SLOW Movement

NY Times: Using Google's Data to Reach Consumers

2011-12-23T08:09:05-08:00

December 22, 2011

Using Google’s Data to Reach Consumers

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

THE viruses that Google researchers usually focus on are those that strike computers, but in recent years, they have studied those that infect people, too.

Google correlated billions of flu-related Web searches from 2003 to 2008 with actual Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data over the same period. Then, because Web searchers’ Internet addresses indicated location, Google devised a formula to estimate regional flu activity based solely on searches, with a reporting lag of only about a day, outdoing C.D.C. flu reports, which typically are published a week or two after outbreaks.

In 2009, researchers from Google and the C.D.C. wrote an article summarizing their findings in the journal Nature, and stated that the new predictive model — now called Google Flu Trends and accessible in an interactive format online — could be a boon to public health. “Up-to-date influenza estimates may enable public health officials and health professionals to better respond to seasonal epidemics,” they wrote.

What the researchers probably did not predict was that the Google flu data would end up being the cornerstone of an advertising campaign.

For the Vicks Behind Ear Thermometer, a new product that determines temperature when placed in the soft area behind the ear, marketers wanted to reach mothers, the primary purchasers of thermometers.

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A mobile campaign by Blue Chip Marketing Worldwide, which is based in Chicago, places the ads for the thermometer within popular apps like Pandora that collect basic details about users, including their sex and whether they are parents, and can pinpoint specific demographics to receive ads.

But not all mothers will see the ad on their smartphones. Rather, the ads will be sent only to devices that, according to Google, are in regions experiencing a high incidence of flu. Also, the ads will only be delivered to mothers within two miles of retailers that carry the thermometer, including Walmart, Target and Babies “R” Us.

“Flu levels in your area are high,” says the banner ad within an app. “Be prepared with Vicks revolutionary Behind Ear Thermometer.”

Tapping the ad, which also notes the nearest store that sells the thermometer (“Buy at Rite Aid .3 miles away.”), brings users to a product page with items including an informational video and a list of nearby retailers. Tapping a retailer reveals directions there.

Also handling the campaign, which was introduced in a limited way early in December and will be at full throttle when flu season peaks in January and February, is Where, the location-based mobile advertising network that is a division of PayPal, a unit of eBay.

“It understands how this mom lives and shops, and she receives the message in the most relevant manner,” said Stanton Kawer, chief executive of Blue Chip, about the campaign. “It is so fantastically targeted that it’s really amazing.”

The new thermometer is made by Kaz, which through licensing agreements markets thermometers under the Vicks and Braun brands (both owned by Procter & Gamble), and which also makes Vicks humidifiers.

Sales for thermometers follow flu season, picking up in October, peaking in January and February, and tapering off in March and April, according to Lara Peterson, a vice president for marketing at Kaz, a subsidiary of Helen of Troy Limited.

Smartphones are used by 53 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 and 64 percent of those 25 to 34, according to Nielsen. Google reports that 79 percent of owners use them for shopping purposes like comparing prices and locating a retailer.

Organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommend against mercury thermometers (citing the danger of both mercury and glass). Sales of digital thermometers are up, growing about 17 percent from 2005 to 2010, according to a report from Mintel, a market research firm.

The American Academy of Pediatrics still recommends taking temperature rectally for newborns under 3 months, and not taking it orally until children are at least 4 years old. The newest generation of digital thermometers measure parts of the body including the underarm, forehead and inside the ear.

The new Vicks thermometer, with a suggested retail price of $40 to $50, is the first in the category made specifically to measure behind the ear, according to Ms. Peterson, of Kaz.

“It measures fever in a very noninvasive way,” said Ms. Peterson, adding that the location’s proximity to the carotid artery, which carries blood to the brain, ensures accurate readings.

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Because feverish children can be particularly fidgety, the ease of use strikes a chord with parents. Kaz recently commissioned a study where the device was used to take the temperature of napping babies at a day care center, and 95 percent slept through it.

In addition to print and online advertising, also by Blue Chip, commercials for the thermometer will be shown in more than 2,600 pediatricians’ offices for two months beginning Jan. 15, through a deal with KidCare TV, which provides informational programming to waiting rooms.

As for the mobile campaign aimed at mothers in high-flu areas, Brian Morrissey, editor in chief of Digiday, an online publication that covers digital marketing and media, said being tracked by advertisers had a “creepy factor” for some consumers.

Many Facebook users, for example, balked when in 2007 it introduced Beacon, a program that shared their online purchases with their social network. “Creepiness comes in when consumers are surprised,” Mr. Morrissey said.

But he predicted consumers would actually like the thermometer campaign.

“It seems like they’ll pull it off, because they’re using the data in a smart way, for advertising that’s more relevant and useful,” Mr. Morrissey said.

NY Times: Philanthropy by the Rest of Us

2011-12-23T08:00:25-08:00

December 22, 2011

Philanthropy by the Rest of Us

By OLIVIER ZUNZ

Charlottesville, Va.

CHRISTMAS SEALS, first sold 104 years ago in a Delaware post office, transformed the treatment and control of tuberculosis, one of the most feared killers of the age.

Just as important, they produced a revolution in philanthropy. At that time, the 1 percent of the late Gilded Age, men with names like Carnegie and Rockefeller, were creating major new philanthropic institutions. Christmas Seals, in a way, was the response from the other 99 percent: by marketing something as inexpensive as a stamp and using the proceeds to attack a major disease, the founders of the Christmas Seals program demonstrated the collective power of the American public.

The idea reached the United States by chance. The Danish-born immigrant Jacob Riis, well known as a pioneer photographer of tenement life, had already seen six of his brothers die of tuberculosis by 1904 when he received a Christmas letter from Copenhagen.

In addition to the traditional postage stamp, it bore a peculiar seal, the brainchild of a Danish postal clerk, Einar Holboll. Rather than rely on a few deep pockets to pay for a new hospital for children with tuberculosis, he sold the seals for two ore (there are 100 ore in a Danish krone) each. Patrons placed the seals alongside regular stamps to raise awareness of the campaign.

Three years later, Riis reported the story of this highly successful “penny subscription” in the magazine The Outlook, urging its duplication in the United States. Riis pointed to the fact that “no millionaire” had yet come forth “to endow” the fight against tuberculosis in America, and went on to say that “no millionaire” was “wanted,” that the job would be “far better done by the people themselves.”

