The Cultural Cognition Project - The Yale Law School

The Cultural Cognition Project is a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities. Project members are using the methods of various disciplines -- including social psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science -- to chart the impact of this phenomenon and to identify the mechanisms through which it operates. The Project also has an explicit normative objective: to identify processes of democratic decisionmaking by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policymaking.

Click here to see examples of CCP studies and research projects.

“Flying people, not planes”: The CEO of Bombardier on building a world-class culture - McKinsey Quarterly

Pierre Beaudoin explains how a company driven by engineering goals learned to focus on customer expectations, teamwork, and continuous improvement. Canada’s Bombardier was founded in 1942 to make snowmobiles and similar equipment. Today, it makes trains and airplanes and is the world’s number-one train manufacturer and number three in civil aircraft.1 The company’s revenue and stock price have held up during the downturn. Over the past couple of years, it has significantly boosted its investments for growth, most notably an entirely new airplane design: the CSeries, a transcontinental commercial airliner with significantly lower emissions and running costs than existing planes have.

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How Social Networking Has Changed Business - Bill George - HBS Faculty - Harvard Business Review

Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

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3 Key Components of an Innovation Culture - Jeffrey Phillips, Blogging Innovation

Good artists borrow and great artists steal. Today I am a great artist, and stealing from another. At a recent speaking engagement which I attended virtually through a Twitter stream, Rob Shelton described an innovation culture as being made of vision and metrics and motivation. I thought this was an excellent summation of the attributes of an innovation culture, and I’d like to tell you why. I’ll also tell you one other component I’m sure Rob talked about but isn’t explicitly in this list.

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Is there a national cultural identity in a Facebook world?

An interesting article originally titled "Is there an Australian culture in a Facebook world?" published to-day in the Sydney Morning Herald could even more appropriately be entitled "Is there a national culture identity in a Facebook world?" Simon Letch Illustration: Simon Letch CULTURE and creativity are central to life in the 21st century. The global stakes have never been higher; never before have we been surrounded by so much information or so much art - high and popular, visual and aural, original and reproduced, amusing and challenging, bland and exciting. In cities the world over, tribes are instantly recognisable irrespective of country of origin, defined by the beautifully designed objects of consumer capitalism they wear and carry, the entertainment they download, the food and drinks they consume, the news they absorb. Spotting anything uniquely Australian in this wash of global brands is harder than recognising the distinctively laidback style of Australians abroad.

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