Columbia University Press

Today, we will finish up our week featuring The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd, with a post explaining what the Robin Hood Foundation is and how it attempts to address the problem of poverty in New York City. (Don’t forget to enter our Goodreads book giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy!)

The Robin Hood Foundation finds, funds, and partners with programs that have proven they are an effective way to combat poverty in New York City. Robin Hood employs a rigorous system of metrics and third-party evaluation to ensure grantee accountability. The board pays all administrative and fundraising costs, so 100% of donations goes directly to helping New Yorkers in need build better lives. The foundation also works closely with grantees to help make them more effective, ensuring that they will assist even more people.

The Robin Hood Foundation is one of the premier poverty-fighting nonprofit organizations focused on combating poverty in New York. This aim leads the foundation to support more than 200 programs in the city, ranging from education reform to stable housing, from food availability to literacy, and from health insurance and healthcare availability to disaster relief.

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This week our featured book is The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, by Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, an imprint of Columbia University Press. Enter our Goodreads book giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy!

Today, we have a couple of videos from the excellent Vimeo channel of the Robin Hood Foundation. In the first video, Michael Weinstein explains the Robin Hood Foundation approach, and in the second, he explains “benefit-cost ratios.”

Our Approach from Robin Hood on Vimeo.

Michael Weinstein Benefit-Cost Video from Robin Hood on Vimeo.

This week our featured book is The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, by Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, an imprint of Columbia University Press. Enter our Goodreads book giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy!

Today, we have a guest post from Michael Weinstein, in which he explains how The Robin Hood Foundation decides what to fund when there are so many important programs that need funding.

The Robin Hood Foundation and “Relentless Monetization”
Michael M. Weinstein

We philanthropists face gnarly decisions. To fight poverty, do we train chronically unemployed women to drive commercial trucks or instead pour money into pre-kindergarten programs for poor youngsters? Do we train male ex-offenders to serve as drug-abuse counselors for adolescent boys or fund charter schools? We can’t afford to do everything.

In The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, Ralph Bradburd and I set forth a framework for making the right choices — spending philanthropic dollars with maximum impact.

Our framework, which we dub “relentless monetization,” uses the workhorse of modern economics, benefit-cost analysis, to help funders decide which grants to make. Spending dollars on programs with the highest benefit/cost ratios puts dollars where they do the most good. For example, taking dollars out of one project and spending them on a project whose benefit/cost ratio is twice as high amounts to raising and spending twice as many philanthropic dollars.

The framework does indeed bite hard. Here’s one of many examples.

At the Robin Hood Foundation, we once proudly funded what we saw as the best permanent supportive housing residence in the city. The grantee takes in homeless families, provides them excellent mental-health and other services, and keeps them safely, permanently housed. Using representative numbers, Robin Hood might have spent $300,000 a year to help house 60 families. We say this residence was best because none–not one–of its families returned to the streets. Case closed: great grant.

Or was it? Once our metric algorithms were in place and staff did the arithmetic, the benefit/cost calculation came in low—indeed, very low. Did we immediately pull the plug? No. Perhaps our algorithms were wrong and were missing key benefits. Perhaps our equations were right but our numbers were wrong. We did eventually pull the funding plug, but we did so only after two years of scrutiny. The answer was that permanent supportive housing is a frightfully expensive way to fight poverty. Here, Robin Hood would spend $300,000 a year to save the same 60 families year in and year out. We do that nowhere else. At our schools, the students in the sixth grade change each year. In our carpentry-training program, the trainees change each year. In our micro-lending programs, borrowers change each year.

Our point is not to criticize permanent supportive-housing programs. They pursue an inspiring and important mission. But for Robin Hood in particular, the strategy is not cost-effective. We can spend the $300,000 in other ways that lift significantly more poor New Yorkers out of poverty over any defined period.

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This week our featured book is The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, by Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, an imprint of Columbia University Press. Enter our Goodreads book giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy!

Today, we have an excerpt from the first chapter of The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving: “An Overview of Relentless Monetization.”

