This Week in Startups

E1077: “Alchemy” Author Rory Sutherland on the Darwinian approach to business, analyzing outliers, why eccentric CEOs have a psychological advantage with customers & more!

Jun 19, 2020

02:19:53

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Highlights

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Episode notes

What's the Framing of a Crazy Idea?

02:02

Is It a 'Nudging'?

01:47

Telly Working and Remote Working - What Does It Mean for Business?

03:39

Introduction

3min

Architecture Is the Cheapest Way of Buying Art

2min

You Can't Change the Interior With Frank Lloyd Wright Properties for Sale

3min

Telly Working and Remote Working - What Does It Mean for Business?

4min

Zen Desk for Start Ups - The Gold Standard

6min

The Darwinian Approach to Business

3min

Dyson - Is There a Market for a Vacuum Cleaner?

2min

Buying Nespresso - I Don't Know.

3min

Square Space Is the Answer to Remote Demo De Docom

3min

10.

The Value of the Product Attribute

3min

11.

The Dyson's Status Is a Status Symbol

2min

12.

The Value of a Dish Washer

2min

13.

Electric Cars - Is It Fascinating?

2min

14.

Netsweet - The Seven Actions Businesses Need to Take Right Now

4min

15.

Is There a Difference Between Marketing to the Tech World and Behaval Science Framing

2min

16.

The Lion Fish - Is It a Predator?

2min

17.

The Banana King - A Great Entrapanorial Tale

4min

18.

Is It a 'Nudging'?

2min

19.

Is Variolation a Form of Emotional Efficiency?

2min

20.

Is It a Mask Question?

2min

21.

Is There a Difference on a Gender Basis?

2min

22.

Is It Normal for Translators to Wear Masks?

3min

23.

The Loss of Truth and Trust in Perts

3min

24.

What's the Difference Between Free Market Economics and News Bias?

4min

25.

What's the Framing of a Crazy Idea?

2min

26.

Parliamentary Democracies, Parliamentary Monarchies, Canada's Kind of Ok?

2min

27.

What Kind of Country Would You Like to Live In?

2min

28.

The One Virtue of Conservatism Is Something It Doesn't Try to Do

2min

29.

Oskar Winners Related to Other Oskarwinns

2min

30.

Race Is Not a Visible Factor

2min

31.

How to Get Into the Advertising Industry

2min

32.

How to Increase Diversity?

2min

33.

Casey Asks, What's Your Favorite Behavior Study?

2min

34.

What Is Ergodicity?

3min

35.

I'm Going Through Six Pods a Day

2min

36.

How Many Boxes Do You Actually Recycle?

2min

37.

The Most Irresponsible Idea You Made?

2min

38.

I'm a Tech Support, and I'll Buy It for You.

2min

39.

Is Your Time Worth More Than This?

4min

40.

The Meeting Owl

2min

41.

Office Spaces Need to Change, but in an Unexpected Way

5min

42.

Is There a Library Area of the Off?

2min

43.

You Can't Bring Your Wife as a Guest

2min

44.

Book Alchemy by Rorie Southerland

2min

45.

Podcasting - I'm a Podcaster, Im Not Quitting

3min

46.

I've Got This Album for Free, I'll Just Have to Put Up With That

4min

47.

Is There a Net Working Value for a TED Conference?

2min

48.

What's Your Best Idea for Theatres?

2min

49.

Movie Theatres Should Run the Same Film Over and Over Again, Twenty Four Hours

3min

50.

What Is the Horror Film?

2min

51.

You Can't Go, You Cant Go.

2min

52.

The Book Alchemy, the Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brand's Business and Life, Is a Tourit of Force

2min

53.

I Wouldn't Re Watch Game of Thrones, or the Wire, or Anything Like That.

2min

54.

The Soprano Series - Carlos A

2min

55.

Is That What Homeland Was Based On?

3min

56.

Ricky Gervase Takes the Piss Out of Us

2min

1:00 Jason intros "Alchemy" author Rory Sutherland
3:45 Architecture is the cheapest way to buy art
6:01 How Rory is dealing with quarantine, why he prefers working from home, and will businesses be more efficient post-COVID?
14:12 What is Rory's job, why you should strive to create your own job title, treating the free market as Galapagos Island, using the Darwinian approach to business & analyzing outliers
19:47 Why some business successes are due to psychological discoveries: Red Bull, Dyson & Nespresso
27:25 Jason's theory on why Dyson succeeded, Kano theory on product development, why eccentric CEOs have a psychological advantage with customers, how Uber's arrival map was the key feature of the product
33:48 Why the actual value of products are typically not the proposed value of products
39:40 How new products hold value as a conversation starter, how context, setting & framing is essential to innovation
43:21 Two ways to create economic value: find something people want and figure out how to make it OR figure out what you can make and make people want it & examples: Lionfish, Fish That Ate The Whale, Royal Potatoes
50:13 Why are Americans resistant to behavioral economics? Is there still a hangover from McCarthyism? How this relates to COVID and wearing masks
1:02:08 Daily news is 95% noise, why political news coverage doesn't reflect political reality
1:11:40 Why modern politics is dumb since far left and far right are much closer than they've ever been, issues with referrals & nepotism
1:21:06 How Rory got his first job in advertising "as a weirdo" and the wildcard since he was hired as part of a group, individual hiring vs. group hiring
1:23:20 TWiST Book Club Questions - Casey: Favorite behavioral study experiment or one that he found the results to be surprising? (ie. Milgram experiment or Stanford Prison Study)
1:32:12 Catherine: What’s Rory’s favorite alchemist moment of his own from work? Has he had to advocate for an illogical idea, and how did he persuade others?
1:41:01 What will we lose by being remote?
1:51:19 Reading their own audiobooks, how cheaper and easier consumption does NOT cannibalize original mediums
2:01:26 How Rory would reinvent the theatre experience, why modern corporations are slow to innovate & experiment
2:11:18 Greatness of re-readable books and rewatchable movies/television