April 30, 2004 • 10:44 am
Martin Seligman’s goal in life is to make people happier. As he explains:
My great ambition for psychology…is that in the next 10 to 15 years we will be able to…claim unblushingly that psychology and psychiatry will have decreased the tonnage of suffering in the world, but also increase the tonnage of happiness in the world.
He has a Web site, authentichappiness.org, where you can take a variety of happiness and depression tests that will help you understand what type of interventions you might take in your own life to achieve a more meaningful, authentic form of happiness.
But an important question arises – is it really OK to pursue an ambition of happines, and use tools other than your own mental psyche and capabilities to enhance your own experience of happines. People are usually born with a set level of talent for being happy. It is something it is hard to be in complete control over. If you are not gifted in happines, should you be allowed to treat this as a condition that can be treated, even though it is not an incapacitating disease? If you just do it to feel better, to increase your level of happines, for comfort, much like recreational drug use. And if you do agree that you should be allowed to increase your happines, should it be as easy as popping a pill?
Martin Seligman has some comments to this. The most important one being that meaning of life is always a component of real happines. Even though you may increase your potential of happines with a pill, you will always be in charge of creating your personal meaning of life, and that has never come without any effort.
This, of course, is a complex debate, and one that should be taken seriously as we are moving towards the neurosociety where individuals will be empowered with new tools for enhancing not only their mental state, but their cognitive capabilites as well.
I know I probably will be one of the first to embrace these innovations, I am all about mastering my life.
Filed under: Mind and Body
Google’s upcoming and much anticipated IPO is probably the IPO of the decade, at least in the tech sector. Every decade has had one the past 30 years or so. As written in a New York Times article:
This mirrors similar once-a-decade events that started companies like Intel in the 1970′s, Microsoft and Apple Computer in the 1980′s and Netscape in the 1990′s, all of which attracted intense attention and served as the icons for successive generations of digital technology.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page are not the usual entrepeneurs. They’ve created all this in just 6 years time. They do not want to create just another tech company, and defie the established corporate culture, even compared to the liberal, casual silicon valley style of business. They refuse to be captives of the short-term horisonts of Wall Street analyst, and are organizing their IPO as a five-step auction.
Analysts are expecting the IPO generating about 18 billion in cash, and a total market value of about 30 to 50 billion dollars! The founders are for sure becoming instant billionaires and there’s probably a few other early employees that can expect a significant growth in their fortunes over night.
Just check out their parking lot outside their parking lot at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA.
Filed under: Business and Marketing
The Rady School of Management at The University of California, San Diego is the first business school to open at a top-tier research university since 1970. It’s different, particularly in its industry focus and interdisiplinary approach.
It needs a different kind of school. Most spend too much time on general management — leadership, organizational behavior, marketing. Growth industries today are technology industries, and they need individuals who not only speak the language of business but also have credibility among scientists and engineers.
They are offering tracks in their innovative MBA programme that will be offered jointly with UCSD’s medical, engineering, and computer science schools.
They expect to launch a PhD programme in 2007. Should be a interesting one. This may be one campus that may be interested in researching the possible applications of neuroscience to market and consumer research.
Filed under: Research and Readings
The Institute for Global Futures, lead by by future guru Dr. James Canton, has published a top ten list of business trends. They propose the innovation economy and emphasize the convergence of:
Four power tools—nanotech, biotech, infotech, and cognitive science. They will offer a new gold rush of opportunity. Leveraging the new building blocks of innovation comprised of bits, atoms, genes, and neurons will be essential for future leaders.
Consumer research is an important part of this picture. Two of the ten trends are related to understanding the mind of the market:
4. The capture and analysis of customer information about product/service use, needs, wants, desires and behavior is mission-critical to the enterprise.
5. The integration of customer touch points across all channels is essential to future success. Watch out for the breakdowns.
Coupling these trends, and using the new buildings blocks of innovation, reveals some very interesting emerging opportunities in market and consumer research. But in order to be a significant source of market intelligence, researchers must develop new methods that investigate consumers on the same data-level on which innovation in general is based.
Filed under: Business and Marketing
