Can we really tell who will succeed in competitive business situations without knowing what they have to offer? - MIT Study

The finding: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It’s possible to predict which executives will win a business competition solely on the basis of the social signals they send. The study: Sandy Pentland and colleague Daniel Olguín Olguín outfitted executives at a party with devices that recorded data on their social signals—tone of voice, gesticulation, proximity to others, and more. Five days later the same executives presented business plans to a panel of judges in a contest. Without reading or hearing the pitches, Pentland correctly forecast the winners, using only data collected at the party. The challenge: Can we really tell who will succeed in competitive business situations without knowing what they have to offer? Professor Pentland, defend your research.

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The Creativity Crisis - Pro Bronson and Ashley Merriman, Newsweek

Back in 1958, Ted Schwarzrock was an 8-year-old third grader when he became one of the “Torrance kids,” a group of nearly 400 Minneapolis children who completed a series of creativity tasks newly designed by professor E. Paul Torrance. Schwarzrock still vividly remembers the moment when a psychologist handed him a fire truck and asked, “How could you improve this toy to make it better and more fun to play with?” He recalls the psychologist being excited by his answers. In fact, the psychologist’s session notes indicate Schwarzrock rattled off 25 improvements, such as adding a removable ladder and springs to the wheels. That wasn’t the only time he impressed the scholars, who judged Schwarzrock to have “unusual visual perspective” and “an ability to synthesize diverse elements into meaningful products.”

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Candour - Simon Cowell's Managerial Legacy - Harvard BR Dan McGinn

I woke up this morning feeling guilty, ready to admit a journalistic lapse: I watched only about five minutes of last night's marathon season finale of "American Idol." That's partly because I've never liked the show, and partly because both the Red Sox and Celtics were playing on other channels. But I'd meant to tune in last night to watch Simon Cowell's swan song. Even though I'm no "Idol" fan, I've always thought Cowell's style, while over-the-top, is relevant for managers. Cowell rose to fame and fortune on the basis of his brutal honesty, ignoring conventions of politeness to give candid feedback. Yes, he's unnecessarily mean and nasty — hey, it's a TV show — but he's also one of the world's foremost practitioners of a word that pops up in HBR every so often: candor.

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What Do Creative People Look Like? - Mark Batey, Msc Phd.

The simple (and honest) answer is that... there is no stereotype. We are all innately creative, we all solve problems, produce ideas and think unusual thoughts. However, this is clearly not the whole story. Whilst we can all be creative, some people are more prone to create than others, some who think more with what the venerable creativity researcher Frank Barron would have referred to as "controlled weirdness". So... what do the people who have a greater control of weirdness look like? What are their hallmarks? To answer this I would like to explore a few key themes and finish off with a cap doffed in the direction of domain differences.

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Keynesian Economics and Its Importance in Understanding the GFC

The importance of how we might understand what has occurred with the Global Financial Crisis is wonderfully summed up in this essay on The General Theory, the title of Keynes economic opus written just after the depression