Emily Bissell, a member of The Outlook’s editorial board and an active fund-raiser for the Red Cross, took him up on the suggestion as a way to support a tuberculosis sanitarium near Wilmington, Del. She borrowed money from friends to print the seals, persuaded the Wilmington postmaster to sell them in the post office lobby, and sold the first Christmas Seals in December 1907. Aided by an adroit publicity campaign, she raised $3,000 that first year, 10 times her original goal.

It was such a success that the next year the Red Cross made the seals available in post offices around the country, packaged with the message, “These stamps do not carry any kind of mail but any kind of mail will carry them.” That year, Christmas Seals raised $135,000; by 1916, they raised $1 million, all through purchases of less than $1.

The Christmas Seals campaign demonstrated the philanthropic power of the grass roots. It not only raised money, but called attention to tuberculosis. In a few years, the number of volunteers for the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis soared to 500,000 from 5,000. In 1919, three million child “crusaders” served in the Modern Health Crusade to raise awareness of the disease.

Equally important, this people’s philanthropy mobilized public health officials, attracted the attention of politicians — President Theodore Roosevelt publicly endorsed Christmas Seals — and even mobilized the 1 percent. The Rockefeller International Health Commission joined the fight against tuberculosis during World War I.

Mass philanthropy took off in a wide variety of fields. Community chests sprang up in every major city, and the Red Cross took volunteerism and grass-roots philanthropy to new levels to support the troops abroad. By the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced the March of Dimes, volunteers knew how to canvass entire populations in large and small cities alike. Today, it is possible for practically every citizen willing to spend a little money to respond directly and almost instantly to world emergencies simply by sitting down at a computer or picking up a cellphone.

At the same time, mass philanthropy has become increasingly news-driven, as givers respond to earthquakes and tsunamis with an outpouring of resources but then lose interest as these disasters move off the front page. During the holiday season, our phones ring incessantly with appeals from scores of nonprofits. That we give to some of them is critical for our society. But the new ease with which we can transfer money does little to deepen the philanthropic spirit or generate long-term commitments.

What’s missing is both the commonality and intensity of purpose displayed by the original Christmas Seals campaign. Interestingly, these are two qualities exhibited by Occupy Wall Street, a movement that seems unable to harness its members’ sense of outrage to purposeful action.

It might be worthwhile for all those who sympathize with the occupiers of Zuccotti Park and other plazas and squares around the country to learn from the example of the Christmas Seals campaign. We have no shortage of urgent causes that will benefit from the energy of the grass roots. The seals campaign showed that the 99 percent, even when feeling disenfranchised, are hardly powerless to repair the safety net — and even influence the actions of the 1 percent.

Olivier Zunz, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, is the author of “Philanthropy in America: A History.”

FT: Charity begins at the office

2011-12-15T07:54:31-08:00

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0f3efb28-25b3-11e1-856e-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1gcRptTwO

December 14, 2011 11:14 pm

Charity begins at the office

By Andrew Jack

Life savers: Network Rail partnered with Samaritans, which provided publicity campaigns to help reduce suicides

The chief executive of Standard Chartered has many pressing financial issues on his mind but when Peter Sands hosts a conference call with the bank’s senior executives on Thursday, one unusual item will be high on his agenda: its campaign to tackle preventable blindness.

Such sustained, top-level commitment to a charitable cause has helped the bank’s success in raising more than $37m in eight years to fund 2.7m cataract operations worldwide in conjunction with staff and partners, including a donation-matching programme for the Financial Times seasonal appeal this year for Sightsavers.

But StanChart’s Seeing is Believing campaign, which began as an employee suggestion for marking the bank’s 150th anniversary in 2003, has triggered a far broader programme that embraces volunteering and technical assistance. It has also brought substantial benefits to the bank itself and even led to changes in working practices. “It captured the imagination and commitment of staff, and plays to our culture in cementing a very diverse business,” says Richard Meddings, StanChart chief financial officer, who chairs the effort and points to its role in motivating employees and attracting recruits.

Such projects reflect a broader international trend towards more sophisticated partnerships between businesses and charities that go far beyond traditional chequewriting, a process that risks providing only short-term benefits while diverting an organisation’s limited resources.

“We’ve gone from the chairman’s wife identifying a worthy cause to cause-related marketing, with companies extending their brand by engaging with charities,” says Ben Kernighan, deputy head of the UK’s National Council for Voluntary Organisations, an umbrella body for the non-profit sector. “Companies recognise the huge range of skills they have to respond to the community”.

Mr Meddings says StanChart’s partnerships with local blindness charities around the world has led the bank to introduce “speaking” ATMs with Braille keys and to recruit from schools for the blind, especially in call-centres, where impaired vision need not be an impediment. In Uganda it has hired a former employee of a partner charity as an executive.

David Fass, Macquarie CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, says the bank has partnerships worldwide, including the Cripplegate Foundation to tackle poverty in Islington, north London. “It not only provides valuable skilled resources for the organisation, it provides development for staff. They come back more motivated, more creative . . . It broadens their horizons, working with a variety of stakeholders, [and] collaborating and engaging with senior colleagues.”

Building stronger partnerships

● Make a partnership a high priority: consistent top management support works better than diktats.
● Match: contribute alongside employees’ donations, and make it easier and more tax-efficient through payroll giving.
● Partner for the long-term:one-off seasonal donations can be quickly forgotten and unsustainable.
● Be sensitive: employee polling to select charities may neglect less popular or well marketed causes.
● Identify shared values:common aims and objectives between a company and a charity help establish better partnerships.
● Provide time and expertise:volunteering and technical assistance can add more than money for both parties.
● Service contracts: charities’ skills and expertise can form the basis for successful commercial contracts.

These deeper partnerships reflect recognition of professionalism among charities, coupled with an urgency to seek financial support during the economic downturn and a shift in the way services are delivered by public and private sector entities alike.

Klara Kozlov, senior corporate adviser at the Charities Aid Foundation, says one shift involves businesses hiring charities to deliver services directly. “The charity/business divide is disappearing,” she explains. “There is a move away from the ‘funder’ model of companies give and charities receive, to a relationship of mutual benefit.”

