THE FOCUSED MIND

When is the best time to make a decision and more importantly, when should we not make decisions.

According to Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, we should make decisions when we aren’t fatigued.

In their 2011 book, Willpower: The Greatest Human Strength, Baumeister, a social psychologist, and Tierney, a science writer, describe the results of a study of parole boards at an Israeli prison.  The board approved prisoner paroles 70 percent of the time in the morning, but only 10 percent of the time in the afternoon.

Even controlling for other factors which helped create the results (such as different types of prisoners getting different time slots, etc.), what caused the discrepancy?

“The mental work of ruling on case after case, whatever the individual merits, wore them down,” they write.

The researchers maintain that factors such as differing energy or glucose levels (which vary by time of day)  impact our willingness and ability to engage in mental decision making.

With this in mind, many professions (legal, corporate, investment, medical) should decide to skew work time and shift decision tasks to earlier in the day.

Or maybe we should just bring back siestas.

Share this post

Are mailboxes and general stores new/old solutions for contemporary service?

For one, the mailbox is answering the call for delivery of online purchases.

Amazon is now teaming up with Staples, Radio Shack, 7-Eleven and Albertsons for its Amazon Locker Service.  The physical retailers will install Amazon lockers in their stores, allowing customers to buy from Amazon and ship packages to the lockers and then pick them up later.

As we have noted in our New American Lifestyles context, individuals are increasingly moving to urban locations and these locker services, also offered by startups BufferBox and ShopRunner, may prove beneficial to those living in apartment buildings and urban environments.

For another example of the past offering a solution for modern problems, the general store is proving to be a valuable retail model in some cities.

Facing a mass exodus from urban to rural areas and a general population decline that was forcing retailers to close, residents of the German village of Barmen formed a corporation and funded the creation of a village center in 2006.  Today the 150 square meter store sells basic staples and also has an ATM machine, post office, travel center, a place to register a car or renew a driver’s license and has a doctor who comes once a week from a neighboring town.

Those who run the Barmen store have gotten so many inquiries from other towns that they have created a separate consulting firm and estimate that they have helped set up about 10 other stores, none of which are losing money.  They have another 25 stores in the works.

According to one of the Barmen consultants, the most important element of the village store is the café in the back.  While the store can’t compete with discounters on price, or with upscale supermarkets on variety, it can offer a community feel and an experience.

Simplicity (the limited inventory), Connectivity (the community of the town center) and Experience (the café) are three things that are making these general stores a success and are also three of the four items, along with Restraint, on our American Consumer Values Hierarchy.

American retailers, faced with a myriad of challenges, might want to look to Germany for some ideas.

Share this post

In late October, Jordan’s intelligence department arrested 11 men who had allegedly been planning terrorist attacks aimed at western diplomats, foreign nationals and shopping centers.  The men are reported to have identified targets, carried out surveillance and been recruiting suicide bombers.  The Jordanian government said the men were inspired by the ideology of al-Qaida.  A government spokesman said the plotters had purchased arms from Syria and had been assisted by al-Qaida operatives based in Iraq in manufacturing home-made explosives.

Not long after those arrests in Jordan, the Indonesian counterterrorism police arrested 11 people accused of planning terrorist attacks on several high-profile targets including the American Embassy in Jakarta.  The police claim that those arrested were part of a relatively new group, the Sunni Movement for Indonesian Society, also known as Hasmi.  Indonesian police uncovered a completed bomb, explosive materials and bomb-making manuals.  An Indonesian spokesman called the threat part of a “new generation” of terrorist organizations that has splintered off from al-Qaida’s Southeast Asian affiliate, Jemaah Islamiyah.

The Jordan and Indonesian arrests come about six weeks after the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and at least according to the police reports in Jordan and Indonesia, included plots to attack U.S. Embassy’s and diplomats.

Are these isolated, coincidental events, or evidence of a network of next-generation terrorists loosely working together to accomplish a common goal?

Twelve years after we wrote our September 2000 Briefing entitled “Bombs and Networks,” intelligence services are still trying to figure that out.

http://www.inferentialfocus.com/media/files/briefings/if2124.pdf

Share this post

As we have been discussing, consumers now trust their shopping “process”, which includes things such as comparison shopping, blog reviews and friend queries more than they trust any specific product or brand.

Yabbly  is a new community-based question and answer Website and app  which allows consumers to receive feedback on potential purchases from others who have recently been in the same situation.   A consumer can ask a question from the general community and Yabbly will then match the questioner with others who have recently made similar decisions.

This Website has the potential to be another tool in the quickly expanding consumer-shopping toolbox and as a result, brands will have to work even harder to get their message across.

http://www.fastcompany.com/3002609/buy-or-not-buy-yabbly-ask-someone-whos-been-there-bought

Share this post

We recall that this past May, President Putin chose not to attend a G8 meeting in Washington, D.C., and a NATO meeting in Chicago, but did travel to Beijing where he discussed energy deals, Iran’s nuclear situation and Syria’s civil violence.  He also participated in meetings of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO) during that time.

Recently, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesmen told news agency RIA Novosti of Moscow’s intention to abandon the Nunn-Luger Cooperative Threat Reduction program, through which the U.S. has funded the decommissioning and disposal of excess and time-expired stocks of Russian nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and other strategic weapons since the 1990s.  The move comes just as Moscow announced its intention to recommence nuclear tests and is placing emphasis on arming attack submarines with nuclear cruise missiles.

