organization:harvard business school

Opinion | Do Not Trust That Stranger’s 5-Star Review - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/sunday/five-star-customer-reviews.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/05/26/opinion/sunday/26chen/26chen-facebookJumbo.jpg

Stars beget sales. According to an often mentioned Harvard Business School working paper that studied restaurant reviews on Yelp, each added star is associated with a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. Not surprisingly, then, new businesses have sprung up to exploit the rating system to the seller’s or the platform’s advantage.

Finally, it’s hard to know what the stars even mean. Often times, whether it’s a mattress or can opener or an Uber driver, a five-star rating means “nothing disastrous happened,” said Nikhil Garg, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. A recent study he co-wrote reported that 80 percent of people gave freelancers hired from an online platform five stars. But when he asked people to choose from different words (“terrible,” “mediocre,” “best possible,” etc.), at least half of the freelancers earned the equivalent of a two-, three- or four-star review.

In the case of hotels, said Dr. Cotte, five stars typically means “everything is what I expected.” I’m assuming this is how the Hampton Inn averaged a five-star rating on my recent search for a hotel in Maine, compared to several luxury resorts that rated only a four.

The experts confirmed what I knew, but resisted, all along. If you really want to find the best product or service for your needs, you’ll need to exert some effort. But it’s also worth remembering that if you don’t, it’s no big deal.

As Dr. Salganik explained, even if a system is gamed, the worst product probably won’t end up at the top of your screen for long; assuming there’s a considerable difference in quality among the options, it will eventually be knocked down. But if the products are pretty similar, then yes, it’s possible that the very best one will actually not float to the very top — though that’s no tragedy either. As Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Paradox of Choice,” argues, if everything is essentially the same, then there’s nothing wrong with ending up with a product that’s the second- or third-best of the heap.

Opinion | Do Not Trust That Stranger’s 5-Star Review - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/sunday/five-star-customer-reviews.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/05/26/opinion/sunday/26chen/26chen-facebookJumbo.jpg

Bon papier sur les évaluations en ligne.

Stars beget sales. According to an often mentioned Harvard Business School working paper that studied restaurant reviews on Yelp, each added star is associated with a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. Not surprisingly, then, new businesses have sprung up to exploit the rating system to the seller’s or the platform’s advantage.

Finally, it’s hard to know what the stars even mean. Often times, whether it’s a mattress or can opener or an Uber driver, a five-star rating means “nothing disastrous happened,” said Nikhil Garg, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. A recent study he co-wrote reported that 80 percent of people gave freelancers hired from an online platform five stars. But when he asked people to choose from different words (“terrible,” “mediocre,” “best possible,” etc.), at least half of the freelancers earned the equivalent of a two-, three- or four-star review.

In the case of hotels, said Dr. Cotte, five stars typically means “everything is what I expected.” I’m assuming this is how the Hampton Inn averaged a five-star rating on my recent search for a hotel in Maine, compared to several luxury resorts that rated only a four.

The experts confirmed what I knew, but resisted, all along. If you really want to find the best product or service for your needs, you’ll need to exert some effort. But it’s also worth remembering that if you don’t, it’s no big deal.

As Dr. Salganik explained, even if a system is gamed, the worst product probably won’t end up at the top of your screen for long; assuming there’s a considerable difference in quality among the options, it will eventually be knocked down. But if the products are pretty similar, then yes, it’s possible that the very best one will actually not float to the very top — though that’s no tragedy either. As Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Paradox of Choice,” argues, if everything is essentially the same, then there’s nothing wrong with ending up with a product that’s the second- or third-best of the heap.

#E-commerce #Evaluation #Avis_utilisateurs

Opinion | Do Not Trust That Stranger’s 5-Star Review - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/25/opinion/sunday/five-star-customer-reviews.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/05/26/opinion/sunday/26chen/26chen-facebookJumbo.jpg

Stars beget sales. According to an often mentioned Harvard Business School working paper that studied restaurant reviews on Yelp, each added star is associated with a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. Not surprisingly, then, new businesses have sprung up to exploit the rating system to the seller’s or the platform’s advantage.