Three years ago insurer Legal & General formed a unit to create links with non-profit groups. “A lot of partnerships are great for a charity of the year, but the company never learns from them,” says Graham Precey, head of corporate social responsibility. “There is a lot of intellectual property in the third sector that would really help our business. We pay charities, which allows us to deliver better services and them to develop a new income stream and build capacity to work with other corporates.”

Identifying Macmillan Cancer Support as one of the most important beneficiaries of L&G’s employee donation programme led to it paying the charity to train 90 of its “critical illness team” in how to deal with calls from customers with cancer.

L&G has negotiated a similar arrangement with Age UK, a charity advising the elderly, recognising that “we’ve got a generation gap, with our 25-year-old employees talking to customers who are mainly aged over 55”.

It also works with housing charity Shelter and funds all three groups for activities beyond its commercial contracts, such as joint advocacy work where they have common interests.

Such innovative approaches can help win funding for groups that work on less popular causes and those with fewer resources to market themselves for employee ballots. One such charity is the Samaritans. “We struggle to get corporate funding because we are not cuddly or sexy,” says Rachel Kirby-Rider, its fundraising director. So she brokered a “commercial partnership” with Network Rail. The UK rail operator has paid the charity £5m over five years to run a programme that aims to reduce the number of suicides on British railways. These human tragedies also distress employees, disrupt passengers and lead to fines for service delays. “The basis is commercial but there are wider benefits,” says Mike Carr, Network Rail’s national safety improvement manager.

The Samaritans has trained station personnel to identify and talk to people they suspect may be contemplating suicide; counselled train drivers following deaths; and run a publicity campaign targeting men aged 30-55, those judged most at risk.

Jan Levy, head of Three Hands, a consultancy advising businesses on community engagement, praises such projects but cautions that effective partnerships require shared values, which risk being forgotten if “companies treat charities like cleaners”.

Sir Stephen Bubb, head of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, says: “[The charity] can’t just be a subcontractor. You have to be involved in the way the contract is put together, and have ways to raise and deal with issues. But the marriage could be a really winning combination.”

Ms Kirby-Rider concedes that a direct donation of £5m from Network Rail would probably have been spent on other projects for the Samaritans such as new systems to allow callers to phone the counselling service for free. But she remains very satisfied with the project. “This is a commercial partnership that saves lives and enabled us to do things we would not have been able to do,” she says. “Network Rail staff are really excited about it, so you can achieve charitable and organisational objectives.”

WSJ: Why You Didn't Hit 'Reply'

2011-12-15T07:38:00-08:00

HEAD CASE
DECEMBER 10, 2011

Why You Didn't Hit 'Reply'

Online, friends still get premium treatment

By JONAH LEHRER

It's hard to imagine a world without email. It's now the dominant form of exchange, with the typical American adult spending more than an hour a day managing the inbox. (People under 25 now spend more time texting from their cellphones than talking on them.) The shift has been most dramatic for "knowledge workers" like computer programmers and lawyers, who devote nearly half their workdays to email.

Email has also profoundly influenced the kinds of people we interact with. According to a new study by Stefan Wuchty and Brian Uzzi at Northwestern University, we exchange the highest volume of email with those people we know the least. Perhaps it's a new colleague, or a friend of a friend, or a total stranger writing out of the blue: Email makes these exchanges possible.

Getty Images

'An easy way to see how you feel about a person: How long does it take you to return their email?'

"These are folks you almost certainly wouldn't talk to on the phone," Mr. Uzzi says. "You also probably wouldn't bump into them on the street. But email allows us to communicate with them all day long."

What makes this study noteworthy is that the researchers had access not only to the complete email records of a midsize company—nearly 1.5 million messages sent by 1,052 employees over a six-month time span—but also to a detailed map of social relationships. (The employees were asked to list all of their personal contacts.)

By comparing these two data sets, Messrs. Wuchty and Uzzi developed an algorithm that let them predict the nature of a given relationship based solely on the details of an email exchange. "We didn't need to read the messages or anything like that," Mr. Uzzi says. "Just looking at the speed of a reply was more than enough."

People reply to their close friends, on average, within seven hours of getting the email, the data show. Professional contacts take a bit more time: We don't hit send for nearly 11 hours. But the biggest difference came when the scientists looked at those people we barely know. On average, it took us 50 hours to reply. In other words, there's a surprisingly easy way to figure out how you feel about someone—just count the hours before you hit the "reply" button.

"Although these messages [from people we don't know well] account for the majority of messages, people replied much more slowly to them," Mr. Uzzi says. "We clearly give email priority to our close friends, just as we do in real life."

The researchers imagine many practical applications for this algorithm, at least once the obvious privacy issues are settled. Companies, for instance, could use it to more effectively assign people to teams, searching for the optimal mixture of close friends and total strangers. Email programs might use it to sort our messages automatically into various folders, while social networking sites could use the algorithm to construct more accurate maps of online connections, thus allowing companies to precisely target their advertising.

This research is also reassuring. Like all new technologies, the Internet has provoked a tremendous amount of anxiety, as people worry about the decay of our attention spans and the dissolution of authentic human contact. We are sometimes so busy texting that we forget to talk, and it seems to some that our online "friending" has ruined real friendship.

But this study is a reminder that even in a world transformed by digital devices, the most important things remain constant. Although we can interact with anyone, we still respond most quickly to our closest friends. We now know many more people, but we haven't forgotten which members of our circle really matter.

The same constancy also applies to social networking sites. The average Facebook user has more than 130 online "friends," but the site hasn't fundamentally changed the nature of real-world friendship. When surveyed, those with the most Facebook contacts still have roughly the same number of close relationships as everyone else. The only difference is that they seem to get more emotional support from these friends.

We always fret over new things, but so far, it's hard to see a social downside to the Internet. Online interaction has allowed us to meet many new people, but it has not diminished our yearning to maintain older relationships. As the song about new and old friends goes, one is silver and the other is gold.

Strategy + Business: A New Way to Gain Customer Insights

2011-12-06T07:57:09-08:00

Published: November 7, 2011

Marketing, Media & Sales

A New Way to Gain Customer Insights

How conjoint analysis, a tried-and-true market research tool, can be used to support organic growth.

by David Meer

When Dow Jones decided to revamp the Wall Street Journal in the mid-2000s, the newspaper had just endured five years of flat circulation and advertising revenue, and the whole industry was ailing. Although the Journal didn’t want to alienate its core readership, it wanted to attract new readers — in particular a younger demographic that advertisers would value. Dow Jones knew it had to make changes to its then 125-year-old newspaper. But the company’s bigger purpose was to understand the needs of an emerging segment of business news consumers that the Journal was not successfully reaching.

