Unknown Unknowns: The Problem of Hypocognition

In 1806, entrepreneur Frederic Tudor sailed to the island of Martinique with a precious cargo. He had harvested ice from frozen Massachusetts rivers and expected to make a tidy profit selling it to tropical customers. There was only one problem: the islanders had never seen ice…. Hypocognition, a term introduced to modern behavioral science by …

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Mice Don’t Know When to Let It Go, Either

Animals, like humans, are reluctant to give up on pursuits they’ve invested in, psychologists report. Suppose that, seeking a fun evening out, you pay $175 for a ticket to a new Broadway musical. Hooked? Read the rest on the original site…

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Rebooting AI – postulates

“We are trapped by Turing’s definition of intelligence. In his famous formulation Turing confined intelligence as a solution to a verbal game played against humans. This in particular sets intelligence as a (1) solution to a game, and (2) puts human in the judgement position. This definition is extremely deceptive and has not served the …

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How to Give Humble Feedback

Andy Grove once told me, over a cup of Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream at Baskin Robbins in Los Altos, “Fucking Steve [Jobs] always gets it right.”   “Nobody’s always right,” I said. “I didn’t say Steve IS always right. I said he always GETS it right. Like anyone, he is wrong all the time, …

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Prisoners of Geography

Interested in how the world came into its current political shape? Want to better equipped to second guess the next manoeuvres of the global stage by Putin or Xi?

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How Lego uses storytelling for commercial benefit

In March 2018 we ran the Power of Storytelling event. It featured lots of brilliant speakers, and amongst them was Stuart Chapman from Lego. Stuart talked to us about how Lego uses storytelling to its commercial benefit. It was a superb, highly entertaining and engaging talk, featuring references to Tom Cruise films and 1980s children’s TV. Here’s …

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The Sugar Levy – what consumers think they know

UK – March/April 2018 This first video in a 3 part study highlighting the categories that consumer think will be affected by the Sugar Levy being introduced in the UK in April 2018. It’s quite an eye opener. Watch out categories outside of Soft Drinks! The consumer has not been educated in what the levy …

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Merging traditional qual with emerging qual methods and why

Global – March 2018 Jenny Hearne (Watch Me Think) and Julie Davey (Julie Davey Research) gave a presentation at Insights 18 on the power of bringing together the old and the new in terms of methodologies. This 3 min film underlines the benefits of a mixed methodology from a client point of view and features …

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Amazon Go

USA – February 2018 When Amazon Go launched in Seattle we thought it would be interesting to see what the experience was like (we couldn’t afford the flights to go ourselves) so we sent some of our thinkers to show us and made this short video showcasing what they saw. If you want to see …

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