Finally, it’s hard to know what the stars even mean. Often times, whether it’s a mattress or can opener or an Uber driver, a five-star rating means “nothing disastrous happened,” said Nikhil Garg, a doctoral candidate at Stanford University. A recent study he co-wrote reported that 80 percent of people gave freelancers hired from an online platform five stars. But when he asked people to choose from different words (“terrible,” “mediocre,” “best possible,” etc.), at least half of the freelancers earned the equivalent of a two-, three- or four-star review.

In the case of hotels, said Dr. Cotte, five stars typically means “everything is what I expected.” I’m assuming this is how the Hampton Inn averaged a five-star rating on my recent search for a hotel in Maine, compared to several luxury resorts that rated only a four.

The experts confirmed what I knew, but resisted, all along. If you really want to find the best product or service for your needs, you’ll need to exert some effort. But it’s also worth remembering that if you don’t, it’s no big deal.

As Dr. Salganik explained, even if a system is gamed, the worst product probably won’t end up at the top of your screen for long; assuming there’s a considerable difference in quality among the options, it will eventually be knocked down. But if the products are pretty similar, then yes, it’s possible that the very best one will actually not float to the very top — though that’s no tragedy either. As Barry Schwartz, the author of “The Paradox of Choice,” argues, if everything is essentially the same, then there’s nothing wrong with ending up with a product that’s the second- or third-best of the heap.

Livestream Tonight : Naomi Klein and Shoshana Zuboff on the Rise of Surveillance Capitalism
▻https://theintercept.com/2019/03/01/surveillance-capitalism-book-shoshana-zuboff-naomi-klein

Join Intercept senior correspondent Naomi Klein and Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism : The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power,” for an engaging discussion about the unprecedented form of power called “surveillance capitalism” and the quest by corporations to predict and control our behavior. Shoshana Zuboff is the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism : The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of (...)

#algorithme #sécuritaire #surveillance

//theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/03/surveillance-feature-art-for-post-1551395030.gif

Acing the algorithmic beat, journalism’s next frontier » Nieman Journalism Lab
▻http://www.niemanlab.org/2019/02/acing-the-algorithmic-beat-journalisms-next-frontier

http://www.niemanlab.org/images/algorithm-cc-700x394.jpg

Algorithms shape large parts of everyday life: our interactions with other people, what products we purchase, the information we see (or don’t see), our investment decisions and our career paths. And we trust their judgment: people are more likely to follow advice when they are being told that it came from an algorithm rather than a human, according to a Harvard Business School study.

Machines make mistakes

Despite our growing reliance on algorithms, the Pew Research Center found that Americans are concerned with the fairness and effectiveness of computer programs that make important decisions in their lives. 58 percent feel that algorithms are likely to reflect some level of human bias.

And they’re right. Even though algorithms can seem “objective” and can sometimes even outperform human judgment, they are still fallible. The notion that algorithms are neutral because math is involved is deeply flawed. After all, algorithms are based on data created by humans — and humans make mistakes and have biases. That’s why American mathematician Cathy O’Neil says: “Algorithms are opinions embedded in code.”

Machine bias can have grave consequences. A hiring algorithm at a large tech company might teach itself to prefer male applicants over female applicants. Policing software that conducts risk assessments might be biased against black people. And a content recommendation algorithm might amplify conspiracy theories.

#Algorithmes #Journalisme #Médias

“When You Get That Wealthy, You Start to Buy Your Own #Bullshit”: The Miseducation of Sheryl Sandberg | Vanity Fair
▻https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/sheryl-sandberg-harvard-business-school-leadership

... it starts all the way back in 1977, when Sandberg was just eight years old and the U.S. economy was still recovering from the longest and deepest recession since the end of World War II. That’s the year that #Harvard #Business School professor Abraham Zaleznik wrote an article entitled, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” in America’s most influential business journal, Harvard Business Review. For years, Zaleznik argued, the country had been over-managed and under-led. The article helped spawn the annual multi-billion-dollar exercise in nonsense known as the #Leadership Industry, with Harvard as ground zero. The article gave Harvard Business School a new raison d’être in light of the fact that the product it had been selling for decades—managers—was suddenly no longer in vogue. Henceforth, it would be molding leaders.

[...]

The truth is, Harvard Business School, like much of the #M.B.A. universe in which Sandberg was reared, has always cared less about moral leadership than career advancement and financial performance.

