Ford Library

Hanson, Jarice. 24/7: How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play. Praeger, 2007.

Media guru Marshall McLuhan had a famous slogan in the 1960’s, “The medium is message”. He meant that communication media had a meaning separate from the content. At the time, he was talking about television and film. But the slogan still applies. Technology changes the culture and the way people relate to each other. Every generation has a particular communication technology that helps to define their worldview and their way of communicating.

Author Jarice Hanson claims that in their short histories, cell phones and the internet have sparked significant changes to traditional attitudes, values and behaviors. Perceptions of time and space are altering. Public and private activities are blurring.

Read more …

Have you ever wondered why people act the way that they do?

Fuqua’s own Professor Dan Ariely has and he wrote a book about this subject. The Ford Library has a number of copies of this book as well as more great titles on the subject of human behavior (and business). (If you would like more information on Predictably Irrational, please see Dan Ariely’s blog.) As always, you can click on any title below to check availability or to place a hold.

• Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• Stumbling on Happiness: Think You Know What Makes You Happy? by Daniel Gilbert
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris
• Snipers, Shills, and Sharks: E-bay and Human Behavior by Ken Steiglitz
• Gimme! The Human Nature of Successful Marketing by John Hallward
• Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (Or Most Expensive Liability) by David Marcum and Stephen Smith
• Behavioral Economics and Its Applications edited by Peter Diamond, Hannu Vartiainen
• Global Consumer Behavior edited by Chantal Ammi
• Explaining Consumer Choice by Gordon R. Foxall
• Economics and Psychology: A Promising New Cross-Disciplinary Field by Mandred F.R. Kets de Vries, Randel S. Carlock, and Elizabeth Florrent-Treacy
• Family Business on the Couch: A Psychological Perspective by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder
• Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap by Mathew Hayward
• Alpha Male Syndromeby Kate Ludeman & Eddie Erlandson

UPDATE: This database subscription was canceled in December 2010 due to cost and licensing issues. Contact a reference librarian for help identifying alternative resources.

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Couldn’t make it to the MBA Media and Entertainment Conference in New York?

Well the Ford Library can get you up to date on the subjects of media, entertainment, and sports businesses with these new titles. Click on any of these book links to place holds or check availability:

• Branded entertainment : product placement & brand strategy in the entertainment business by Jean-Marc Lehu
• Coming attractions? : Hollywood, high tech, and the future of entertainment by Philip E. Meza
• Asper nation : Canada’s most dangerous media company by Marc Edge
• The new influencers : a marketer’s guide to the new social media by Paul Gillin
• Team sports marketing by Kirk L. Wakefield
• Brand NFL : making and selling America’s favorite sport by Michael Oriard
• Shopping as an entertainment experience by Mark Moss
• The new rules of marketing and PR : how to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly by David Meerman Scott
• International perspectives on the management of sport edited by Milena M. Parent and Trevor Slack
• Econospinning : how to read between the lines when the media manipulate the numbers by Gene Epstein
• Film business : a handbook for producers edited by Tom Jeffrey; with new chapters by Damien Parer

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Ford Library announces its new Business E-Book Collection! We’ve added over 150 new business e-book titles to Duke University Libraries eContent holdings.

NetLibrary’s online reader allows you to read, search, and annotate these new titles, as well as providing you with access to over 24,000 e-books and over 1800 eAudiobooks.

For first time NetLibrary users, we’ve created a Getting Started page with advice on the best ways to access these new e-books. If you’re already familiar with how the NetLibrary site works, you can browse a list of the new titles and connect right away!

You can also find these e-books in our online catalog in advanced search mode by using the following keyword phrases:

• ford e-book collection
• ford electronic books
• netlibrary ford e-book

Here’s a sample search.

We hope you enjoy the new collection, and please feel free to send any comments or questions to: reference-librarians@fuqua.duke.edu.

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Taleb, Nassim. The black swan : the impact of the highly improbable.
Random House, 2007.

The Black Swan is a follow-up to the author’s 2001 best-seller, Fooled by Randomness, about the role chance plays in life. Fooled was controversial when released and continues to be a classic text in the hedge fund industry. Writing a general-interest book about probability is in itself quite an accomplishment. With Black Swan, it looks like the author (Lebanon-born, Wharton MBA, doctorate in mathematical finance, Wall Street hedge trader) has done it again.

This time, Taleb uses the image of a black swan to describe an event that is highly improbable yet causes a huge impact. Plus, after the event occurs, people concoct explanations for its occurrence in an attempt to make it seem predictable. The terrorist attack of 9/11 is a black swan. So is Black Friday in 1987. So is the development of the internet. Black swans can be either positive or negative, but either way, they have a huge influence on history.

The Black Swan considers fundamental questions about the nature of randomness. The central thesis is that the outliers, not part of the bell curve, are too often ignored by social scientists and these outliers have enormous importance for individuals, government, science and society.
Read more …

The Ford Library adds new books every month. Here is just a sample from specific categories. Come check out our New Books section for even more choices on a variety of business and related topics. (Click on any of the titles below to check availability or to place a hold.)

