The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Bronwyn James - 260212705

Why are black swans impacting our lives?

“Consider that thinking is time-consuming and generally a great waste of energy, that our predecessors spent more than a hundred million years as nonthinking mammals and that in the blip in our history during which we have used our brain we have used it on subjects too peripheral to matter.” (xxii)

Many in society consider an absence of proof equivalent to a proof of absence. Prior to the discovery of Australia in the 18^th century, where black swans are common, it was widely accepted in Western culture that all swans were white. The term ‘black swan’ developed from this sudden change in common knowledge – only a single black swan was necessary to eradicate this previously unquestioned fact. In the book, Nassim Taleb defines a black swan as a highly unlikely event that is unpredictable with substantial consequences. These events are perceived post-hoc as part of the predictable sequence of history.

Taleb divides the world into two fundamentally different types of data, those from ‘Mediocristan’ and those from ‘Extremistan’. In Mediocristan, there are known limits to what any given value can be. Limits impede outliers from significantly impacting the average. Omitting an outlier doesn’t change the nature of the data. No single data point comprises a significant proportion of the total in a large sample. Mediocristan follows the Gaussian bell curve, also known as the normal distribution. The further away from the mean, the less likely an event is to occur. In Extremistan, there is no known limit to what any given value can be. A single point can comprise a huge proportion of the total. Thus, omitting one value can skew results. When theories are developed, people have a “natural tendency to look only for corroboration” (58). This confirmation bias can produce negative ramifications in our complex modern world. Taleb suggests employing a strategy of “negative empiricism”, as “knowledge does not increase from a series of confirmatory observations” (56). Only one instance contrary to a theory can invalidate it.

For the vast span of human development, Mediocristan has been the norm. Ignoring outliers had no adverse impact on an individual’s survival and success. Today, the world is changing. Extremistan is dominating more and more elements of our lives. While the 80/20 rule is widely discussed, Taleb prefers to focus on the more extreme 50/01 rule. The rule holds that one per cent of the world population controls fifty per cent of the world’s assets. With the distribution so distorted, the normal distribution no longer applies. Experts throughout the world continue to apply the bell curve to determine risk. Despite consistent failures, they slog on with precise estimates. Taleb theorizes that analysts validate their inaccurate predictions by attributing mistakes to factors beyond their control while success is always the result of their deliberate actions. From Taleb’s empirical studies on prediction, it can be concluded that people have an innate desire to be precise, even when there is no incentive for a narrow estimate. Ever the contrarian, Taleb opines, “I’d rather be broadly right than precisely wrong”.

Another element of the normal distribution is that all events are independent. When a coin is flipped, the previous outcomes have no bearing on the result. This characteristic of the Gaussian bell curve is rarely present in real life. Instead, events tend to be highly dependent, creating a cumulative advantage – or disadvantage. With several examples, Taleb illustrates “how an initial advantage follows someone through life” (217). However, black swans and chance interrupt accumulations, both positive and negative. The potential for a virtuous (or vicious) succession of events is mitigated by randomness, ensuring that “nobody is truly established” (225).

Taleb’s awareness of the prevalence of black swans leads him to comment on the vulnerability of the current financial system. Published in April 2007, Taleb assesses the weakness of the banking sector several months before the advent of the credit crisis. Globalization has increased the interconnectedness and homogeneity of the banking sector, resulting in “interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability” (225). This interdependence, coupled with fewer banks of larger size, “seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale”, with devastating results (226).

There is a cognitive dissonance in people’s understanding of Taleb’s argument. Many agree with his position at face value yet proceed to apply a Gaussian context to events that are inherently non-normal. This seeming contradiction pervades many aspects of human life. Logic learned in the classroom remains within its academic framework, it is “domain specific” (53). Our brains do not easily transfer concepts from the abstract to practical, or vice versa. Similarly, people interpret and rationalize black swans on an individual basis, without realizing broader trends. September 11^th is not perceived as an example of an event that “stand[s] largely outside the realm of the predictable” (xxi). Instead, common wisdom has developed “precise rules for avoiding Islamic prototerrorists and tall buildings” (xxi).