This new rejection of a long-standing cooperation agreement with the U.S. and its resumption of offensive-armaments buildup seem to be part of Putin’s strategic turn away from the West, as well as a move to warn China.  As Russia continues its strategic shift from the West to the East, will this armament buildup eventually result in future deals with its Asian neighbors or will Russia be viewed as another regional threat?

Share this post

Chinese pop star Gao Xiaosong recorded a 33 minute Chinese-language video explaining the American presidential election and electoral college system, which he posted to Chinese video sharing site youku.com.  The tutorial received over a million views.

Meanwhile, in a Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, 36 percent of Chinese surveyed in 2007 said they reject the idea of American democracy, but in the survey this year, just 29 percent held that view.

As America gets swept up in today’s presidential election, it is easy to forget that China’s once-a-decade leadership transition begins this Thursday as well.  While at this time it is unclear if China’s incoming leaders will institute any reforms that might appeal to the Chinese people’s increasing interest in suffrage, it is important to remember that this leadership transition in Beijing is at least as important as today’s U.S. election, if not more so.

Share this post

Much has been written about the upcoming U.S. military “pivot”.  The following are some recent facts and events, no opinions, that may illustrate future U.S. military priorities.   We currently don’t have enough intelligence to offer a new context, but we hope you find these interesting.

Focus on Asia-Pacific as a long-term objective

• A congressional study published in August suggests that the U.S. considers the modernization of China’s navy an aggressive act.
• China has developed ballistic anti-ship missiles that are the first capable of striking aircraft carriers.
• China has launched three nuclear subs of its own design that are capable of firing nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles.
• The number of Chinese military-related patents has increased by an average of 35 percent per year during the last decade.
• U.S.  Marine Corps is moving troops to Asia/Pacific and will end up with 22,000 Marines west of the International Date Line
• The U.S. 7^th Fleet, the Navy’s largest and strongest force with more than 60 warships and around 40,000 personnel, is stationed in Japan and Guam.

Greater focus on Special Operations

• U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year.
• President Obama asked for a 5.7 percent increase in the Special Operations budget for fiscal 2011 (total $6.3 bil) plus an additional $3.5 billion in 2010 contingency funding.

Advanced drones

• The Air Force Chief of Staff General claims they will pursue “manned-unmanned” pairings, including using a manned Apache helicopter to control UAV or UAVs payloads.

Cyber War

• The U.S. military recently participated with other countries in the Cyber Endeavor- full on cyber warfare drill focused on protecting information in a collaborative environment.
• The Department of Defense is building cyber ranges (controlled battlefield environments) to evaluate cyber defense tools.

Share this post

It doesn’t get much more meta than this.

Kansas museum officials have proposed spending $34 million to create the National Museum of Suburbia in Overland Park.

One of America’s quintessential (and economically successful) suburbs is going to build a museum of the suburbs.  Is America ready to put the idea of “suburbs” in a museum?  We suspect the suburb will always have a place in the fabric of the American landscape, but as we have recently written, the recent renaissance of urban and downtown areas across the U.S. makes it an interesting time to suggest the suburbs merit a position in history.

Share this post

“Trust. But verify.”

That was President Ronald Reagan’s perspective on international diplomacy.  Increasingly, that is advice all individuals, all the time, need to apply.  On Amazon.com, for instance, roughly 80 percent of all reviews are four stars or higher, a positive perspective that defies human nature.  Yelp!, which knows that fake reviews undermine its entire business model, claims a proprietary fraud-detection system stops at least 20 percent of all reviews before they reach the public.  According to computer scientist Bing Liu, who studies online fraud, roughly 30 percent of all reviews across the Internet are fraudulent.  Yet, 70 percent of global consumers trust online consumer reviews, up from 55 percent just four years ago.  Review fraud is increasing, and trust in those reviews is also increasing.  Is this ignorance or indifference to accuracy?

The Reagan perspective needs to be used much more widely than just for consumer reviews on the Internet.  A recent study of biomedical journals discovered that use of manipulated data or fraudulent professional reviews has increased 10 fold since 1975 – and that study only counted frauds that were caught.  In September alone, several journals, including Experimental Parasitology and Pharmaceutical Biology discovered that nearly 30 papers had made their way to publication by using fake peer reviews.  The reviews, which are routinely solicited by the journal to assess the papers’ worthiness for publication, were fraudulent, most commonly being reviews by fake professionals created by the authors themselves.

The Internet has put an enormous amount of information at everyone’s fingertips, and now those wanting to use that incredible resource are having to deal with the effects of the intentional polluting of that information. Has deception and fraud become so commonplace that those trying to detect it constantly lag the deceivers?  What does that say about nearly all kinds of societal interactions, including those in retail, advertising, medicine, equities, religion, politics, education, marketing and on and on?  Is there any place individuals can place their trust?  Is there room for an independent, non-aligned business to validate information?

Hmmm, fact checking, the new black.

Share this post

When skydiver Felix Baumgartner fell from near space – about 23 miles above the earth’s surface – he became the first free-falling human to break the sound barrier. However, that may not have been the only record set.

At the peak of the YouTube coverage of the event, there were approximately 8 million concurrent viewers from around the world, likely a record for YouTube.  The company claims that they had millions of live viewers during the first Presidential debate, and during a peak of YouTube’s Olympic coverage, it delivered video for more than a half million concurrent live streams.

Google is slowly aggregating a viewing audience for live events, and offering its streams to a global audience is certainly making that happen more quickly. The more live events Google can offer, the easier it will be for on-the-fence cable subscribers to cut the cord.

Share this post