Description
By far the best book I ve ever read on the how and why of scaling. If you care about changing the world, or just want to make better decisions in your own life, The Voltage Effect is for you. Angela Duckworth, CEO of Character Lab and New York Times bestselling author of Grit
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Why do some ideas make it big while others fail to take off? According to award-winning behavioural economist John List, the answer comes down to a single question: Can the idea scale?
Countless enterprises fall apart the moment they scale; their positive results fizzle, they lose valuable time and money, and the great electric charge of potential that drove them early on disappears. In short, they suffer a voltage drop. Yet success and failure are not about luck - in fact, there is a rhyme and reason as to why some ideas fail and why some make it big. Certain ideas are predictably scalable, while others are predictably destined for disaster.
In The Voltage Effect, University of Chicago economist John A. List explains how to identify the ideas that will be successful when scaled, and how to avoid those that won t. Drawing on his own original research, as well as fascinating examples from the realms of business, government, education, and public health, he details the five signature elements that cause voltage drops, and unpacks the four proven techniques for increasing positive results - or voltage gains - and scaling great ideas to their fullest potential.
By understanding the science of scaling, we can drive change in our schools, workplaces, communities, and society at large. Because a better world can only be built at scale.
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One of the best economics books I have ever read - and an instant classic in behavioral economics. Cass R. Sunstein, Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University, and New York Times bestselling co-author of Nudge
Thought-provoking and engaging. A must-read. Daron Acemoglu, Institute Professor at MIT and co-author of Why Nations Fail and The Narrow Corridor.
About the Author
Professor John A. List is the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on combining field experiments with economic theory to deepen our understanding of the economic science. In the early 1990s, List pioneered field experiments as a methodology for testing behavioral theories and learning about behavioral principles that are shared across different domains. He co-authored the international best seller, The Why Axis, in 2013. List was elected a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2011, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2015. List received the 2010 Kenneth Galbraith Award, the 2008 Arrow Prize for Senior Economists for his research in behavioral economics in the field, and was the 2012 Yrjo Jahnsson Lecture Prize recipient. He is a current Editor of the Journal of Political Economy.
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