Resources:
Book Reviews
June 2023
Between Us: How Cultures Create Emotions
Culture shapes our emotional world and Fader explores the author’s original MINE and OURS models of emotions that effectively challenge the belief that emotional cues, socially accepted reactions, and empathy are universal across societies.
Read more >
January 2023
Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & Well You Live by and Stage (Not Age): How to Understand and Serve People Over 60
The world's population is getting older, but businesses struggle to address this consequential shift. Two new books explore the many negative ageist perceptions and self-perceptions that constrain business opportunities within aging populations and how people self-sabotage their mental and physical health by absorbing these misconceptions about aging.
Read more >
July 2022
Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out
Fader's review discusses the self-stories we tell ourselves — many times subconsciously — that can impede our happiness and success and what we can do to change our self-stories to create more positive outcomes.
Read more >
March 2022
The Sea We Swim In and Wonderworks
Fader shares why we have to rethink both the purpose and structure of storytelling.
Read more >
January 2022
Listen Like You Mean It and The Truth about Lies
Fader warns that we tend to fall into ‘default listening’ that hampers our ability to meet business challenges. She shares how we can transition to ‘wide open listening.’
Read more >
November 2021
Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything
Fader discusses the three major books/thoughts on habits and analyzes the three different points of view and approaches, and the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Read more >
July 2021
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Fader discusses how as someone who has designed and conducted research in thirty-plus countries on five continents, it was an awakening to see that while in the United States we may think it is “natural” and “normal” to use racial categorization as a dominant categorizer, in most of the world the role of race is viewed differently.
Read more >
April 2021
How You Say It: Why You Talk the Way You Do — and What It Says about You and This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes: How Science Is Tackling Unconscious Bias
Susan's book review touches on how Sociolinguistics and Unconscious Bias impact how we perceive information, make judgements, and interact with people. She shares specific examples.
Read more >
November 2020
Physical Intelligence and The Inside Game
How people think, how they rationalize, how they perceive reality, how they make choices, and why they do what they do. All of these are important to understand, especially when developing or selling any product or service. It is even more important for the market researcher whose task is to unravel these mysteries. These two books explore the topic using physical activities – Physical Intelligence uses hiking and The Inside Game uses baseball.
Read more >
July 2020
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialize World
This review examines the author’s fascinating take that shatters the preconceived notion that to be successful one needs to specialize.
Read more >
July 2020
Alchemy: The Dark Art and the Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business and Life
Susan reviews behavioral science guru and “ad man,” Rory Sutherland’s humorous but profound musings on moving beyond superficial analysis and logic to understand human behavior.
Read more >
March 2020
Brand Hacks
New ideas and perspectives on effective brand building, brand management and consumer engagement, and the initiatives that brands can take.
Read more >
March 2020
Because Internet, WOW, and Talking to Strangers
Three books that provide different perspectives and ways to decipher various forms of communication, with Gretchen McCulloch's 'Because Internet' being a real game changer.
Read more >
January 2020
Networking for People Who Hate Networking
Most people hate networking, and most networking books don't seem to take this into account. This book does and is packed with actionable advice on how to make networking easier and more effective.
Read more >
January 2020
Rare Breed: A Guide to Success for the Defiant, Dangerous and Different and Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead and Live Without Barrier
These two books provide very different approaches to embracing your true self.
Read more >
October 2019
Uberland: How Algorithms are Rewriting the Rules of Work
The rapid evolution of technology is causing the uberization of everything. The technology emanating from Silicon Valley not only is transforming how we work and the employer/employee relationship, but also is causing major CPG companies to rethink how they approach insights.
Read more >
May 2019
Games and Gamification in Market Research: Increasing Consumer Engagement in Research for Business Success
Gamification is the process of applying the elements that make game playing appealing to everyday tasks so as to encourage more active participation. Focus of book is creating and integrating games into online studies.
Read more >
March 2019
Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most
Decision-making can be challenging. Finding the Holy Grail that will make the process easier, while producing the right decision, has led to a tsunami of books on this subject. If you only read one book on the subject – this should be the book.
Read more >
March 2019
The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google and The Upstarts: Uber, Airbnb, and the Battle for the New Silicon Valley
Two different authors, two different writing styles, but both books have the same goal of painting a more realistic, detailed understanding of the dynamics and business goals of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, and Uber and their impact on consumer choice and society as a whole.
Read more >
March 2019
Marketing to Mindstates: The Practical Guide to Applying Behavior Design to Research and Marketing
The author presents a “Mindstates Behavioral Model,” which he suggests is a practical way to apply insights of behavioral science to real-world situations in research and marketing communication.
Read more >
December 2018
How Women Rise: Break the 12 Habits Holding You Back from Your Next Raise, Promotion, or Job
The “confidence gap” – where women underestimate their abilities, think they are less skilled, and believe they are less able to do something than a man of similar qualifications and experience; and men overestimate their actual competence and abilities – seems as entrenched as ever. This book helps women break the “confidence gap” and 11 other self-limiting habits.
Read more >
September 2018
Truth: How Many Sides to Every Story Shape Our Reality
Interesting deep dive on how people consciously or unconsciously select certain strands of truth to support their version of reality – provides important perspectives.
Read more >
Summer 2018
Creating Signature Stories: Strategic Messaging That Persuades, Energizes and Inspires
The focus of this book is not just on stories, but signature stories, those that communicate a strategic message that is relevant to the brand vision, the customer relationship, the organization, and its values and/or the business strategy…
Read more >
Summer 2016
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics
Thaler manages to cram a lot of interesting background, anecdotes, and scientific studies into this book without making the reader feel overwhelmed. He has an eye for detail and a witty, self-deprecating writing style, as he provides the history of how behavioral economics began and its transformation from a derided science to one of acceptance.
Read more >
Back to Contemplations >