A black swan can be positive or negative – and Taleb advises how to minimize the effect of negative ones while maximizing our exposure to the positive. Black swans, by their nature, are unexpected. Thus, risk is at its lowest when it is most visible, most scrutinized, and hence most expected. Invest when the circumstances are asymmetric, “where favorable consequences are much larger than unfavorable ones” (210). It is generally simpler to focus on the ramifications of an occurrence than its probability.

The Medici Effect

The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson investigates how new and extraordinary ideas can be formed by established ideas from different cultures, disciplines or fields of study when they collide. According to Johansson innovative ideas spawn from intersections. Intersections happen when two unrelated fields, for example culinary arts and the flocking formation of birds, are connected and made relevant to each other. At an intersection a vast pool of creative and unlikely ideas can be created due to the unlikely pairing. This intersection spawns the Medici Effect, which is a burst of creative ideas resulting from this convergence of knowledge. The book then details the trials and tribulations encountered on the path to creativity (generation of new and valuable ideas) and innovation (realization of creative ideas).
Johansson speaks with many innovators of the époque throughout the entire book and they all agree upon the Medici Effect and its remarkable potential. While innovation is universal throughout history, Johansson highlights that globalisation and recent advances in technology make way for innovation now more than ever. This intriguing model outlines three forces which favour intersectional ideas to form. Intersections are becoming more likely first because of the movement of people since cultures and perspectives can clash, mesh and feed off one another, second by the convergence of science or interdisciplinary sciences which make way for new discoveries and perspectives and lastly the leap of computation which enables human capital to be freed from tedious tasks to engage in further innovation.
One concept, lowering associative barriers to facilitate innovation suggests that laypeople in a specialisation are more likely to be able to come up with creative solutions. Ideas are linked to one another in the mind based on previous experience and gained knowledge in chains of association. These chains of association streamline thought and make the process efficient but may also inhibit creativity by directing thought towards assumptions and blind-siding us to unconventional associations between ideas. Low associative barriers can be built when a person is exposed to a diverse range of knowledge and move outside their expertise so that they ideas are not always linked to one another in a “typical” fashion. This concept reveals to us why it is important to have a mixture of experiences as well as be exposed to different perspectives to be effective problem-solvers and creative thinkers.
Another interesting concept is the link between productivity and innovation. Although the burst which happens at an intersection opens doors to fantastic ideas, obviously not all ideas can be hit-wonders. One key to innovation is constant productivity. Innovation does not necessarily happen in an incremental fashion. Just because a vast number of new ideas is accessible by combining two different fields does not mean that every one of these permutations is viable therefore constant and voluminous productivity is necessary to be able to innovate. Also, being primed for failure enables people to learn from mistakes as well as lowers the risk of spending all resources on the first trial if we know that it is highly improbable that we will succeed on the first attempt.
What Johansson proposes in this book does not only benefit innovators but are smart nuggets of advice for any person, professional or layman living in the 21st century. The paradigms have shifted from specialized to interdisciplinary, from homogenous to diverse. In an age where knowledge is a commodity an innovative approach to thought and life has become extremely valuable. Organisations of the world can use this standpoint of innovation on many different planes.
The Medici Effect reaches past innovation and applies also to how people can up their quantity and thus probability of quality of work by doing some rudimentary things like diversifying their experiences, learning and practicing outside of their specialties, keeping low associative barriers, always being productive and priming themselves for failure. These concepts are very simple, very obvious and yet they are revolutionary.

The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is changing how we live, work, and love

Our every day thoughts and moods are derived by a combination of our conscious and unconscious mind. At any given moment we are generally induced by an automated process known as the cognitive unconscious. Richard Restack reveals how we are majorly influenced by external factors that without our awareness alter our cognitive unconscious mind and determine our personal attributes: trust, love, ethics and memory. Neuroscientists are currently studying these attributes with the help of advanced imaging devices capable of measuring brain activity. During the first half of the twenty-first century, neuroscientists’ understanding of the brain will revolutionize our behavior with developments such brain imaging which provide snapshots to our brain’s natural occurrences, discoveries which are even influencing specialists in fields not associated with brain study. Picture a future where we will be mainly controlled by our society – marketing and advertising programs based on brain scans to predict consumer interest in products, campaigns using brain-image profiles to determine what political candidate we are most likely to vote for, tests utilizing advanced neurotools to assess why we are romantically attracted to some people yet repelled by others, and even neuroscience-based chemical brain enhancers inducing us to insatiably consume specific products.

