CityU Library - Books of the Week

Monday, June 8, 2015

The Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking

Roger L. Martin
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If you want to be as successful as Jack Welch, Larry Bossidy, or Michael Dell, read their autobiographical advice books, right? Wrong, says Roger Martin in The Opposable Mind. Though following best practice can help in some ways, it also poses a danger: By emulating what a great leader did in a particular situation, you'll likely be terribly disappointed with your own results. Why? Your situation is different.

Instead of focusing on what exceptional leaders do, we need to understand and emulate how they think. Successful businesspeople engage in what Martin calls integrative thinking creatively resolving the tension in opposing models by forming entirely new and superior ones. Drawing on stories of leaders as diverse as AG Lafley of Procter & Gamble, Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nandan Nilekani of Infosys, Martin shows how integrative thinkers are relentlessly diagnosing and synthesizing by asking probing questions including: What are the causal relationships at work here? and What are the implied trade-offs?

Martin also presents a model for strengthening your integrative thinking skills by drawing on different kinds of knowledge including conceptual and experiential knowledge.

Integrative thinking can be learned, and The Opposable Mind helps you master this vital skill.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

成事在天 : 機遇在市場及人生中的隱蔽角色 (Fooled by Randomness)

塔勒波 (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) 著
online access from SuperStar Digital Library
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本書談的是運氣問題，確切地說，是我們在工作與人生中如何看待和處理運氣問題。錯把運氣當成技巧的事——交易市場是個最令人矚目的大舞台。《成事在天》以此為背景，對在我們所有人的生活最缺乏了解的這些因素做了令人折服的分析說明，作者以妙趣橫生，平白易懂的語言，通過具體的人物，成功地探討並解釋了我們在人生和市場中經常會遇到的三大學術問題：歸納問題，幸存者認識偏差以及人類對當今世界的遺傳不適性。

本書描述了若干個不同人物，其中有些人以自己的方式理解了機遇的意義：他們當中有棒球傳奇人物約吉·貝拉，認識論哲學家卡爾·波普爾，古代世界最智慧的人梭倫，現代金融家喬治·索羅斯，以及希臘旅行家尤利西斯，此外我們還認識了虛構人物尼洛，在自己的交易員業務中，他似乎能理解隨機性所扮演的角色。然而卻也成了自己帶有迷信色彩的愚蠢行為的犧牲品。所有這些角色中最令人一目了然的人，那個在正確地點和正確時間出現的幸運的傻瓜，“最不適者生存”的具體體現者，卻沒有被賦予名字，這類人吸引著忠心耿耿的追隨者，聽任權威們的見解和做法，但是，他們從機遇中獲得的東西沒人能再現，一隻猴子在鍵盤上胡亂敲打，最終有可能打出一篇《伊利亞特》，但是你敢跟它簽合同，讓它打出續篇來嗎？

我們真有能力辨出，誰是交好運的騙子，誰真具備先見之明？

我們確有必要從隨機事件搜尋出那本不存在的信息嗎？

要對運氣女神突發奇想的做為加以防範，對我們來說似乎不可能。不過讀過《成事在天》後，我們會變得多少有點準備。

(摘錄自product.dangdang.com)

Monday, June 1, 2015

A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature

Tom Siegfried
online access from ProQuest Ebook Central
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Millions have seen the movie and thousands have read the book but few have fully appreciated the mathematics developed by John Nash's beautiful mind. Today Nash's beautiful math has become a universal language for research in the social sciences and has infiltrated the realms of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and even quantum physics. John Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize in economics for pioneering research published in the 1950's on a new branch of mathematics known as game theory. At the time of Nash's early work, game theory was briefly popular among some mathematicians and Cold War analysts. But it remained obscure until the 1970's when evolutionary biologists began applying it to their work. In the 1980's economists began to embrace game theory. Since then it has found an ever expanding repertoire of applications among a wide range of scientific disciplines. Today neuroscientists peer into game players brains, anthropologists play games with people from primitive cultures, biologists use games to explain the evolution of human language, and mathematicians exploit games to better understand social networks. A common thread connecting much of this research is its relevance to the ancient quest for a science of human social behaviour, or a Code of Nature, in the spirit of the fictional science of psychohistory described in the famous Foundation novels by the late Isaac Asimov. In "A Beautiful Math", acclaimed science writer Tom Siegfried describes how game theory links the life sciences, social sciences, and physical sciences in a way that may bring Asimov's dream closer to reality.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

For more information about John Forbes Nash, Jr., please visit John Nash from Gale Biography in Context.

博弈論的詭計：日常生活中的博弈策略

王春永編著
online access from SuperStar Digital Library
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博弈論的目的在於巧妙的策略，而不是解法。我們學習博弈論的目的，不是為了享受博弈分析的過程，而在於贏得更好的結局。博弈的思想既然來自現實生活，它就可以高度抽象化地用數學工具來表述，也可以用日常事例來說明，並運用到生活中去。沒有高深的數學知識，我們同樣通過博弈論的學習成為生活中的策略高手。孫臏沒有學過高等數學，但是這並不影響他通過運行策略來幫助田忌贏得賽馬。

博弈時時存在，它就在你的身邊。本書就是試圖通過日常生活中常見的例子，來介紹博弈論的基本思想及運用，並且尋求用種智慧來指導生活決策的方法。

(摘錄自amazon.cn)

Monday, May 25, 2015

How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships

Leil Lowndes
online access from EBSCOhost
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"You'll not only break the ice, you'll melt it away with your new skills." -- Larry King

"The lost art of verbal communication may be revitalized by Leil Lowndes." -- Harvey McKay, author of “How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”

What is that magic quality makes some people instantly loved and respected? Everyone wants to be their friend (or, if single, their lover!) In business, they rise swiftly to the top of the corporate ladder. What is their "Midas touch?"

What it boils down to is a more skillful way of dealing with people.

The author has spent her career teaching people how to communicate for success. In her book How to Talk to Anyone (Contemporary Books, October 2003) Lowndes offers 92 easy and effective sure-fire success techniques-- she takes the reader from first meeting all the way up to sophisticated techniques used by the big winners in life. In this information-packed book you’ll find:

• 9 ways to make a dynamite first impression
• 14 ways to master small talk, "big talk," and body language
• 14 ways to walk and talk like a VIP or celebrity
• 6 ways to sound like an insider in any crowd
• 7 ways to establish deep subliminal rapport with anyone
• 9 ways to feed someone's ego (and know when NOT to!)
• 11 ways to make your phone a powerful communications tool
• 15 ways to work a party like a politician works a room
• 7 ways to talk with tigers and not get eaten alive

In her trademark entertaining and straight-shooting style, Leil gives the techniques catchy names so you'll remember them when you really need them, including: "Rubberneck the Room," "Be a Copyclass," "Come Hither Hands," “Bare Their Hot Button,” “The Great Scorecard in the Sky," and "Play the Tombstone Game,” for big success in your social life, romance, and business.

How to Talk to Anyone, which is an update of her popular book, Talking the Winner's Way (see the 5-star reviews of the latter) is based on solid research about techniques that work!

By the way, don't confuse How to Talk to Anyone with one of Leil's previous books, How to Talk to Anybody About Anything. This one is completely different!

(Excerpt from amazon.com)