Robert Hagstrom

Rethinking the Value of a Business Major

by Shane Parrish on February 16, 2013

Melissa Korn reporting in the Wall Street Journal: “The biggest complaint,” writes Korn is that “undergraduate degrees focus too much on the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting and don’t develop enough critical thinking and problem-solving skills through long essays, in-class debates and other hallmarks of liberal-arts courses. Companies say they need flexible thinkers [...]

Building Blocks and Innovation

by Shane Parrish on January 20, 2013

Most innovation comes from combining well-known, well-established, building blocks in new ways. John Holland, a professor of two vastly different fields—psychology and engineering—at the University of Michigan, lectures frequently on innovative thinking. According to Holland there are two steps to innovation. The first step is to try and find the right building blocks—the basic knowledge. [...]

Metaphors

by Shane Parrish on January 19, 2013

For most people a metaphor is a matter of extraordinary rather than ordinary language. “For this reason,” write Mark Johnson and George Lakoff in their book Metaphors We Live By, “most people think they can get along perfectly well without a metaphor.” We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, [...]

Reality is shaped by the words we use

by Shane Parrish on January 17, 2013

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.” — Wittgenstein Philosopher Bertrand Russel described Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein as “the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.” Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher, worked primarily in logic, mathematics, and the [...]