Over the past two hundred years, neuroscientists have studied the brain in isolation of other external factors, until recent research confirmed that biological and social factors must also be taken into heavy consideration in order to accurately comprehend behavior and emotions. The brain’s functioning is directly affected by social contexts. Social demands, thought patterns, stress, excitement and other mental activities affect our brain function and consequently our “blood flow, electrical discharges and magnetic field.” A common functional brain imaging technique known as Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) measures our visual, frontal and motor areas. Most of the things we do involve a balance between controlled and automatic processing.

When we are overwhelmed with too much automatic processing we tend to become impulsive, and when we use too much controlled processing we become indecisive. Automatic processing involves thought not accompanied by effort, which is why we fail to justify or explain our impressions, perceptions or immediate intuitions. On the other hand, in a controlled process, thoughts follow a sequential pattern where we are consciously aware of our actions and can explain our thoughts to others.

Neuroscientists argue that it is more effective to exert less mental effort by letting “the brain be the brain” and allowing it to work at its own pace. Although we may believe we are being more accurate when we force ourselves to memorize something new, we are actually diminishing efficiency. Multiple choice tests prove this rule, as numerous studies show people’s original answer is most likely to be correct and additional thinking may lead to the introduction of uncertainty and error. For this reason, students are encouraged to quickly move on to the next question after they respond, as lingering in conscious thought may prove detrimental.

Our cognitive unconscious plays a crucial role in the development and evolution of neuroscience. Paul Fletcher, a well-known British psychiatrist, also proved automatic thinking is more effective by observing the brain’s activity with an FMRI test. Fletcher instructed his volunteers to push one of four boxes on a computer screen when the particular box was highlighted. The group that was unaware of the pattern was instructed to push the highlighted button as fast as they could without making errors; their response was more accurate as they continued the activity. The volunteers were later told about the pattern and asked to memorize it and their response was ultimately slower and less accurate. To summarize, the test showed people who think too much about a particular outcome perform weaker than those who do not place conscious effort. In other words, because most of our knowledge exists beyond our conscious awareness, we have an implicit knowledge that explains how at times we can do things without describing how we did them. Once an activity becomes routine our response occurs automatically, however when we have to make a decision or learn something new we use our controlled processes.

We usually have feelings of ownership and independence over our actions. We strongly believe our actions are produced from our own interest, dreams and desires. We rarely think our actions originate from outside agents. Nevertheless, the link between our consciousness and our awareness is a complicated arrangement. An experiment was carried by Édouard Claparede, a famous Swiss neurologist, on a patient who lost her short term memory in an accident. She was unable to remember any experience happening minutes earlier. Claparede wanted to see if she could remember intense impressions so he grabbed her hand and pinched her with a hidden pin between his fingers. Minutes later, she forgot she had felt pain, but when he tried to grab her hand the second time she pulled back with a reflex reaction, unaware why she had reacted that way. She could unconsciously recognize events, places and people that she couldn’t consciously recall as memory.

Another test that further highlights the power of our subconscious can be seen through a simple experiment with index cards. If you sit far away from another person, and ask him to read very dim letters that she can’t recognize, her response will be correct more often than if she were guessing. Now picture someone who shows you a screen of visible Chinese ideographs and even though your unfamiliar with Chinese you must guess if the word expresses a “good” or “bad” concept. You later realize your results weren’t random, they were directly related to human faces expressing happiness and anger which was flashed 4 milliseconds preceding the ideograph. Although you cannot consciously recall the faces, the experiment’s results prove the faces unconsciously guided your judgment. The experiment was later done by flashing the faces slowly and you’re asked to ignore them, in which case they don’t affect your answer. Subsequent research proved that subconsciously perceived information has a more powerful effect on human emotion than does conscious information. Our subconscious perceives things that we are consciously unable to witness; and the information leads to automatic reactions which are out of our control. Thus, although you may believe you are acting freely, your actions might be a response to someone else’s caprice.