To help develop its strategy, Dow Jones employed a variant of conjoint analysis, a technique that has been widely used in market research for 30 years. In a traditional conjoint analysis, survey respondents are asked which products or product attributes they value as a trade-off between two or more options, repeated in enough combinations to yield a reliable ranking of each attribute’s importance. Dow Jones used this type of analysis in a new way, to identify prospective readers and reveal their preferences. After its redesign to attract this new customer segment, the Journal (now part of the News Corporation) saw a 35 percent improvement in its efforts to add new subscribers through direct marketing, reversed a three-year slump in ad sales, and experienced an annual revenue improvement of US$25 million from new programs and pricing initiatives.

In fact, for companies in industries as varied as luxury goods and retail banking, conjoint analysis is emerging as a strategic tool, providing actionable intelligence businesses can use to go beyond product optimization to support organic growth. The methodology needed to use conjoint analysis in this new way is very similar to the methodology that traditional practitioners of this type of analysis have used, but has a key variation: The marketing team uses the results to organize customer groups (and prospects) with similar preferences, providing a more detailed view of the categories they fall into, the needs they have, and the likelihood that they might become bigger (or smaller) sources of revenue.

In other words, conjoint analysis has become a new source of insight into customer segments. Of course, it would be hard to find a company that hasn’t done some kind of customer segmentation, and using conjoint analysis is certainly not the only way to achieve it. Companies usually have a sense of who their real and prospective customers are, and have an idea of what each segment considers important. But by segmenting customers with the help of conjoint analysis, companies can develop a more layered form of intelligence, with implications for which segments to prioritize, which value propositions to offer them, and how to market to them.

Looking for Luxury Shoppers

In recent years, a manufacturer of luxury gifts had become dissatisfied with the pace of growth in one of its largest geographic markets. Was the company targeting the wrong customers? Using the wrong materials? Supporting a brand with an undifferentiated value proposition? Advertising ineffectively? The company thought that if it could answer these questions, it would gain some of the insights needed to transform its organic growth strategy.

Using traditional conjoint analysis techniques, the manufacturer surveyed 2,000 luxury gift–buying consumers to find out the extent to which they were price- and brand-conscious; valued materials such as fine leather, fabrics, and metals; and wanted their gifts to elicit oohs and aahs from friends and family. The manufacturer then combined the data from the conjoint analysis with the results from other survey questions to define five customer segments and decided it had headroom — an opportunity to pick up significant market share — in several of those segments, including a group it called “classic shoppers.”

Thanks to the conjoint analysis survey, the manufacturer knew that in the “classic shopper” segment, customers ascribed great importance to prestige, cared a lot about high-quality materials, and preferred designs that made bold statements. The least important attribute to this customer segment was price — these customers didn’t mind paying a premium to get what they wanted.

The company might have already had an intuitive sense of these findings. However, the intelligence from the conjoint analysis was definitive. The results of the analysis have played a role in changing the company’s product line, changing what happens within the company’s distribution channels, and changing how and where the company spends its marketing dollars.

Protecting Profits at a Bank

In another recent example, a European bank was picking up signals that regulators were going to force it to become more transparent about the costs of loan protection, a product the bank made available to consumers who held unsecured loans. The bank didn’t make money selling unsecured loans, but it made a considerable profit selling insurance that guaranteed payment if a borrower lost his or her job or otherwise suffered an interruption of income. What would happen to the business model if regulators insisted on changes? Would there be a way to keep making money in the business of unsecured loans and loan protection?

The bank used a conjoint analysis survey of 1,600 people who had unsecured loans to estimate price elasticity for the loans themselves and for loan protection insurance. This was a way of anticipating the options it would have in the event that the regulatory environment changed, and banks were forced to raise (or lower) prices on either loan or loan-protection products.

The conjoint analysis answered the price elasticity question in the aggregate. After the bank clustered the panelists into five segments, it was also able to answer this question in a more granular way. For instance, customers in a segment the bank called “bargain hunters” were very sensitive to pricing — this group would not pay more to take out a loan or to insure it. By contrast, customers in a segment the bank designated as “personal bankers” (those who liked the high-touch approach, were willing to hear advice, and were open to special offers) were not particularly price sensitive. There would be ways, even in the event of a regulatory change, of selling this segment higher-priced unsecured loans and loan protection and profiting from it.

Indeed, one of the intriguing things about this bank’s use of conjoint analysis was the broad utility of the results. Although the analysis started off as a way to test price elasticity and prepare for external changes, the information the conjoint analysis generated — not only about how customers would respond in the event of a price increase, but also about more basic findings such as how people make borrowing decisions and how they think about financial providers — allowed the bank to identify tailored product strategies that would appeal to all its customer segments. The company decided its existing product would work for some of those segments, but that it should probably develop a no-frills product for the “bargain hunters” among its customers and a premium product for its “personal bankers.”

Segmenting for Growth

In an era of cautious consumer spending, many companies are looking for new ways to identify growth opportunities through improved customer insight. Conjoint analysis is at the forefront of this effort. The analytic rigor it brings is helping creative companies move forward with promising initiatives that they may have thought sounded good but couldn’t agree to implement without the data to back them up. Other companies find that it is generating avenues for organic growth they might not have come up with on their own.

In this way, conjoint analysis, which has historically informed relatively narrow product decisions (enhance this feature, remove that one) is turning out to have bigger strategic implications. It is a powerful tool that can fundamentally change companies’ perceptions about where opportunity lies and how to pursue it.

NY Times: A serving of Gratitude May Save the Day

2011-12-06T07:20:18-08:00

November 21, 2011

A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day

By JOHN TIERNEY

The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us.

Thanksgiving may be the holiday from hell for nutritionists, and it produces plenty of war stories for psychiatrists dealing with drunken family meltdowns. But it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep,less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.