The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving

“The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving is a must read for all ‘do-gooders,’ including the donors who give money and the nonprofits that spend it. The authors have a marvelous way of conveying complex concepts in simple English, including one of the best explanations of benefit-cost analysis that I have ever read. This book is a true gem.” — Sheldon Danziger, University of Michigan

This week our featured book is The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving, by Michael M. Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd, published by Columbia Business School Publishing, an imprint of Columbia University Press.

Throughout the week, we will be featuring the book and its authors on our blog as well as on our Twitter feed, and on our Facebook page.

We are also offering TWENTY FREE copies of The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving through a book giveaway at Goodreads. To enter our book giveaway, simply click here and follow the instructions for entering. The giveaway runs through May 27th, so enter today for your chance to win!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving

by Michael M. Weinstein

Giveaway ends May 27, 2013.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

“This is a great book for both non-profit funders and non-profit leaders. The book’s “relentless monetization” concept — if widely deployed — would dramatically boost the impact of the independent sector. Now let’s get right to work and act on this great advice.” — Mark Tercek, President and CEO of the Nature Conservancy

The most recent issue of Barron’s features Howard Marks, author of The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor. The book is an update of his his best-selling The Most Important Thing but the new edition includes comments, insights, and counterpoints of four renowned investors and investment educators: Christopher C. Davis (Davis Funds), Joel Greenblatt (Gotham Capital), Paul Johnson (Nicusa Capital), and Seth A. Klarman (Baupost Group), as well as a foreword by Bruce Greenwald.

The article discusses the three commentators’ respect for Marks’s investment strategy and philosophy as well as remarkable success and that of his fund Oaktree Capital Management. The company consistently has high scores, prompting Warren Buffett to praise Marks’s famous memos to investors as must-reads. In 2007, Marks sensed the dangers of the sub-prime mortgage market and invested and prepared accordingly, providing his clients with another solid return amid the chaos in the wake of the financial collapse in 2008.

Marks grew up in Rego Park, Queens, the son of an accountant, whose investment philosophy was borne not only from his experience on Wall Street and his MBA from the University of Chicago but also his interest in Japanese culture:

Marks was particularly struck by the Buddhist concept of mujo, which holds that life and human affairs are a ceaseless process of transience and change to which the wise adjust. “Isn’t this the essence of investing?” he asked in one of his memos.

His experience investing for Citicorp in the 1970s provided for a crystallization of what is crucial for investing:

Perhaps most trenchant in Marks’ investing philosophy is his insight into investor behavior. Investors, in his opinion, tend to be lazy and superficial in their investment decisions, embracing rosy scenarios when optimism reigns and end-of-the-world despond when markets sink. Classic manic-depression, in other words, and not the wisdom of crowds. These swings cause markets to move in a pendulum motion around fair value, rather than in the linear direction most observers assume. That means investors must be astute, both in determining fair value and judging the amplitude of each emotional wave.

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Zach Lowe from Grantland recently interviewed Benjamin Alamar, author of Sports Analytics: A Guide for Coaches, Managers, and Other Decision Makers .

They interview took place at the annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference or “Nerd Fest 2013″. Alamar, who used to work as an analytics consultant for the Oklahoma City Thunder, describes how analytics shaped the team’s decision to draft Russell Westbrook over Brook Lopez, and why they thought Westbrook could play point guard.

In the interview Alamar also talked about how decisions in general are made by sports teams and how he had to convince decision-makers on the Thunder that analytics is an effective tool for assessing players. (For more on the book, here is an excerpt from Sports Analytics)

One of the most important voices on Wall Street is Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management and author of The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor. As reported by Robert Lenzer at Forbes, Howard Mark’s most recent letter cautions against some of the risks recently being taken in the market of late, behavior that resembles events leading up to the financial meltdown

In Marks’ letter he cites “errors of the herd,” “the brevity of financial memory,” and “the role of cycles and pendulums.”

Lenzer writes:

As Marks so grittily puts it; “The scramble for return has brought elements of pre-crisis behavior very much back to life. Mull that description of the fixed income markets in early 2013 over– and decide what the fallout might be on equities. Just as took place most shockingly in 2008 and early 2009.”

