Everything Is Obvious by Duncan J Watts

Everything Is Obvious by Duncan J Watts

By understanding how and when common sense fails, we can improve our understanding of the present and better plan for the future.

Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.

It seems obvious, for example, that people respond to incentives; yet policy makers and managers alike frequently fail to anticipate how people will respond to the incentives they create. Social trends often seem to be driven by certain influential people; yet marketers have been unable to identify these influencers in advance. And although successful products or companies always seem in retrospect to have succeeded because of their unique qualities, predicting the qualities of the next hit product or hot company is notoriously difficult even for experienced professionals.

Watts' argument has important implications in politics, business, and marketing, as well as in science and everyday life.

Watts, Duncan J.: - Duncan J. Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a founding member of the MSR-NYC lab. He is also an AD White Professor at Large at Cornell University. His research on social networks and collective dynamics has appeared in a wide range of journals including Nature, Science, the American Journal of Sociology, and the Harvard Business Review.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780307951793
ISBN 10	0307951790
Title	Everything Is Obvious
Author	Duncan J Watts
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2012-06-26
Number of pages	368
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable