Blink

Malcom Gladwell

Highlights

  • be in command and out of control,” Van Riper says, echoing the words of the management guru Kevin Kelly.
  • extra information is more than useless. It’s harmful. It confuses the issues.
  • But testing products or ideas that are truly revolutionary is another matter, and the most successful companies are those that understand that in those cases, the first impressions of their consumers need interpretation. We like market research because it provides certainty—a score, a prediction; if someone asks us why we made the decision we did, we can point to a number. But the truth is that for the most important decisions, there can be no certainty.
  • One of the questions that I’ve been asked over and over again since Blink came out is, When should we trust our instincts, and when should we consciously think things through? Well, here is a partial answer. On straightforward choices, deliberate analysis is best. When questions of analysis and personal choice start to get complicated—when we have to juggle many different variables—then our unconscious thought processes may be superior.

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