In the following interview with The Street, Howard Marks, author of The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor, discusses some of his insights about investing. Marks points to the complexity of the stock market and the importance of second-level thinking. He argues that there are inefficiencies in the stock market and it is important to focus on the value of an investment rather than its potential growth.

This week our featured book is Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation by William Duggan. Enter by 1 PM today for a chance to win a FREE copy of Creative Strategy. Professor Duggan is senior lecturer in business at Columbia Business School, where he teaches creative strategy in graduate and executive courses. Today, in the final day of our book giveaway, we are featuring a video taken of Professor Duggan teaching his well-known creative strategy class at Columbia, and reflecting on how common ideas of brainstorming don’t reflect our modern understanding of how the mind works.

This week our featured book is Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation by William Duggan. Enter today for a chance to win a FREE copy of Creative Strategy. Professor Duggan is senior lecturer in business at Columbia Business School, where he teaches creative strategy in graduate and executive courses. Today, we have a short video of Professor Duggan explaining how recent discoveries in mind science have changed the way that we should view the process of innovation.

This week our featured book is Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation by William Duggan. Enter today for a chance to win a FREE copy of Creative Strategy. Professor Duggan is senior lecturer in business at Columbia Business School, where he teaches creative strategy in graduate and executive courses. Today, we are featuring an excerpt from the introduction and the first chapter of Creative Strategy. In the chapter, “From Mind to Method,” Duggan explains how the human mind creates solutions to problems and then translates the solutions into a series of formal steps to be taken.

Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation — William Duggan by Columbia University Press

“My previous book, Strategic Intuition, laid out the theory. It explained the science of how creative ideas happen in the human mind and documented how successful innovators actually came up with their innovations. This new book, Creative Strategy, is the practice: it shows how to apply that theory as an innovation method yourself.” — William Duggan

This week our featured book is Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation by William Duggan. Enter today for a chance to win a FREE copy of Creative Strategy. Professor Duggan is senior lecturer in business at Columbia Business School, where he teaches creative strategy in graduate and executive courses. Today, we are featuring an interview with Professor Duggan that originally ran on Columbia Business School’s Ideas at Work.

What is creative strategy?

It’s a classic case of “theory to practice.” My previous book, Strategic Intuition, laid out the theory. It explained the science of how creative ideas happen in the human mind and documented how successful innovators actually came up with their innovations. This new book, Creative Strategy, is the practice: it shows how to apply that theory as an innovation method yourself.

Here’s how it works: you start with a problem or situation where you aim for an innovation, break that down in to elements of the problem, and then search for precedents that solve each element. You then see a subset of these precedents come together in your mind as a new combination that solves the problem. That idea is your innovation.
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This week our featured book and giveaway is: Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation by William Duggan.

Throughout the week we will highlight aspects of Creative Strategy on our blog, our Twitter feed, and Facebook page. We are also offering a FREE copy of the book to one winner.

To enter our book giveaway, simply e-mail lf2413@columbia.edu with your name and address. We will randomly select one winner on Friday at 1:00 pm. Good luck, and spread the word!

Stay tuned all week to learn more about this excellent new title from Columbia Business School Publishing!

With the recent publication of Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation, we wanted to revisit William Duggan’s related book, Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement.

In the following video, Duggan explains some of the ideas that shaped Strategic Intuition, including how innovation really happens in business and other fields and how that matches with what modern neuroscience tells us about how creative ideas form in the human mind.

Earlier this summer the popular website 800CEOREAD reviewed The Best Business Writing 2012, edited by Dean Starkman, Martha M. Hamilton, Ryan Chittum, and Felix Salmon.

The review praises the book for collecting the most compelling and important writing of the past year. It also commends The Best Business Writing 2012 for providing a larger context to understand recent events amid our 24-hours news cycle.