But what if you’re not the grateful sort? I sought guidance from the psychologists who have made gratitude a hot research topic. Here’s their advice for getting into the holiday spirit — or at least getting through dinner Thursday:

Start with “gratitude lite.” That’s the term used by Robert A. Emmons, of the University of California, Davis, for the technique used in his pioneering experiments he conducted along with Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami. They instructed people to keep a journal listing five things for which they felt grateful, like a friend’s generosity, something they’d learned, a sunset they’d enjoyed.

The gratitude journal was brief — just one sentence for each of the five things — and done only once a week, but after two months there were significant effects. Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out.

Further benefits were observed in a study of polio survivors and other people with neuromuscular problems. The ones who kept a gratitude journal reported feeling happier and more optimistic than those in a control group, and these reports were corroborated by observations from their spouses. These grateful people also fell asleep more quickly at night, slept longer and woke up feeling more refreshed.

“If you want to sleep more soundly, count blessings, not sheep,” Dr. Emmons advises in “Thanks!” his book on gratitude research.

Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness. Sure, you may feel obliged to return a favor, but that’s not gratitude, at least not the way psychologists define it. Indebtedness is more of a negative feeling and doesn’t yield the same benefits as gratitude, which inclines you to be nice to anyone, not just a benefactor.

In an experiment at Northeastern University, Monica Bartlett and David DeSteno sabotaged each participant’s computer and arranged for another student to fix it. Afterward, the students who had been helped were likelier to volunteer to help someone else — a complete stranger — with an unrelated task. Gratitude promoted good karma. And if it works with strangers ....

Try it on your family. No matter how dysfunctional your family, gratitude can still work, says Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside.

“Do one small and unobtrusive thoughtful or generous thing for each member of your family on Thanksgiving,” she advises. “Say thank you for every thoughtful or kind gesture. Express your admiration for someone’s skills or talents — wielding that kitchen knife so masterfully, for example. And truly listen, even when your grandfather is boring you again with the same World War II story.”

Don’t counterattack. If you’re bracing for insults on Thursday, consider a recent experiment at the University of Kentucky. After turning in a piece of writing, some students received praise for it while others got a scathing evaluation: “This is one of the worst essays I’ve ever read!”

Then each student played a computer game against the person who’d done the evaluation. The winner of the game could administer a blast of white noise to the loser. Not surprisingly, the insulted essayists retaliated against their critics by subjecting them to especially loud blasts — much louder than the noise administered by the students who’d gotten positive evaluations.

But there was an exception to this trend among a subgroup of the students: the ones who had been instructed to write essays about things for which they were grateful. After that exercise in counting their blessings, they weren’t bothered by the nasty criticism — or at least they didn’t feel compelled to amp up the noise against their critics.

“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky. “It helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy. “It’s an equal-opportunity emotion. Anyone can experience it and benefit from it, even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

Share the feeling. Why does gratitude do so much good? “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”

Try a gratitude visit. This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”

Contemplate a higher power. Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.

Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger.

“As a culture, we have lost a deep sense of gratefulness about the freedoms we enjoy, a lack of gratitude toward those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom, a lack of gratitude for all the material advantages we have,” he says. “The focus of Thanksgiving should be a reflection of how our lives have been made so much more comfortable by the sacrifices of those who have come before us.”

And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself —

Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.

Is that too much of a stretch? When all else fails, remember the Monty Python mantra of the Black Plague victim: “I’m not dead.” It’s all a matter of perspective.

WSJ: In China, IKEA Is a Swede Place for Senior Romance, Relaxation

2011-12-04T05:55:15-08:00

THE A-HED
DECEMBER 1, 2011

In China, IKEA Is a Swede Place for Senior Romance, Relaxation

Free Coffee, Empty Beds Set Intimate Tone; Retailer Struggles to Police the Unruly

By LAURIE BURKITT

At 62, Tang Yingzhuo, a retired widow looking for love, doesn't think it is appropriate to scope out men at bars, clubs or Karaoke joints. That's why she goes to IKEA.

Yang Jie/The Wall Street Journal

Chinese seniors find coffee and love at IKEA.

The former tax-bureau worker is among the throngs of seniors who meet every week at the Swedish retailer's cafeteria in Shanghai's Xuhui shopping district to take a second shot at romance.

Retired and divorced chiropractor Qian Weizhong is also on the prowl. On a recent Tuesday at IKEA Mr. Qian was excited to get the number of a woman he referred to as a "nice lady." He plans to ask her out soon, he said.

While Ms. Tang and the rest of the lonely hearts club flock to the do-it-yourself furniture shop for its clean, homey environment, they pose something of a challenge for IKEA. They sit for hours in the cafeteria, leaving behind orange peels and egg shells they have picked off boiled eggs brought from home. Occasionally, security guards intervene to try to keep order.

At the weekly IKEA romance session in Shanghai, the elderly arrive in swarms of 70 to 700 to get the free coffee offered to holders of the IKEA Family membership card. Zhou Hong, the official IKEA card swiper, says she typically hands out an average of 500 coffee cups each time the group meets.

Ms. Tang, seated amid the backdrop of Poang reading chairs and Vreta poufs, sips coffee and says she is grateful to have such a meeting place. "I make more senior citizen friends when I come here," said Ms. Tang. "There's more to offer than meeting a boyfriend at IKEA."

In China, IKEA is planning to up its nine locations to 17 stores by 2015 to meet demand from the nation's growing middle class, who aspire to Western lifestyles at affordable prices. But some are still in the gawk-phase. They come out of sheer curiosity, or to behold the vast spaces bursting with thousands of gadgets and creature comforts.

As culture and commerce intersect, some unusual behavior has emerged. And older folks aren't the only troublemakers. Young people, often with kids in tow, plop on chairs to watch videos on their smartphones. People aren't shy about kicking off their shoes and tucking into display beds for a nap.

On a recent Sunday in Beijing, Liu Yunfeng sat in a 3,999 yuan ($625) white leather Tirup chair, watching home videos from the screen of her Sony digital camera while her shoeless daughter jumped on the Nyvoll bed of a mock-up room.

"She loves all the different rooms they have," said Ms. Liu, sitting near a man who had dozed off on another bed.

IKEA isn't alone. Other big chains, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and McDonald's Corp., are accustomed to Chinese consumers spending lots of quality time—if not serious money—at their often huge, comfortable stores.

Policing the freeloaders and the unruly isn't so easy. Attempting to tell a rowdy crowd of seniors to lower their voices recently, 24-year-old security guard Li Ya says he encountered resistance. An older man who didn't enjoy being hushed by someone 40 years his junior, says Mr. Li, once splashed scalding coffee on him. "They always argue that they have the right to do what they want here," says Mr. Li.

Earlier this year, after a spate of altercations—and realizing that the seniors were taking seats away from paying customers—managers of the Shanghai IKEA outlet decided to take action.

To keep order, they bolstered security, assigning six guards to the cafeteria on Tuesdays and Thursdays in addition to the usual two posted there on other days.

They created a special roped off zone for sitting, allowing more tables to be open for shoppers who wanted warm tilapia, not hot dates.

They also propped up a notice board at the entrance of the cafeteria, pleading with the group to disband. "IKEA would hereby like to inform this group and its organizers: Your behavior is affecting the normal operations of the IKEA cafeteria," the notice said.

It went on: "Frequent fights and arguments do serious harm to the image both of Shanghai residents and IKEA. Bringing in outside food and tea violates the cafeteria's regulations…If you are a member of this group, we feel we have warned you, do not use the resources of IKEA to organize events of this kind."

Spokeswoman Yin Lifang said IKEA is attempting to find the group's organizers so that it can negotiate with them. Members of the group deny there are organizers.

With people of all ages using big-box stores as their personal playgrounds, a new term has emerged: "retailtainment."

A blend of the words retail and entertainment, it is now frequently used by companies and strategists.

Several years ago, some Wal-Mart stores in China set up a children's camp for summer and winter school breaks. During daily sessions, children are encouraged to try their hands as part-time greeters and announce deals over the broadcast system.

Whether that is enough to convert the campers into consumers is another matter. "If I go to Wal-Mart I'll want to go for the day," said Cui Hongyan. "I can buy my goods somewhere else much more quickly."

McDonald's, with its free Wi-Fi and clean bathrooms, is adding more electrical outlets to most of its China stores in hopes that people will actually come and hang around longer.

In Hong Kong, the fast food giant is developing a service known as "McWedding" to encourage people to marry in their stores. One proposed feature of the ceremony: When it is time for the big kiss, the bride and groom can each chomp on the end of a french fry until their lips meet.

Meanwhile IKEA, known for its Swedish meatballs, has no plans to allow nuptials in its cafeterias.

—Yang Jie contributed to this article.

Write to Laurie Burkitt at laurie.burkitt@wsj.com

WSJ: How a Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything

2011-10-30T03:34:37-07:00

OCTOBER 24, 2011

How a Few Bad Apples Ruin Everything

What harm can a handful of nasty or incompetent employees do? A lot more than you may think.

By ROBERT SUTTON

Superstars get a lot of attention from bosses. But bad apples deserve even more.

A growing body of research suggests that having just a few nasty, lazy or incompetent characters around can ruin the performance of a team or an entire organization—no matter how stellar the other employees.

Bad apples distract and drag down everyone, and their destructive behaviors, such as anger, laziness and incompetence, are remarkably contagious. Leaders who let a few bad apples in the door—perhaps in exchange for political favors—or look the other way when employees are rude or incompetent are setting the stage for even their most skilled people to fail.

It's crucial for leaders to screen out bad apples before they're hired—and if they do slip through the cracks, bosses must make every effort to reform or (if necessary) oust them.

Spreading the Vibes

It's easy to understand why bosses would rather focus on attracting and developing superstars. A mountain of research shows that stars and geniuses can deliver astounding results. And, obviously, it's more fun and inspiring to focus on top-performing, energetic employees.

Serge Bloch

But studies of everything from romantic relationships to workplace encounters show that negative interactions can pack a much bigger wallop than positive ones. The reason is simple: "Bad is stronger than good," as psychologist Roy Baumeister and his colleagues put it. The negative thoughts, feelings and performance they trigger in others are far larger and longer lasting than the positive responses generated by more constructive colleagues.

Consider research on bad apples and team effectiveness by Will Felps, Terence R. Mitchell and Eliza Byington. They examined the impact of team members who were deadbeats ("withholders of effort"), downers (who "express pessimism, anxiety, insecurity and irritation") and jerks (who violate "interpersonal norms of respect"). An experiment by Mr. Felps found that having just one slacker or jerk in a group can bring down performance by 30% to 40%.

How can organizations squash those negative influences? The easiest way, obviously, is to avoid hiring bad apples in the first place—and that means taking a different approach to assessing candidates for jobs.

The usual means of screening are often weak when it comes to determining if a job candidate is a bad apple. Candidates may have gone to the best schools or may come across as charming and brilliant in interviews—thus disguising their laziness, incompetence or nastiness.

That's why one of the best ways to screen employees is to see how they actually do the job under realistic conditions. Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta favor that approach. When they're hiring new people for their Palo Alto, Calif., company, Pulse, which makes a news-reading app for mobile devices, they consider evaluations from peers and superiors and do multiple rounds of interviews. But they say the most effective thing is to bring candidates in for a day or two and give them a short job to accomplish. (The candidates are paid for their time.)

Not only do they learn a lot about the candidates' technical skills, Messrs. Kothari and Gupta say, but they also learn about their personality. How do they deal with setbacks? Do they know when to ask for help and to give others help? Is the candidate the kind of person they want to work with? The partners say there have been several candidates who looked great on paper and came highly recommended but weren't offered jobs—because technical and interpersonal weaknesses surfaced during the selection process.

Play Nice or Else

Beyond smarter screening, it's important to develop a culture that doesn't tolerate jerks. The best organizations make explicit their intolerance for bad apples; they spell out which behaviors are unacceptable in the workplace and act decisively to prevent and halt them.

Consider Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial-services firm that has won praise as a great place to work. The company is serious about creating a culture where disrespect and selfishness are unacceptable. They call this the "no jerk rule" (though they use a more colorful word than "jerk").

The company starts sending the message during the hiring process, says CEO Paul Purcell. "During the interview, I look them in the eye and tell them, 'If I discover that you are a jerk, I am going to fire you,' " he says. "Most candidates aren't fazed by this, but every now and then, one turns pale, and we never see them again—they find some reason to back out of the search."

When the company makes a hiring error and brings aboard an employee who persistently demeans colleagues or puts personal needs ahead of others, Baird acts quickly to deal with or expel the bad apple.

Mr. Purcell's crusty approach won't work in every company culture. For an idea of how to handle the task with a more subtle hand, look at renowned chef Alice Waters, who has headed the restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., for 40 years now.

Biographer Thomas McNamee describes how Ms. Waters's love of people and food has spread to those around her. Along the way, though, many bad apples have been shown the door—but Ms. Waters doesn't hold it open. The process usually starts when one of her colleagues conveys the message that Ms. Waters isn't "entirely pleased." If the hints don't work, then that colleague—or someone else close to Ms. Waters—does the firing.

A spokesman for Chez Panisse says Ms. Waters does personally fire employees on occasion and "she manages to have that person feel as though they are making the decision to leave and it is better for themselves to move on and explore new opportunities." He also notes that a large percentage of employees have been with the restaurant for decades.

Keeping Them Close

There are times, of course, when an organization can't—or won't—remove a destructive personality. Maybe the person is a star as well as a bad apple, for instance, or is otherwise crucial to the operation. In such cases, leaders might try to use coaching, warnings and incentives to curb the toxic employee's behavior. Another tactic is to physically isolate the bad apple.

In one organization, there was a deeply skilled and incredibly nasty engineer whom leaders could not bring themselves to fire. So, they rented a beautiful private office for him several blocks from the building where his colleagues worked. His co-workers were a lot happier—and so was he, since he preferred working alone.

But beware: Leaders who believe that destructive superstars are "too important" to fire often underestimate the damage they can do. Stanford researchers Charles O'Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer report a revealing episode at a clothing retailer. The company fired a top-producing salesman who was a bad apple. After he was gone, none of his former colleagues sold as much as he had. But the store's total sales shot up by nearly 30%. The lesson, according to the researchers: "That one individual brought the others down, and when he was gone, they could do their best."

Mr. Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University, is the author of "Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst." He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

WSJ: Toughest Exam Question - What Is The Best Way to Study?

2011-10-30T03:28:46-07:00

WORK & FAMILY

OCTOBER 26, 2011

Toughest Exam Question: What Is the Best Way to Study?

By SUE SHELLENBARGER

Here's a pop quiz: What foods are best to eat before a high-stakes test? When is the best time to review the toughest material? A growing body of research on the best study techniques offers some answers.

With test-taking season upon us, Sue Shellenbarger on Lunch Break looks at the latest findings from the science of studying. For students approaching SAT/ACTs, midterms and finals, which memory tricks work best and does cramming help?

Chiefly, testing yourself repeatedly before an exam teaches the brain to retrieve and apply knowledge from memory. The method is more effective than re-reading a textbook, says Jeffrey Karpicke, an assistant professor of psychological sciences at Purdue University. If you are facing a test on the digestive system, he says, practice explaining how it works from start to finish, rather than studying a list of its parts.

In his junior year of high school in Cary, N.C., Keenan Harrell bought test-prep books and subjected himself to a "relentless and repetitive" series of nearly 30 practice SAT college-entrance exams. "I just took it over and over again, until it became almost aggravating," he says.

Practice paid off. Mr. Harrell, now 19, was accepted at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, a college he's dreamed of attending since the third grade. He scored 1800 (out of 2400) on the SAT, up 50% from 1200 on the PSAT, a preliminary test during his sophomore year.

Taking pretests "felt like hard work," Mr. Harrell says, but seeing steady increases in his scores boosted his confidence. Practice tests also help with test-taking skills, such as pacing, says Paul Weeks, vice president of educational services for the ACT, which creates and administers college-entrance exams.

Getty Images

Repeated practice tests help master test format and pacing.

Sleep also plays a role in test performance, but in two unexpected ways. Review the toughest material right before going to bed the night before the test. That approach makes it easier to recall the material later, says Dan Taylor, director of a sleep-and-health-research lab at the University of North Texas in Denton. And don't wake up earlier than usual to study; this could interfere with the rapid-eye-movement sleep that aids memory, he says.

A common study habit—the all-nighter—is a bad idea. Although 60% of college students stay up all night at some point in school, the practice is linked to lower grades, says Pamela Thacher, an associate professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., based on a 2008 study of 120 students. It also impairs reasoning and memory for as long as four days.

Being Confident

Write down fears and anxieties before the test to free working memory and prevent distractions during the test.

To combat self-doubts (such as 'I'm bad in math'), remind yourself of proven personal traits and strengths that can propel you to success.

Practice in advance facing all the pressures you will face on exam day, such as driving to the testing center or visiting an unfamiliar testing room.

Test yourself by recalling broad concepts rather than trying to memorize facts or re-reading textbooks.

Before the test, envision yourself answering questions calmly and with confidence.

Everybody knows you should eat breakfast the day of a big test. High-carb, high-fiber, slow-digesting foods like oatmeal are best, research shows. But what you eat a week in advance matters, too. When 16 college students were tested on attention and thinking speed, then fed a five-day high-fat, low-carb diet heavy on meat, eggs, cheese and cream and tested again, their performance declined. The students who ate a balanced diet that included fruit and vegetables, however, held steady, says Cameron Holloway, a senior clinical researcher at the University of Oxford. The brain requires a constant supply of energy and "has only a limited backup battery," he says.

While many teens insist they study better while listening to music or texting their friends, research shows the opposite: Information reviewed amid distractions is less likely to be recalled later, says Nicole Dudukovic, assistant professor of psychology at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

Discuss on The Juggle

Do your kids suffer from test anxiety? Have you found ways to ease the problem?

In her research, college students categorized and made judgments about pictures of more than 100 items. Then, they were tested on a new mix of pictures and asked to recall which ones they had already seen and how they had categorized them; half the time, they were also asked to listen and respond to a set of rhythmic sounds. When the students were tested later, they were more likely to remember correctly what they had studied without distractions.

"Students do have this belief that they can do it all and they aren't really being distracted" by music or sounds from a noisy cafe, Dr. Dudukovic says. But while the sounds may "make them feel more relaxed," she says, they won't help them ace the midterm.

