New Books in Business, Management, and Marketing

Cannabis "legalization" hasn't lived up to the hype. Across North America, investors are reeling, tax collections are below projections, and people are pointing fingers. On the business side, companies have shut down, farms have failed, workers have lost their jobs, and consumers face high prices. Why has legal weed failed to deliver on many of its promises? Can Legal Weed Win?: The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics (U California Press, 2022) takes on the euphoric claims with straight dope and a full dose of economic reality.

This book delivers the unadulterated facts about the new legal segment of one of the world's oldest industries. In witty, accessible prose, economists Robin Goldstein and Daniel Sumner take readers on a whirlwind tour of the economic past, present, and future of legal and illegal weed. Drawing upon reams of data and their own experience working with California cannabis regulators since 2016, Goldstein and Sumner explain why many cannabis businesses and some aspects of legalization fail to measure up, while others occasionally get it right. Their stories stretch from before America's first medical weed dispensaries opened in 1996 through the short-term boom in legal consumption that happened during COVID-19 lockdowns. Can Legal Weed Win? is packed with unexpected insights about how cannabis markets can thrive, how regulators get the laws right or wrong, and what might happen to legal and illegal markets going forward.

Robin Goldstein is an economist and author of The Wine Trials, a controversial exposé of wine snobbery that has become the world’s best-selling guide to cheap wine. Daniel Sumner is Frank H Buck, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis. Together they take readers on a tour of the economics of legal and illegal weed, showing where cannabis regulation has gone wrong and how it could do better.

John Emrich has worked for decades years in corporate finance, business valuation and fund management. He has a podcast about the investment space called Kick the Dogma.

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Why does the monarchy matter? In Running the Family Firm: How the Monarchy Manages Its Image and Our Money (Manchester UP, 2021),  Laura Clancy, a Lecturer in Media and Lancaster University, considers the British monarchy in the context of contemporary financialised capitalism, exposing the tensions and contradictions between the public face of royalty and the reality of the infrastructures, labour relations, financial arrangements, and political economies of Britain’s ‘family firm’. The book uses a huge range of examples, from the monarchy’s role in politics and public life, through to the personalities that drive much media coverage. Rich with detailed case studies and analysis, the book is essential reading across the social sciences and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in understanding how power and elites function in Britain today.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

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In AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live (ASTD, 2020), Margie Meacham describes the benefits, uses, and risks of AI technology and offers practical tools to strengthen and enhance learning and performance programs. In layman's terms, Meacham demonstrates how we can free time for ourselves by employing a useful robot "assistant," create a chatbot for specific tasks (such as a new manager bot, a sales coach bot, or new employee onboarding bot), and build personalized coaching tools from AI-processed big data. She concludes each of the six chapters with helpful tips and includes a resource guide with planning tools, templates, and worksheets.

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Today I talked to Richard Chataway about his book The Behaviour Business: How to Apply Behavioural Science for Business Success (Harriman House, 2020).

Ever seen the TED talk video on Youtube where Capuchin monkeys get enraged when some receive cucumbers and other monkeys more delicious grapes for completing the same task? Welcome to the inequality basis, whereby a lack of fairness drives all of us crazy. Whether it’s a matter of employees getting different pay for the same job, or consumers feeling like some people get better deals than others, feelings of injustice or disappointment or pride---you name it—drive our behavior. How often is what people say and how they feel and behave identical? Not especially, says my guest this week. Indeed, Richard Chataway would estimate that verbal input might at best get you 50% of the way to understanding how somebody might behave in actuality. Other topics covered in this episode include why inspiring disgust helped an anti-smoking campaign do so well and how Hilton Hotels leveraged the use of the Big Five personality model to increase clicks and shares online.

Richard Chataway is the CEO of BVA Nudge Consulting UK and the founder of the Communication Science Group. Clients have included: Lloyds Banking Group, Google, and IKEA. He’s also a former board member of the Association of Business Psychology in the UK.

Dan Hill, PhD, is the author of nine books and leads Sensory Logic, Inc. (https://www.sensorylogic.com). His new book is Blah, Blah, Blah: A Snarky Guide to Office Lingo. To check out his related “Dan Hill’s EQ Spotlight” blog, visit https://emotionswizard.com.

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Sophie Adelman is the co-founder of Multiverse and The Garden, two companies that are innovating the way people learn and enhance their personal skills. Multiverse offers professional apprenticeships as an alternative to traditional college approaches, and The Garden is launching a platform for building and educating a diverse community of people who share a passion for learning.

Sophie’s path to success began with no clear entrepreneurial role model, nor a precise idea of what she wanted to do with her professional life. After studies at Cambridge, Harvard, and Stanford Business School, she worked in a variety of positions in the corporate world, including stints in headhunting, banking, and finance.

But along the way, Sophie knew one thing for certain—she wanted to change the world, and she believed that meaningful change could begin at the organisational level. Today, her innovative learning models are levelling the playing field for people and businesses that want access to top-tier educational opportunities. Tune in and find out for yourself how it works.

About our guest:

As co-founder of Multiverse and The Garden, Sophie Adelman is on her way to pursuing her overriding dream—which is nothing less than trying to make the world a better place for everyone. How does she plan to do it? By levelling the playing field between those who can and those who traditionally didn’t have access to equal educational opportunities.