The review culminates by reiterating the importance of the volume:

So often lost in the mix are the facts we should be seeking, and the stories that ferret them out. The Best Business Writing 2012 searched those facts and stories out and gathered them back up in one important and entertaining collection. Some of those facts and stories may challenge your beliefs and change your mind; I know they are doing so for me. You are also certain to find much that will comfort and/or enrage you. Most importantly, you will find excellent, purposeful writing, well-told stories, and a search for the truth.

Earlier this year, the Columbia Journalism Review and Public Business, organized a panel Has the Business Press Failed the Public Trust?. Among the panelists were Dean Starkman and Felix Salmon, two of the editors of The Best Business Writing 2012.

The discussion focused on the the distinction between reporting for investors and the general public, the press’s ability to shape public debate, and the role of non-business reporters in covering business scoops. As evident in the video below of the event, the discussion often turned heated and revealed some of the challenges journalists face in covering business and financial news.

One of the more fascinating pieces in The Best Business Writing 2012 is When Patents Attack!, a story that was broadcast on NPR’s beloved “This American Life”.

In the radio piece, Alex Blumberg and Laura Sydell investigate how patent lawyers have run amok in the digital age, hindering innovation and costing companies and consumers billions of dollars. They track down shell companies in East Texas and a source’s inconsistencies in Silicon Valley to reveal how patent trolling is affecting innovation and driving the prices up on new technologies.

You can listen to the show in its entirety here:

Columbia Journalism Review‘s The Audit, which features all the editors of The Best Business Writing 2012, not only celebrates excellence in business journalism but also criticizes its failures.

One fault, detailed in a 2009 piece by Dean Starkman , is the “CNBC-ization” of business journalism. Starkman and other contributors to The Audit have argued “that business-news outlets have in the past decade or so increasingly narrowed their focus toward the narrow interests of investors and away from the much broader interests of readers.”

In a recent post on The Audit, Felix Salmon shows how the CNBC-ization of business and economics reporting continues at CNBC.

Discussing a recent appearance by Martin Wolf (whose article Time for Germany to Make Its Fateful Choice is included in The Best Business Writing 2012) on CNBC, Salmon points to how the show’s host Andrew Ross Sorkin failed to ask the right questions regarding the Greek financial crisis. Instead of allowing Wolf and Ryan McCarthy, another journalist who appeared on the show, to analyze what is known about the present, the focus of the program was to speculate on the future. Compounding the problem was CNBC’s use of a confusing graphic.

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“It’s not going overboard to say that great business writing is the vital link between the public and the institutions that shape our economic lives.”—Dean Starkman, The Best Business Writing 2012

The following is an excerpt from Dean Starkman’s introduction to The Best Business Writing 2012. In this excerpt, Starkman describes the role the business press has played in the past and continues to play in the present:

The crash and ongoing crisis remind us that, in a democracy, it’s not enough to understand only political events and actors, but economic and financial ones as well. The debate can’t be left to experts and cognoscenti (clearly) and must be opened to as wide a swath of society as possible, even people who don’t normally think of business news as their bag. Put another way: hopeful ignorance about matters business and financial is no longer an option, if it ever was.

In assessing the early-twentieth-century Muckrakers, the historian Richard Hofstadter said their importance lay in the fact that their sweeping, investigative style of journalism allowed “any literate citizen to know what barkeepers, district attorneys, ward heelers, prostitutes, police court magistrates, reporters and corporation lawyers had always come to know in the course of their business.” That certainly describes Ida Tarbell’s sober, fact-laden nineteen-part expose of Standard Oil, which became a national phenomenon and changed the national discussion about industrial consolidation, the great economic issue of that era. What insiders already knew, Muckrakers revealed to the general public. They were the great connectors.

That role is now played, more or less, by the business press, supplemented by the general press when it ventures into business, economics, and finance (e.g. The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, This American Life). The definition of the business press has changed radically in the last decade or so. It has exploded with the rise of new media and has also shrunk as industrial-era news-gathering institutions—particularly great metropolitan dailies including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post—have seen once-formidable business desks hollowed out. For now, the public still relies to a great extent on what are known as “legacy” news organizations for news gathering and investigations, supplemented by a gusher of economic, financial, and business commentary and analysis from new players, some of it quite fantastic (examples of which are included here)….

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