The roots of the problem can be found in the Harvard Business School’s vaunted “Case Method,” a discussion-based pedagogy that asks students to put themselves in the role of corporate #Übermensch. At the start of each class, one unlucky soul is put in the hot seat, presented with a “what would you do” scenario, and then subjected to the ruthless interrogation of their peers. Graded on a curve, the intramural #competition can be intense—M.B.A.s are super-competitive, after all.

Let’s be clear about this: in business, as in life, there isn’t always one correct answer. So the teaching of a decision-making philosophy that is deliberate and systematic, but still open-minded, is hardly controversial on its face. But to help students overcome the fear of sounding stupid and being remorselessly critiqued, they are reminded, in case after case—and with emphasis—that there are no right answers. And that has had the unfortunate effect of opening up a chasm of moral equivalence in too many of their graduates.

#carriérisme #sans_scrupules

What You Don’t Know About Human Intuition Can Hurt You
▻https://hackernoon.com/what-you-dont-know-about-human-intuition-can-hurt-you-e9a12db2433e?sourc

Learn from the Flaws of Human IntuitionNir’s Note: This guest post is by Francesca Gino, an associate professor of #business Administration at Harvard Business School and the author of “Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan”A few years ago, Joe Marks, then Disney’s vice president of research, visited Tokyo Disneyland and was puzzled by a particular behavior he observed there. Park visitors were standing in line, often for many hours at a time, outside a shop in the park’s Frontierland. Marks found out that they were waiting to buy an inexpensive (less than $10) leather bracelet on which they could have a name painted or embossed.Why were the bracelets in such demand? Joe wondered. And why weren’t other stores in the park selling the same bracelets, so (...)

#tech #human-intuition #entrepreneurship #startup

Harvard Business School’s Latest Case Study Looks at American Politics and Finds a Rigged System - Real Time Economics - WSJ
▻https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2017/09/13/harvard-business-schools-latest-case-study-looks-at-american-politics-and

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-VC424_congha_P_20170913151845.jpg

The U.S. political system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly the way the two main parties designed it. That’s the conclusion of a new Harvard Business School study.

New Research Exposes Why Competition in U.S. Politics Industry is Failing America - News - Harvard Business School
▻http://www.hbs.edu/news/releases/Pages/why-competition-us-politics-industry-failing.aspx

“The politics industry is a classic duopoly with two dominant competitors. The parties focus on serving their partisan supporters and special interests, not the average voter, ” said Katherine Gehl, a former CEO, who has also worked in government and is now dedicated to driving political innovation and reform. “This report is not about adding to the depressing national dialog about politics, but about how to understand how the political system actually works and change it through reforms that will matter.”

“I was drawn to analyze the U.S. political system as an industry when our research found that our political system is the biggest impediment to U.S. competitiveness,” said Harvard’s Porter, who is based at Harvard Business School and co-chair of the School’s U.S. Competitiveness Project. “Our dysfunctional political outcomes are a competition problem. Politics is an industry that sets its own rules. Over time, it has shaped the nature of competition to advance the interests of political parties and their industry allies rather than serve the public interest.”

#démocratie #détournement #accaparement #etats-unis

Gauging urban change with Google Street View | Harvard Gazette
►http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/07/gauging-urban-change-with-google-street-view

https://harvardgazette.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/streetchange_77_seaport_blvd_boston_ma_6052.jpg

Nikhil Naik, Scott Duke Kominers, and their collaborators are hoping to transform the way scientists study urban environments, with an assist from Google.

In joint work with Edward L. Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, and César A. Hidalgo and Ramesh Raskar, associate professors at the MIT Media Lab, Kominers, an associate professor in the entrepreneurial management unit at Harvard Business School (HBS) and the department of economics, and Naik, a Prize Fellow in economics, history, and politics, authored a study that uses computer vision algorithms to examine millions of Google Street View images to measure how urban areas are changing.