Sophie’s passion for driving change doesn’t stop there. She is also co-founder and president of WhiteHat, a tech scale-up committed to creating a whole new generation of leaders. In many ways, she is just getting started. Who knows where her passion for leadership and change will eventually lead her?

About NBN:

The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate, inform and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal stories of carefully selected guests—all in an informal atmosphere of unscripted conversations and open, personal accounts.

Find links to past episodes here.

About our Hosts:

Kimon Fountoukidis:

Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. He founded both companies in the mid-90s with zero capital, and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. He is passionate about sharing his success with others and working entrepreneurs of all kinds to help them achieve their goals. Listen to his story here. Kimon's on Twitter here. 

Richard Lucas:

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who has founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network.

Richard has been a TEDx event organiser for years, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels. He was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991, where continues to invest in promising companies and helps other entrepreneurs realise their dreams. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here. Richard is on Twitter here.

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Listen to this interview of Roslyn Petelin, Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, Australia. We talk about her book How Writing Works: A Field Guide to Effective Writing (Routledge, 2021) writing well and knowing why.

Roslyn Petelin : "My book caters for all kinds of writers: student writers, creative writers, technical writers, journalistic writers, corporate writers, all of whom need to be able to write well, write successfully, for either personal or corporate credibility."

Contact Daniel at [email protected].

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Realize your fullest leadership potential, claim your boldest vision, and prioritize the well-being of your team and world with this new science-based approach to leadership. In Boundless Leadership: The Breakthrough Method to Realize Your Vision, Empower Others, and Ignite Positive Change (Shambhala, 2021), psychotherapist Joe Loizzo and executive coach Elazar Aslan offer science-based vision of leadership to help leaders cultivate clarity, compassion and fearlessness for themselves and throughout their organization.

In the podcast, our host Leo explores the main themes of the book, disciplines of heart, mind, and body, and how leaders can evolve from their survival instinct to their thriving instinct. They discuss real-world examples and real-world applications of how executives, entrepreneurs, and individuals, all seeking to get the best out of themselves, develop to better lead themselves and others. Joe explains the underlying philosophy and psychology behind Boundless Leadership; Elazar shares his story as a former C-suite executive to unleash and control his thriving instinct; the pair are an engaging duo, synced up after many years of collaboration, and the podcast is an helpful introduction to the book and captivating record of their journey and message.

Visit Leo's blog at empoweredbelonging.substack.com to read his overview of the book and participate in the discussion. He writes about how leadership can build societies fit for the 21st century and would love to hear your feedback about the podcast at bit.ly/Feedback-Leo.

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Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about:

Our guest is: Dr. Samuel West, a licensed psychologist (cognitive behavioral therapy) with a PhD in Organizational Psychology. His research focuses on creating climates for innovation by encouraging experimentation and exploration. In 2017 he founded the Museum of Failure showcasing over a 100 innovation failures from around the world. The aim of the museum is to stimulate productive discussions about the important role of failure for innovation and to increase organizational acceptance of failure.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-creator and co-producer of the Academic Life. She previously worked in Museum Education at a small museum in New York; and as a PhD student worked for a professor who was a Smithsonian curator.

Listeners to this episode might also be interested in:

You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. We reach across our mentor network to bring you experts about everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

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When faced with new challenges, it’s easy to feel our solutions need to be equally unprecedented. We think we need a revolution. But what if this is a big mistake?

In Evolutionary Ideas, Sam Tatam shows how behavioral science and evolutionary psychology can help us solve tomorrow’s challenges, not by divining something the world has never seen, but by borrowing from yesterday’s solutions – often in the most unexpected ways.

Just as millions of years of evolution have helped craft the wing and dorsal fin, thousands of engineers, designers, marketers, and advertisers have toiled to solve many of the problems you face today. Over time, through intent, design, social learning and sheer luck, we have found what works.

Armed with an enhanced ability to see these patterns in human innovation, we can now systematically approach the creative process to develop more effective ideas more readily and rapidly.

Sam Tatam's book Evolutionary Ideas: Unlocking Ancient Innovation to Solve Tomorrow's Challenges (Harriman House, 2022) explores five of the most critical challenges we face today, and we learn how to ‘breed’ more effective solutions from those that have survived. The result is a dynamic and exciting way of solving problems and supercharging creativity – for anyone in any endeavor.

John Emrich has worked for decades in corporate finance, business valuation and fund management. He has a podcast about the investment advisory industry called Kick the Dogma. [email protected].

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How Amazon combined branding and relationship marketing with massive distribution infrastructure to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy. Amazon is ubiquitous in our daily lives—we stream movies and television on Amazon Prime Video, converse with Alexa, receive messages on our smartphone about the progress of our latest orders. In Buy Now: How Amazon Branded Convenience and Normalized Monopoly (MIT Press, 2022), Emily West examines Amazon's consumer-facing services to investigate how Amazon as a brand grew so quickly and inserted itself into so many aspects of our lives even as it faded into the background, becoming a sort of infrastructure that can be taken for granted. Amazon promotes the comfort and care of its customers (but not its workers) to become the ultimate service brand in the digital economy.

Noopur Raval is a postdoctoral researcher working at the intersection of Information Studies, STS, Media Studies and Anthropology

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