Many times our actions originate outside our awareness; consciousness plays a small role on how we behave in different situations; which is why we cannot always honestly reason and explain our actions. Although we usually claim ownership over actions; Benjamin Libet, a pioneer in the field of human consciousness, revealed that “the brain decides to act prior to any conscious decision.” Although we believe our thought patterns cause action, it appears that “the brain creates both the thought and the action simultaneously,” thus our brains know our decisions before we do.

Research by psychologist Roy F. Baumeister proved we are not as efficient when we ‘multitask’ or perform several tasks at once because “acts of conscious self-control in one area interfere with our ability to exert control in another.”

We incessantly try to give plausible causes for our actions, especially with emotional responses. When we feel sad, for example, we tend to blame something or someone as if it caused the feeling. After noticing a feeling, the verbal system in the left hemisphere tries to attribute the emotion to a cause. In reality, we end up accepting any explanation we give to ourselves as true, although this merely reveals a selection by our left hemisphere among other possibilities. In effect, we are usually misled in order to project a positive self-image to ourselves.

Book Club for the 21st Century

The Ten Faces of Innovation
by Tom Kelley

Student : Chan Sung (Jason) Kang
Student # : 260213389

About the Book…
Tom Kelley, the author of this informative and instructive book, reveals the secret strategy that IDEO, the world-famous design firm, adopted in order to boost innovative thinking and overcome “Devil’s Advocate” who sees only the problems and extremely negative possible outcomes. The book suggests a solution for such Devil’s Advocate by providing a clear image of ten important roles in our surroundings, our companies, and our society: the anthropologist, the experimenter, the cross-pollinator, the hurdler, the collaborator, the director, the experience architect, the set designer, the caregiver, and the storyteller.

Key Ideas…
1) The Anthropologist: The Anthropologists are the Seers. They observe the organization and bring their new learning and new insights for better understanding of both physical and emotional environment of the organization. They have this ability of “seeing” things that others usually overlook in unusual places. When the anthropologist faces a problem, he or she, with innovative concepts, recomposes the problem and suggests countless solutions.

2) The Experimenter: The experimenter is a master of practicing. It’s uncertain whether the new idea, the anthropologist comes up with, would succeed or not. In order to make ideas tangible and to achieve success, the experimenters undergo numerous experimentation and implementation. They learn from the ceaseless process of trial and error and lead the experiment to be successful.

3) The Cross-Pollinator: The cross-pollinator explores other industries, cultures, or geographies and co-relates the findings with his or her own organization. The cross-pollinator seeks out for diverse projects for further improved and innovated services and products and divers solutions for problems by crossing ideas. One good example might be the pie tins from the world of baking became Frisbee.

4) The Hurdler: The Hurdlers, by instinct, know how to overcome the obstacles of the path to innovation. Although they perfectly know the possibility of failure, they never stop. They are tireless problem-solvers. They, with optimistic and positive determination, are ready to take any risk and pay any cost for failure. Also, they have the ability of seeing beyond initial failure.

5) The Collaborator: The Collaborator is a crucial role for the 21st century, who values the team over the individual. The collaborator is able to firmly tighten every individual together as a group. The existence of collaborators would result cooperative teamwork and each individual’s skills molten well into one project.

6) The Director: The Director is not just ordering each individual what to do, but also helps to ignite their creative and innovative talents. They are capable of drawing a bigger picture of organization and grasping the group firmly. They are also responsible for motivating and inspiring each group members to bring the best result of the group.

7) The Experience Architect: The Experience Architects designs deeper and better quality of services in order to meet customers’ expressed needs and their satisfaction. They are eager to offer notable impression and delightful experiences to each individual through products, services, spaces or events.

8) The Set Designer: The Set Designer is a supporter who takes care of the organization’s or firm’s workspace. By providing with energetic environments which will encourage innovative and inspired thinking, he or she is able to stimulate each individual’s creativity. For example, IDEO created “brainstorming area” with whiteboards, oversized posti-its, comfortable seats, and stylish café tables.

9) The Caregiver: The Caregiver, founded on human-powered innovation, has a role of understanding each individual customer and have a close relationship with them. The caregiver’s job is to make customers feel comfortable and emotionally rely on him and his own organization.

10) The Storyteller: The Storyteller captures our imagination with convincing narratives and commemorates success or emotive recoveries from failure in terms of business. Through work in medium best fits their skills and message: video, narrative, animation, even comic strips, this person is able to initiate emotion and action, transmit values and goals, boost collaboration, create heroes of business, and lead the organizations into the brighter future.