#urban_matter via Renaud Epstein sur Twitter

#Made_in_america (compilation uniquement à partir de sources MSM)

The world’s best cyber army doesn’t belong to Russia
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/515937

The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/532933

jeudi 21 janvier 2016 - Hellemmes - Action Antipub Déboulonneurs
▻http://lille.demosphere.eu/rv/3880
#autres

The New Weapons of Mass Detection | Shoshana Zuboff’s Response to Martin Schulz
FAZ 13/02/2014
▻http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ueberwachung/shoshana-zuboff-s-response-to-martin-schulz-the-new-weapons-of-mass-detection-1

#surveillance #tracking #silicon_army

Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Summons: Our Fight for the Soul of an Information Civilization (Forthcoming, 2015), is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration (retired) at the Harvard Business School.

The challenge I see is that, thanks to Edward #Snowden, we know that the technology revolution has once again been hijacked by the dream of perfect control. It’s being used as a Trojan horse for a still poorly understood convergence of public and private institutions that wield unprecedented power over information. This new power bloc operates outside our control as citizens and consumers. I’m calling it the military-informational complex, because its power derives from the production and deployment of what I call new weapons of mass detection composed of information and the technical apparatus required for its access, analysis, and storage.

Eisenhower’s Message in a Bottle
▻http://seenthis.net/messages/105043#message105105

The military-information complex is a convergence of public and private expertise in the control and analysis of information camouflaged by a forest of excuses. The official story is that these growing powers are a necessary response to forces beyond control: technological requirements, digital proliferation, autonomous market dynamics, and security imperatives.

(...)

Rewind for a moment to 1961 and President Eisenhower’s farewell address to the American people. He had revised the speech many times over a two year period. In each draft he insisted on retaining a crucial passage, as if he was determined to send a message in a bottle to be discovered, read, and grasped by future generations. American society was under threat from a new “military-industrial complex,” he warned, and only “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry” could ensure that “security and liberty” would both prosper. Guardian readers will recognize the phrase “security and liberty” as the tag line on Glen Greenwald’s now immortal series. Greenwald found the bottle.

Five years later economist John Kenneth Galbraith, elaborated his concept of the “technostructure” in The New Industrial State. “Power,” he wrote, had “passed to...a new production function... men of diverse technical knowledge, experience or other talent, which modern industrial technology and planning require.” Galbraith’s book celebrated an industrial oligarchy at the heart of the military-industrial complex, enmeshed in state functions and protected by state power, insulated from public accountability, and innocent of responsibility. Why? Because it promoted itself as the inevitable expression of technology’s indisputable “requirements.” Galbraith had fallen under the spell of technological determinism.

«I’m all about demilitarization»

Demilitarization had been essential for what Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain calls the “generative” capabilities of the Internet –– the ways it lends itself to trust, interaction, invention, and creativity. Militarization is already having the opposite effect, as firms withdraw their data from cloud servers and governments explore new regulations and infrastructures that enable nation-specific privacy controls.

Of equal concern are the economic effects of information militarization. It suppresses the creative adaptation to human needs that is #capitalism’s greatest strength . In the annals of capitalism, the production of prosperity and well-being have depended on a steady flow of commercial “mutations” that better align business with the changing needs of people.

In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate secure portals...in some instances on company servers.” In some cases, the New York Times reported, tech company employees have national security clearance. In others, NSA agents installed their own software on company servers, and even hung out at the company for days or weeks of system monitoring.

Had Google and Facebook learned surveillance tactics from the NSA in the first place? Or was it the other way around? The identity of the military-informational complex was taking shape along with its assumptions, attitudes, interests, and perspectives. Armaments production was well underway.

#auto-censure

That self-censorship is a life sentence to an endlessly repeating present. Nothing new can happen once we curb our thoughts.

Why Do Some Americans Speak So Confidently When They Have No Clue What They’re Talking About?
▻http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/leadership-training-or-bullshit-training-harvard-price-pseudo

The Harvard Business School information session on how to be a good class participant instructs, “Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only 55 percent, say it as if you believe it 100 percent,” Susan Cain reported in her bestselling book Quiet. At HBS, Cain noticed, “If a student talks often and forcefully, then he’s a player; if he doesn’t, he’s on the margins.”

(...)

Our society once routinely called people “bullshit artists” if they spoke with total certainty without any basis for such certainty so as to persuade others and get attention for themselves. Nowadays, bullshit training is called “leadership training” and unashamedly taught at “elite institutions” and at expensive leadership seminars.

Schumpeter: Too much information | #concentration #internet #interruptions
►http://www.economist.com/node/18895468

They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.