The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Transformation Economy by THRESHOLD

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do "Free-Rider Friday." Most of our shows are "topic" driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be "event" driven—whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events either will bring up. If you'd like to call-in during the live show, the listener line is: 866-472-5790. You can also participate on Twitter at #ASKTSOE. We look forward to having you at our Inaugural Free-Rider Friday show on January 30th!

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, "Competition is a furious plagiarism." Yet the fact of the matter is there is no such thing as a commodity. Anything can be differentiated, which is precisely the marketer's job. Believing that your company—and the products and services it offers—is a commodity is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are a commodity, so will your customers. How could they believe otherwise? This notion of selling a commodity is one of the most pernicious beliefs, which leads to price wars, incessant copying of competitor's offerings, and lack of innovation, creativity, and dynamism, not to mention suboptimal pricing strategies. The potential for competitive differentiation is only limited by your company's imagination. Many business leaders lament that since their industries are mature, commoditization is inevitable, despite all the empirical evidence surrounding them that this is simply not so. Ed and I will attempt to dispel the myth of commoditization.

Ed and Ron will interview Dr. Jules Goddard, author of one of the best business books we read in 2014: Uncommon Sense and Common Nonsense. Dr. Goddard has many profound insights into corporate strategy, value creation, efficiency vs. effectiveness, and much else. This promises to be an insightful and educational conversation.

Ron and Ed interview Adam Davidson, a journalist focusing on business and economics issues for National Public Radio. He is currently one of the co-hosts of the Planet Money podcast. Previously he has covered globalization issues, the Asian tsunami, and the war in Iraq, for which he won the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. His work has won several major awards including the Peabody, DuPont-Columbia, and the George Polk Award. brbr Adam came to our attention when he mentioned the VeraSage Institute in his New York Times Article - Welcome to the Failure Age.

Ron and Ed will interview Dr. Thomas Sowell, world renowned economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. His appearance on TSOE coincides with the release of a new edition of his international best seller on economics, Basic Economics – 5th Edition (Basic Books, December 2014). In this soon-to-be released volume, Sowell revises and updates his popular book on common sense economics, bringing the world into clearer focus through an understanding of the fundamental economic principles that influence our lives. Dr. Sowell is currently Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Sowell was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York. Since 1980, he has worked at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He writes from a conservative and classical liberal perspective, advocating free market economics and has written more than thirty books. He is a National Humanities Medal winner.

On Friday's episode, Ron and Ed will interview Jody Thompson, the Co-Founder of CultureRx® and Co-Creator of the Results-Only Work Environment™ (ROWE™), along with Cali Ressler. CultureRx® is the sole global authority on ROWE™ and the sole executor of organizational and individual certification. Thompson provides domestic and international keynote presentations on the 21st century workplace and has been featured on the covers of BusinessWeek, Workforce Management Magazine, HR Magazine, and HR Executive Magazine, as well as in the New York Times, TIME Magazine, USA Today, and on Good Morning America, CNBC, MSNBC and CNN. She has co-authored two best-sellling books on revolutionizing the workplace and the practice of management, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It and Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It.

On Friday's show Ron and Ed will interview Tim Williams, a noted author, international speaker, and presenter for major advertising associations, agency networks, universities, and business conferences worldwide. brbr He is author of the book, "Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out" ranked by Amazon as one of the top ten books on brand building. His booklet "Defining the Agency Brand," published by the American Association of Advertising Agencies is regarded as the standard in agency brand development. Tim's newest book is "Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success."

On the biggest shopping day of the year, hosts discuss a thought-provoking book arguing that holiday gift-giving can lead to a staggering $12 billion economic loss. They explore the concept of deadweight loss with humorous examples of unwanted gifts. The conversation covers spending frameworks, impacts of relationship proximity on gift value, and the time wasted during holiday shopping. They suggest alternatives like cash and gift cards, while reflecting on international gift-giving trends and the commercialization of Christmas.

Charging different prices to different customers is the definition of price discrimination, a term coined in 1920 by Arthur Cecil Pigou in The Economics of Welfare. Price discrimination occurs when a good or service is sold at different prices that do not reflect differences in production costs. Companies engage in this practice in order to extract the consumer surplus from various customers. It is worth noting that price discrimination does not imply discriminating against people based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity, and so forth, but only on their willingness and ability to pay, which is based on the value they are receiving. Ed and Ron will explore the four requirements for a business to be able to price discriminate, the three degrees of price discrimination, examples of this practice, and the ethics of charging different prices to different customers.

Rabbi Lapin is one of America's most eloquent speakers and his ability to extract life principles from the Bible and transmit them in an entertaining manner has brought countless numbers of Jews and Christians closer to their respective faiths. In 2007 Newsweek magazine included him in its list of America's fifty most influential rabbis.