Brothers Chip Heath, Stanford Graduate School of Business Professor, and Dan Heath, Duke University Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship senior fellow, have followed up their Made to Stick with an excellent piece on how change can occur despite the myriad of forces that oppose change. A very dramatic case study they cite is that of changing the culture of how many hours hospital interns should be allowed to work. Anyone who is related whatsoever to someone in the healthcare profession knows two things: One, interns are expected to work infinite hours because that’s the way it’s always been done. Two, getting egotistical doctors to change doesn’t happen very easily- unless they think it is their idea. Read more

Paco Underhill’s “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping” (1999, Simon and Schuster) is somewhat a misleading title because it is a business book that every business owner and executive should read. Why? It challenges the norm that numbers mean everything and that executives know what is going on in their business because- well, they are the executive.  Read more