Trust Your Gut? Not so Fast….
Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever read, Undoing is about the lifework of two brilliant but quirky Nobel Prize-winning Jewish psychologists (Ivan Tversky and DannyKahneman). It’s also a book about their evolving, endearing friendship. Tversky and Kahneman’s research focuses on critical judgement and decision making in uncertain environments—professional athlete recruitment, the stock market, healthcare, espionage, war, national security, marriage…. It literally has implications for everything and everyone. For me, this was a real game-changer; it tore a big hole into my “trust your gut” philosophy and it made me want to learn so much more about human behavior, especially when it comes to making decisions. While it doesn’t address marketing specifically, there is much here for a marketer to consider with respect to the consumer path to purchase. I love a book that teaches. This one demonstrates extremely effectively how often our thinking is flawed, specifically how often we ignore the math and science. On top of that, it’s exceptionally well written. Michael Lewis also authored The Big Short and Moneyball. I recommend highly!