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Showing posts from January, 2021

Death to Sensationalism

                If I had a dollar for every time I received a condescending or patronizing glance when I told someone I do not intend to be an entrepreneur, I would have enough capital to start my own business and become one after all.   “But…aren’t you in business school?” They ask with a dumbfounded look plastered on their face. As though there is a stipulation on the bottom of a business degree that says thou shalt use for entrepreneurship only.                    As a teenager I was enamored with the idea of running my own company, being my own boss, working on my own time, and all the other mystifications that entrepreneurship sells you on. But the more information I gathered, and the deeper my soul searching went, I concluded that me being an entrepreneur is similar to the square peg round hole dilemma.       To the people at networking events, on social media, or even on school campuses that believe entrepreneurship is the next (and only ) viable step after studying business,

The Science of What Makes People Care

  The Science of What Makes People Care did a tremendous job in uncovering and disclosing the factors behind getting people to react appropriately. For social science workers, at one point or another their job involves moving people to act, and act in a certain way that is beneficial to their cause. To do this requires writing effectively, and compelling people to empathize with and support a designated cause. It involves moving from feelings to actions. Two principles stood out as the most universal and all withstanding. Tell better stories and create meaningful calls to action. On the latter, meaningful calls to action do better than raising awareness. As the article says, Stop Raising Awareness already. Awareness is more often than not a lofty attempt at virtue signaling and has little to no effect in the real-world. Meaningful calls to action, however, can create concrete results. For example, imagine if the bus boycott s campaign (which was a meaningful, quantifiable call to act