Renowned marketing expert and bestselling author known for his insights on branding, prosperity and consumer trends

Are you looking for a summer reading suggestion? You might expect me to recommend a non-fiction book since that’s what I write, but I suggest a recently released novel that is both gripping and highly informative. You can learn from novels as well as be entertained. That was true about Fyodor Dostoevsky whose description of the human psyche in The Brothers Karamazov was as profound (or more so) than Freud. His psychological principles about reward and punishment have been replicated by hundreds of experiments a hundred years after Dostoevsky wrote his classic novels. And if you like fast-paced but accurate legal details that make John Grisham’s novels so believable, you will relish just-released Chinese Conspiracy by John Mariotti. Chinese Conspiracy is fiction, but fact-based as well as fascinating. As a rule, absorbing novels also have a few romantic episodes, and yes, this novel follows that rule. While reading this intriguing and riveting saga, you gain fascinating insights into at least three cultures: China (along with Iran and Pakistan), Rural America (specifically West Virginia), and U.S. government agencies (CIA, FBI, DHS and other D.C. bureaucracies). Will the quest between China and the U.S. for world dominance be won with nuclear bombs […]

The topic in my latest book, Objective Prosperity, “Why Some Countries are Rich and Why Some Countries Are Poor” just won the Nobel Prize for Economics. Those words are chosen carefully; it was the topic, not my book that won the Nobel Prize. The winners were Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson of MIT and Chicago Booth School of Business for research in their book, Why Nations Fail. Jakob Svensson, chair of the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences, said their analysis has provided “a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.” The Associated Press called it the most important topic in economics, and a clear signal that the causes are different than conclusions from traditional economics. But you already knew that if you read Objective Prosperity by Blackwell and Bailey. You know that behavioral economics provides a richer understanding of why some people live in poverty compared to those who are prosperous. Our book is more recent than Acemoglu et. al. and shows how attributes that make a nation prosperous also make people and organizations prosperous. In other words, we show how the principles that won the Nobel prize also […]

You may have heard someone say, “he was boogieing it up” referring to being something other than their actual selves. Is that good or bad? Emulating aristocratic possessions is not good, of course, but the term is derived from Bourgeois values – behavior guided by middle class values. Research by behavioral economist Dr. Diedre McClosky, whom we reference extensively in our recent book, documents that values achieving prosperity are bourgeois. We do not define prosperity in our book because we want every reader to develop their personal definition of prosperity. We also want each reader to draw their own conclusions about values that lead to their own prosperity, but law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander generated considerable controversy when they published the following summary of values creating prosperity. “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, civic-minded and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.” (WSJ) What do you think, did these values make America great? Do they lead to […]