Most Appealing Concepts…
There were so many concepts and ideas that will help us, the leaders of our future and our societies. However, one of the most appealing concepts is “T-shaped persona.” Throughout the book, each chapter strongly emphasizes on each role’s power and contribution to the organization. However, at the end, it also emphasizes on having overlapping talents and abilities. Not forced by traditional rules, which is to concentrate on solely one role, people nowadays need to have more flexibility. The book suggests that it might be useful to know how to blend a traditional, discipline-based role with an innovative persona: “You can be a Hurdler in Accounts Payable. A storyteller even if your degree is in finance. If you have spent years building depth of experience in your functional area, then becoming a Collaborator or a Caregiver or an Experimenter might give you breadth.” In this way, one will be able to prevent himself being outsourced or replaced by other flexible personas. The path of innovation is not a single path; rather, it is a mixture of trails, narrow paths, some shortcuts, and highway.

Another concept which arrested my attention is the idea of presence of “Devil’s Advocate.” Although it only shows up in the introduction, it is well explained how they hinder further inventive progress. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise doubts that effectively kill new ideas, while claiming no personal conscientiousness. Even slight of negativism will cause collapsing of every individual’s innovation like a small hole in the middle of dam, which will cause fractures and cracks eventually. Even “Devil’s Advocate” is dangerous for himself. Pessimism will soon put heavy damage on one’s self-esteem and dignity, resulting in declining efficiency of work. The existence of “Devil’s Advocate” will bring awful effect to both the whole community and oneself.

The last, but not the least concept is the power as the mix of ten roles. Innovative progress doesn’t occur on just each individual role’s account. In the last chapter of this book, it’s stating, “Innovation is ultimately a team sport.” Whenever one is trying to create something new, it doesn’t mean that he or she needs to employ every ten roles per a project. However, hiring a wise combination of the Set Designer and the Anthropologist, or the Cross-Pollinator and the Caregiver, will boost innovative thinking and help achieving true excellence to the highest degree. This book might mislead by emphasizing each role’s power separately, but the truth is that each individual is nothing without acting as a team, as it is well explained at the end. If you desire to innovate yourself, work hard for your entire team’s innovation.

Significance…
If you wish to be a leader of a organization or a firm or you are already a leader, you certainly want to have this book. Without knowing each individual’s potential power as the Hurdler or the Story teller, you won’t be able to put right man into a right job. You will be able to find a new pathway quickly with three learners: the Anthropologist, the Experimenter, and the Cross-Pollinator. Also, this book will promise you of easy organizing and building your stage with the Sat Designer, the Hurdler, and the Collaborator. Furthermore, you will fully understand how important the role of the Experience Architect, the Caregiver, and the Storyteller in order to maintain good relationship with customers or audiences. Not only that, you will soon question yourself whether you are suitable for the Director. If not, you might come up with new training program of directing skills with the help of this book.

In order to run business effectively without any failure, knowledge will be a handy tool. Read this noteworthy book, called “The Ten Faces of Innovation.” Learn about ten personas. Now you are ready to launch for success.

21st Century Book Club

Work With Me, Here: A Stab at Executive Summaries

Wikinomics; How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

Dear Colleagues,

I understand that you were all busy this past week with various jobs at home and work. That said, I’ve taken the liberty to write this very, very concise summary of Wikinomics so that you won’t need to battle the thick chapters and never-ending anecdotes yourselves. Now, I’m writing this in the hopes of delivering just the facts; I want the summary to be just as good as reading the whole book. So, here’s my first attempt at a bare bones account of Wikinomics.

Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams use a multifaceted approach at defining their main concept, mass collaboration, with a myriad of anecdotes from a long and diverse list of company executives (e.g., Google, Apple, The Human Genome Project, Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, and IBM). They use the term “wikinomics” to describe the new era of mass collaboration, built on four principles: “openness, peering, sharing, and acting globally.” Although these concepts are familiar to most, the point is that in the new era, the magnitude with which they are used is greater than ever.

