Columbia University Press

“I always believed getting an education was the only way to succeed in life. Now I regret it every single day.”—Donna DeNaro, from The Trouble is the Banks excerpted in The Best Business Writing 2013

The Trouble is the Banks comes from a volume published by n+1 which includes letters from Occupy the Boardroom, a site that collects letters to banks and financial institution in the wake of the 2008 collapse. A portion of The Trouble is the Banks is included in The Best Business Writing 2013. Here’s an excerpt:

Please Don’t Harass My Father Any Further

Deena DeNaro

To: Lloyd H. Dean, Wells Fargo

Dear Lloyd,

In May 2007, I became the first person in my immediate family to get a degree, at age 38. I graduated owing more than $100,000 in private student loans. Payments were more than $1,100 per month. My 74-year-old retired father is the cosigner for most of these loans, but in September 2008, my dad lost $70,000 of his pension with the banks’ collapse.

In December 2009, after just one year in the workforce, I was laid off due to cut-backs. For most of 2010, I wasn’t able to find steady employment. In January 2011, I ran out of defer­ment with my private student loans. The banks began chasing my father as the cosigner. They have wrecked his line of credit and called in his home equity loan on which he never missed any payments.

In June 2011, my father saw a lawyer to try to get the pay­ments reduced to something proportionate to his fixed in­come. In October 2011, he got word that the lawyer failed to get payments reduced enough. My dad wrote me a letter say­ing he had to sell his life insurance and rearrange his will to protect my sister and stepmom.

The letter arrived last Saturday.

He had a stroke on Sunday.

Now Wells Fargo is harassing him for payment of another student loan.

I am asking you to please suspend collection actions against my father until I have a job that will pay me enough to make the payments myself.

I always believed getting an education was the only way to succeed in life. Now I regret it every single day.

Sincerely,
Deena DeNaro
Durham, NC 27701

(more…)

This week two different stories looked at the ideas at the center of The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving , by Michael Weinstein and Ralph M. Bradburd.

In his post, Adventures with quantitative philanthropy, Felix Salmon, examines the Robin Hood Foundation approach to giving and its “relentless monetization” framework. Salmon explains how the Robin Hood Foundation seeks to monetize the benefits of philanthropic giving to make sure it is effective and helps those it is intended to help.

An article for the Fast Company blog, Co.EXIST, also explores the Robin Hood method. The book’s coauthor, Michael Weinstein explains how the Robin Hood foundation developed its approach and the various factors it considers when trying to establish a cost-benefit analysis for giving money.

Increasingly, as the article points out, the Robin Hood Foundation method is being adopted by other philanthropic organizations, such as The Gates Foundation, and it is winning many adherents among donors in the financial industry.

The article concludes with Weinstein’s reflections on the aims of The Robin Hood Rules for Smart Giving:

Weinstein hopes that the book pushes even more people to consider Robin Hood’s techniques. “We wrote the book for two reasons. One reason is that donors, other foundations, and philanthropists are often asking us to advise them, to share what we’re doing,” he says. “The second reason is the opposite. We hope that by laying it out in black and white, we get feedback that tells us how to do things better. We already know our 170 equations [for monetization] are wrong. We’d love for people to say we have another wrong way to monetize interventions, but we have a less wrong way to do it.”

Steve Coll’s “Gusher,” published in The Best Business Writing 2013 offers a behind-the-scenes look at the tremendous influence ExxonMobil has in Washington and in shaping environmental and climate policy. In this excerpt, Steve Coll documents some of the early battles between ExxonMobil and the Obama administration and how the company and its CEO, Rex Tillerson, helped to kill the cap-and trade bill:

ExxonMobil’s initial efforts to reach out to the Obama adminis­tration gave way, during 2009 and 2010, to a succession of legis­lative and policy battles in which the corporation and the new president found themselves on opposite sides. Tillerson sought meetings with Treasury and White House officials to explain ExxonMobil’s views on energy markets, domestic drilling, cli­mate legislation, and the recession. On one occasion, Tillerson joined a group of chief executives at dinner with Obama. In general, however, wary administration officials saw no reason to favor ExxonMobil with access. There was little basis for trust on either side. ExxonMobil lobbying sessions with Obama’s team at the Treasury Department or the Department of Energy could be stiff, with Fariello and other lobbyists enunciating ExxonMo­bil’s advocacy positions, sometimes just by reading from notes and prepared materials. During the first three years of Obama’s presidency, the corporation spent more than fifty-two million dollars on lobbying in Washington, about 50 percent more per year than during the Bush presidency.

The most important challenge that ExxonMobil faced was the climate bill, known as “cap-and-trade,” which Obama and congressional Democrats introduced early in 2009. The House of Representatives passed a version of the law in June and moved it to the Senate, where the most difficult negotia­tions were expected. The proposed law would have established a new regulatory system under which polluting corporations could buy and sell permits to emit greenhouse gases, under an overall “cap” that would seek to reduce the rate of global warming.