Bryan Almanza says he did poorly on the PSAT as a high-school sophomore because he didn't know how to prepare. He got too little sleep the night before and ate only a bowl of cereal for breakfast. On the test, some hard physics questions made him nervous and distracted, says Mr. Almanza, 18, a senior at Campbell High in Smyrna, Ga. "I'm going to fail," he remembers thinking at the time. A test-prep program at his school taught him to get plenty of sleep, eat a good breakfast and pace himself on the test. By staying calm, optimistic and focused, he raised his score significantly on the SAT.

Tips on Conquering Test-Day Jitters

Even when students are fully prepared, anxiety can be another burden on test day.

An estimated 35% of students are so nervous before high-stakes tests that it impairs their performance, says Richard Driscoll, a Knoxville, Tenn., clinical psychologist who has researched text anxiety.

To help ease fears, Julie Hartline, lead counselor at Campbell High School in Smyrna, Ga., helped start a three-week program last year to teach juniors anxiety-reduction techniques.

One calming tactic that has been shown to improve scores is to teach yourself in advance to think differently about the test, Dr. Driscoll says. Envision yourself in a situation you find challenging and invigorating; a soccer player might imagine scoring a goal, or a mountain climber might envision herself topping a ridge, he says. Then switch your mental image to the testing room and imagine yourself feeling the same way. With practice, you'll be able to summon up more confidence on test day.

Also, reducing "novelty and stress on the day of the exam" can prevent choking under pressure, says Sian Beilock, a researcher and author on cognitive performance. If you are taking the exam in an unfamiliar place, visit the room in advance.

If you are still feeling anxious, set aside 10 minutes beforehand to write down your worries, says Dr. Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. She and a fellow researcher tested 106 ninth-graders for anxiety before their first high-pressure exam, then asked half of them to spend 10 minutes writing down their thoughts right before the test. The anxious kids who did the writing exercise performed as well on the test as the students who had been calm all along. But anxious students who didn't do the writing performed more poorly. Expressing one's worries in writing, Dr. Beilock says, unburdens the brain.

—Email Sue.Shellenbarger@wsj.com

FT: Far-sighted but no visionary

2011-10-29T20:53:52-07:00

Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/90804618-f8b0-11e0-ad8f-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1cEY0I254

October 21, 2011 10:19 pm

Far-sighted but no visionary

By Harry Eyres

Steve Jobs was an undoubtedly impressive human being, but I am still not convinced that it qualifies him to be called a visionary

Claudio Abbado rehearsing at the Royal Festival Hall

It would have been too easy (reader, I was tempted) to write a column dismissing all the hype about the late Steve Jobs. I must say for a non-Apple user – I have never owned a Mac, an iPod or an iPad – the effusiveness of the tributes, and in some cases the grief, was hard to fathom. The last time I remembered anything comparable was after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Whatever his other achievements, it appeared that Steve Jobs had arranged a posthumous coup: he had made sure his obituaries were written by his own PR department.

President Obama mourned him as a “visionary” who “changed the way each of us sees the world”. With still less restraint, the philosopher Alain de Botton gushed: “there are businesses that redraw the landscape entirely, creating needs we never knew we had, and remoulding our sense of what we have to have in order to be happy.” Goodness, was I only dreaming when I thought I still recognised those blue remembered hills? Might it be an advantage to remain unaware of needs I do not know I have?

You can imagine a Slow Lane line on all this: that, after all, the man had only been a creator, or refiner, of gadgets, which I for one have managed to get along quite happily without. Maybe Jobs “transformed our lives” (Obama again) somewhat, making them even more full of annoying electronic gizmos that render living in public spaces progressively less bearable. Perhaps I am missing something, but we seem to be just as fractious and addicted to short-termism as we have ever been.

But this was all just knee-jerk stuff. Not only was I not an initiate of the Apple cult but, frankly, I had little idea who Steve Jobs was. Reading his famous Stanford address was a sobering experience. Here was an undoubtedly impressive human being, a man of substance and originality.

Jobs was unusual in many ways, and not least in his approach to education. In contrast to the ever more streamlined, synchromeshed idea of expensive university degrees leading seamlessly into jobs (the normal kind), Jobs needed to drop out of university to find his way. More precisely, he dropped out of the required classes he found boring, in order to drop in to classes which inspired him. One of them was a calligraphy class which influenced all his subsequent thinking, and ensured, as he said with no false modesty, that personal computers would have “the wonderful typography they do”.

That was a very considerable achievement. I am still not convinced that it qualifies Jobs to be called a visionary. One of the qualities of visionaries is that they see far ahead; not just 10 years ahead but maybe a century or two. Often visionaries are little appreciated in their own time, dismissed as oddballs or madmen. Jobs might have been a maverick but was hardly an unappreciated one – and he became one of the richest people in America.

Might it be an advantage to remain unaware of needs I do not know I have?

A week after Jobs died I was in the Royal Festival Hall listening to Claudio Abbado conducting Anton Bruckner’s towering Fifth Symphony. If there was a Jobs connection, it might have been that Abbado has fought life-threatening illness; he made a remarkable recovery from cancer and, though he now looks gaunt, skin stretched tight over his long bony face, he stood spry and upright as he conducted the immense symphony from memory.

I am not sure Abbado would consider himself a visionary. I see him more as a supreme facilitator, a great clarifier of textures. He looked humble, not full of ego, as he took waves of applause and a standing ovation at the end of the symphony, and eventually stood to one side of the podium, as if to direct the applause away from him, towards his hand-picked Lucerne Festival Orchestra(I have never heard more hushed and precise pianissimo playing from a string section), and ultimately towards Bruckner himself.

I have a feeling that Bruckner and this symphony in particular are finally coming into their own 135 years after the Fifth was completed (amazingly, Bruckner never heard the work performed by an orchestra). For the composer Arnold Bax, hearing the corrupt Schalk-conducted version in 1906, it was a monumentally boring piece of Austro-German pedantry.

I didn’t find it boring when I first heard it, as a teenager at the Proms. It was certainly extreme; extremely long, extremely slow, extremely desolate, extremely unruly and extremely loud, especially at its thrilling ending, one of the grandest perorations in music. I found the extremes exciting (as teenagers tend to). It was like being taken on a tour of the Arctic, or Patagonia, a landscape of arresting splendour and strangeness.

Yes, Bruckner did change the way I saw the world, and myself within it. It felt vaster and more thrilling; and, if it also felt frightening, the fear was tempered by the fact that a brave soul had been there before me and charted the territory.

harry.eyres@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/eyres