The bulk of the book discusses seven models that embody the four principles:

1. Peer Pioneers. The new generation of internauts is quite different from their predecessors. They don’t just make websites for others to read, they harness mass collaboration by using wikis (internet tools which allow for public editing) and opening their ideas to everyone. Two prime examples are Wikipedia and Linux. The three conditions that best harness peering are: “1) The object of production is information or culture, which keeps the cost of participation low […] 2) Tasks can be chunked out into bite-size pieces that individuals can contribute in small incremens and independently of other producers […] And, finally, 3) The costs of integrating those pieces into a finished end product […] must be low.”
2. Ideagoras. There exists a new marketplace where innovation can be bought or sold (e.g., InnoCentive) in the new era of mass collaboration. These eBay’s for invention cut costs and efficiently allocate R&D for who are looking for “solutions to questions” or “questions to solutions.” It has helped companies like P&G save billions of dollars on R&D and patenting, by giving smaller companies a chance to research P&G’s stagnant projects, while also helping P&G find better and cheaper methods of solving their biggest research issues.
3. Prosumers. Mass collaboration has turned consumers into “prosumers,” customers that co-produce their products. For years consumers have customized their purchases (like iPods or Legos) by tinkering with products, in most cases, illegally. In the new era, companies should no longer penalize the act, but rather encourage it. A good example is Legos. The company now allows consumers to co-produce their purchases via the Internet.
4. The New Alexandrians. Science 2.0 is emerging; they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. With open projects like the Human Genome Project allowing for mass collaboration, advancements in human health, environmental issues, and new technologies have accelerated at an exponential rate. Organizations can tap into the world as their resource, finding genius solutions in places outside of their walls.
5. Platforms for Participation. Platforms can be anything from a Web service (Google) to an e-commerce system (Amazon). Anyone can combine platforms to make a new type of Web tool. Paul Rademacher’s housingmaps is a combination of Google Maps and craigslist ads for houses, which he made and shares with the world. There are still some legality issues with these platform combinations; Tapscott and Williams emphasize the significance of finding the right balance between being completely open (and vulnerable to too much piracy) and completely closed (falling behind).
6. The Global Plant Floor. Mass collaboration is also at the forefront of assembling physical goods as well. Recently, decentralized networks have been doing more and more designing and producing. Open source methods of software collaboration (like in 2) are finding a way into the physical realm of automobiles and airplanes. As this is happening, a global plan floor is slowly replacing smaller industrial assembly-line factories around the world.
7. The Wiki Workplace. The final model explains how to translate all the aforementioned information into the workplace. Service companies like Geek Squad (currently owned by Best Buy) can use wikis, and other collaboration technologies used by peer communities like Facebook or MySpace, within the workplace to share ideas between offices at unparalleled speeds. This kind of transparency within a company is most efficient, because it cuts down on repetition of information and encourages collaboration.

There are three key lessons to take away from this book. The first is that the new “wikonomy” (wiki + economy) still needs managers to guide it. The obsolescence of hierarchy certainly should/does not lead to anarchy. The second is that, according to Coase’s Law, profits are not from lucrative sales. Rather, they are from cutting costs in the new ear. Mass collaboration is the most efficient way to transfer knowledge and expertise, while drastically cutting down on costs; in every example in the book, monetary gains are in the form of cost cutting. The final key lesson from this book spurs from its critics. Many roll their eyes at the book and claim that “the new era of mass collaboration” is just a fad—a renaming of old concepts. However, what critics fail to see is that although the concepts are not new, they are used on a much larger scale, and that is the point that Tapscott and Williams makes. We all know that globalization and the Internet bring information and even continents to our fingertips, but how may be best refine our skills at mass collaboration? How may be harness it? How do we balance the old views embedded in ourselves with the new ones vying for attention? Through anecdotal examples, Tapscott and Williams answer these questions. This is their contribution, and this is why it is a must-read.

Executive Summary: The Act of Giving

--Book review of “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World” by Bill Clinton

“Life is not fair”[1], I regret to admit it, but this is the reality in the modern society. There are people who would spend thousands on clothes, while there are millions of people only getting two dollars per day; There are people who live in a over ten thousand feet square foot house, yet thousands of people do not have their own shelters. The book “Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World” by Bill Clinton--the former president of United States is to address various global issues in the society, examine the charity and social involvement around the world, and to encourage people to contribute whatever they can to the help people who need it.

