems it is contra indicated. I was in the Twin Cities a few weeks ago and someone in