“Introduction to” business texts:

• Introduction to the Theory of Cooperative Games (Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical) by Bezalel Peleg
• An Introduction to Corporate Finance: Transactions and Techniques Second Edition by H. Ross Geddes
• Ethics and Business: An Introduction by Kevin Gibson

Web Design & Technology:

• The Design of Sites, 2nd Ed: Patterns for Creating Winning Websites by Douglas K. Van Dyune, James A. Landay, and Jason I. Hong
• Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design by Robert Hoekman, Jr.
• 24/7 How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Jarice Hanson

Psychology and Human Behavior in Business:

• Snipers, Shills, and Sharks: E-bay and Human Behavior by Ken Steiglitz
• Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris
• Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (Or Most Expensive Liability) by David Marcum and Stephen Smith
• Spiritual Motivation: New Thinking for Business and Management edited by Jeremy Ramsden, Shuhei Aida, and Andrew Kakabadse

Green Business Strategy:

• Harvard Business Review on Green Business Strategy by Harvard Business School Press
• Carbon Strategies: How Leading Companies are Reducing Their Climate Change Footprintby Andrew J. Hoffman
• The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder

Tourism and Hospitality Industry:

• Managing Tourism and Hospitality Services: Theory and International Applications edited by Brude Prideaux, Gianna Moscardo, and Eric Laws
• Managerial Competence within the Hospitality and Tourism Service Industries: Global Cultural Contextual Analysis by John Saee
• The International Hotel Industry: Sustainable Management by Timothy L. G. Lockyer

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McGinn, Daniel F. House lust : America’s obsession with our homes.
Currency Doubleday, 2008.

A few years ago friends moved to my town from a hotter housing market, thus allowing me to join them on their house hunt. My own home is small, takes me about 90 minutes to clean from baseboards to ceiling, and holds just enough stuff that I don’t have to “weed my collection” more than once a year. It fits my small family of 3 humans, one dog, and one kitten just fine. My friends have several children plus the accoutrement that goes with them, they needed the amenities new houses offer. We met with a Realtor who took us to see homes with mud rooms, jacuzzi tubs, more bathrooms than bedrooms, deluxe game rooms, cathedral ceilings, granite everything, cherry wood this and that. After a certain point, I wondered how I could live without a subzero refrigerator – so changed was my idea of shelter.

House Lust, the new book by Newsweek reporter Daniel McGinn, explores our obsession with our homes in the unique American way of bigger is better. Since the dot.com bust, many people view their homes not only as shelter but as investments, as McGinn points out, it’s easier to show off a barbecue pit than a stock portfolio. From MacMansions, to the renovation craze, to vacation homes, we see that, even following a market bust, we’re still attached to our dream home(s) ideals.

A highly entertaining, sometimes funny, read, House Lust offers a cautionary tale of the next housing boom while at the same time causing me to think about, maybe, pushing out the master bedroom wall a tiny bit to add just the smallest of walk-in, cedar lined, closets.

© Reviewer: Jane Day & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business. All rights reserved.

Are you thinking of attending Duke’s Second Annual Conference on Intellectual Property Markets for Technology: Challenges and Opportunities?

Then you may also want to check out any of these excellent books on these subjects available at the Ford Library: (Click on any of the titles below to check availability or to place a hold.)

• Strategic Use of Information Technology for Global Organizations by M. Gordon Hunter and Felix B. Tan
• The Consequences of Information: Institutional Implications of Technological Change by Jannis Kallinikos
• Innovate or Perish: Managing the Enduring Technology Company in the Global Market edited by Edward Kahn
• The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder
• Information Resources Management: Global Challenges by Wai K. Law
• E-Business Innovation and Process Management edited by In Lee
• Future Thinking, Learning, and Leading: Applying Multiple Intelligences to Success and Innovation by Irving H. Buchen
• 24/7 How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work, and Play by Jarice Hanson
• Blind Men and The Elephant: Demystifying the Global IT Services Industry by Was Rahman and Priya Kurien

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Heath, Chip and Dan Heath. Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die.
Random House, 2007.

Several weeks ago, a staff member at Fuqua sent an email to the “everyone” list warning drivers to avoid flashing their lights to oncoming cars, or they may be shot by a gang member. In reply another staff member noted that this was an urban legend that had been around for some time. The sender acknowledged that the story may not be true but still felt the warning was worth sending. This left me wondering — Why is this urban legend so successful? What is it about this story that makes it stick?

Written by Chip Heath, formerly a faculty member at Fuqua and now at Stanford, and his brother Dan, a consultant at Duke Corporate Education, Made to Stick explores why some ideas thrive and others fade away.

The authors analyze hundreds of sticky ideas, including compelling stories, persistent rumors, urban legends, conspiracy theories, proverbs and jokes. What emerges is a common set of six traits normally present in a successful idea. The 1992 Clinton campaign’s slogan “It’s the economy, stupid,” is an example of the simplicity principle. Urban legends often combine a vivid concrete image, an unexpected outcome and an emotional ending, such as the man who wakes up in an icy bathtub with no kidneys. Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef” commercials from the mid-80’s draw on the credibility principle as consumers are invited to see for themselves.

Finally in the epilogue, the authors suggest ways to transform and communicate ideas to make them more successful.

© Reviewer: Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business. All rights reserved.