The title of the book has summarized the essential idea, which is the act of giving. It has categorized giving into different ways—money, time, things, skills, and good ideas. In each forms of giving, he has revealed the innovative efforts that made by nongovernmental nonprofits organizations (NGOs), the extraordinary contribution made by individuals and companies. All these examples have urged us to value our life, to think about what we can we give to the world, what how can we make a change to help other to be closer to their dreams.

Bill Clinton has demonstrated that the act of giving by listing various charity organization, global issue projects and individual contribution; he believes that everyone has the ability to give. Bill Gates is one of the examples he used throughout the book. Gates is a well-known figure in the software industry; he is the one of the wealthiest person in the world. Not only he is successful in his career, he has founded of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reduce the world’s inequalities in health, education and development. He is one of the models of giving money. Followed by Bill Gates, there are many more organizations formed, more wealthy individuals have traced his footprint to give money to help the undeveloped countries, to help them fight for poverty and diseases, such as Warren Buffet, Oprah, Sterling Stamos and many others.

Giving money is not the only way of giving, most people are only earning the moderate income, their salaries are just about to support their families, and however everyone has time or things or skills to contribute to society. Clinton has said in his book, the amount of good that so many individuals and NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) have been able to do has proven to me that almost everyone — regardless of income, available time, age, and skills — can do something useful for others and, in the process, strengthen the fabric of our shared humanity."[2] He has highlighted Dr. Paul Farmer, who is a model of giving time, who graduated from Harvard medical school. He has a miserable childhood, where he lived in a bus with his family until he went to college. Even he grew up from this harsh condition, his parents were still helping those who were in the worse situation than they did. After all the economic insecurity he had, he didn’t choose to live in luxurious life for the rest of his life, instead he chose to work in developing countries to help the poor in health issues. He has a strong interest to in global health issues; he founded Partners in Health, where they give health care to the poor. Also, he opened up clinic in poor nation, provided them health service, and worked closely with patients in Rwandan who suffer from AIDS.

Clinton has also taken action to make a difference in the world. He is very actively involved in community, global health issues, promoting education, fighting for poverty. After he left White house, he wanted to contribute the rest of his life to the society. Through his foundation—Clinton Global Initiative, they helped developing nations to adapt better health systems to deal with AIDS/HIV and other diseases, the organization has provided them with medical equipments, medicines and vaccines with the lowest cost. In addition, he has worked with university of Arkansa in the United States, established a graduate school of public service to encourage more young people to devote their career into serve the others, and help the nation grow as a whole.

Often people would think celebrities, people with extreme wealth have a strong influence in fund raising, publicizing awareness of global issues and serving in the community. But they are not the only ones who can make a change, who can make an impact in the world. Each one of us can make a difference in the world as well. We are all capable to give something back to the society. Maybe we do not have a million dollar to donate, cannot devote our entire life living in a poor nation to help them grow, but there are many different ways we can give in, we can contribute to the world to make a difference. Volunteering in the local community, giving out the things we do not need helping youth by tutoring them, or even go to the developing countries to work on health-related projects, are all the possible ways we can make a positive change in the society. If everyone contributes a little, it mounts up just like butterfly effect, which will lead to drastic global change, it lead everyone to live in a peaceful life, leads everyone in this planet have an opportunities to reach their dreams.

Throughout the entire book, Clinton has highlighted the globalization of compassion. It is not people in the same nation help their own people anymore, but they are out-reaching the other nations; help them to cope their problems. This movement ties the entire nation together; making us a big family, also strengthen the international relationship among different cultures and nations.

Overall, it is a great book for promoting the action of giving. Bill Clinton has revealed many well-established charitable organizations, provided many options to give people ideas for effective giving. He said, “We all live in an interdependent world in which our survival depends upon an understanding that our common humanity is more important than our interesting and inevitable differences and that everyone matters.”[3] Giving does not only makes a beneficial impact on others, but also build up individuals’ morality, making ones’ feel good about themselves. This book is great for managers, it leads them not only think about how to maximize their profit, but how to promote their products or services to make a differences in the world.

[1] Sykes, Charles J. “Some Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School.” The San Diego Union-Tribune. 19 September 1996.
[2] Clinton, Bill, 2007, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
[3] Clinton, Bill, 2007, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.