ExxonMobil denounced the cap-and-trade system as un­wieldy and bureaucratic. It did, however, announce that it would support a straight “carbon tax,” which would create incentives for reductions in coal and oil use.

The proposal was a major policy shift for the corporation, which had come to it aft er years of isolated, deliberative policy analysis. But there was little support for the idea among Demo­crats. They knew that Republicans—many of whom had signed pledges never to raise taxes—wouldn’t go for it. And they had determined that cap-and-trade was the climate-change policy they would try to pass. Exxon’s support for a carbon tax would have been welcome in, say, the early nineties, when Al Gore was pushing the idea. But the debate had moved on.

(more…)

“There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subcon­scious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive render­ing of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.”—Charles Duhigg, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”

As we learn about the extent to which the United States government monitored its citizens phone calls and online activity, Charles Duhigg’s article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” from the New York Times Magazine, reminds us that corporations are also keeping a close eye on our activities in the name of trying to sell us more stuff. The following excerpt is from Duhigg’s article, which is included in The Best Business Writing 2013:

The desire to collect information on customers is not new for Target or any other large retailer, of course. For decades, Target has collected vast amounts of data on every person who regularly walks into one of its stores. Whenever possible, Target assigns each shopper a unique code—known internally as the Guest ID number—that keeps tabs on everything they buy. “If you use a credit card or a coupon or fill out a survey or mail in a refund or call the customer help line or open an e-mail we’ve sent you or visit our website, we’ll record it and link it to your Guest ID,” Pole said. “We want to know everything we can.”

Also linked to your Guest ID is demographic information like your age, whether you are married and have kids, which part of town you live in, how long it takes you to drive to the store, your estimated salary, whether you’ve moved recently, what credit cards you carry in your wallet, and what websites you visit. Tar­get can buy data about your ethnicity, job history, the magazines you read, if you’ve ever declared bankruptcy or got divorced, the year you bought (or lost) your house, where you went to college, what kinds of topics you talk about online, whether you prefer certain brands of coffee, paper towels, cereal, or applesauce, your political leanings, reading habits, charitable giving, and the number of cars you own. (In a statement, Target declined to identify what demographic information it collects or purchases.) All that information is meaningless, however, without someone to analyze and make sense of it. That’s where Andrew Pole and the dozens of other members of Target’s Guest Marketing Ana­lytics department come in.

Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to invest­ment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analyt­ics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits so as to more effi­ciently market to them. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.”

(more…)

The declining middle-class, foreclosures, pharmaceutical companies behaving badly, the corporate misdeeds of Wal-Mart and Apple, are some of the stories that have been in the news in the past few months and are the ones that reveal the changing economic, political, and social aspects of our lives. These issues have been uncovered and analyzed by some of the excellent journalism and investigative reporting included in The Best Business Writing 2013, edited by Dean Starkman, Martha M. Hamilton, Ryan Chittum, and Felix Salmon

Throughout the week, we will be featuring The Best Business Writing 2013 Twitter feed, and on our Facebook page. For more on the book you can also read the Table of Contents and the Introduction by Dean Starkman.

We are also offering a FREE copy of the book to a lucky winner.

To enter our Book Giveaway, simply e-mail pl2164@columbia.edu with your name and preferred mailing address. We will randomly select one winner on June 14 at 1:00 pm. Good luck, and spread the word!

It’s been a good past few days for titles from Columbia Business School Publishing with several notable reviews:

Success recently wrote about the soon-to-be-published Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO’s Quest for Meaning and Authenticity, by August Turak. In the article, it lists four valuable lessons from the book:

1. Always honor your promises—even small or trivial ones. People will gauge your reliability on the big things by how you handle the little ones.

2. Keep promises to yourself because doing so correlates with willpower and self-control, virtues that are essential to trustworthiness. Willpower is like any other muscle; it needs daily exercise to stay in shape.

3. Under-commit and over-deliver. Only make promises that you know you will be able to keep. The quickest way to lose respect is to bail on your promises.

4. Protect your personal brand. Get in the habit of asking yourself, “How will this decision affect my personal brand?” In the long run, your reputation is your most valuable asset.

Forbes joins the chorus of admirers (Warren Buffett, etc.) for Howard Marks’s The Most Important Thing Illuminated: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor. In a review they write:

This isn’t yet another “how to invest” book or a tired rehashing of received investment “wisdom” that looks more like something found in a fortune cookie and which rarely seems to hold up in practice.

Instead, Marks gives us the insightful thoughts of a man who struggles with his own investing decisions on a daily basis. There are no shortcuts, formulas or easy tricks. But there is a wealth of experience and thoughtful contemplation from a real “in the trenches” investor who has been doing this a long time.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

.

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.
(more…)

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!