#michael norton

[theartofthecover]

Grumble #9 (2019)

Art by: Mike Norton and Marissa Louise

[glamrockbandit]

Have some Halloween art of my OCs dressed as White Tiger!

(Left to right: Bellatrix, Bandit, Beth, and Bangladesh; respectively dressed as David Donato, Mark St. John, Michael Norton, and Brian James Fox.)

[harvardbusinessschool]

The Legacy of Boaty McBoatface: Beware of Customers Who Vote

Companies that encourage consumers to vote online should be forewarned—they may expect more than you promise, according to research by Michael Norton, Leslie John, and colleagues.

In 2016, the National Environmental Research Council (NERC), a quasi-governmental agency in the United Kingdom, decided it would be fun to let the public vote online to name the country’s newest research vessel. The agency was less pleased when it saw the winning entry: Boaty McBoatface.

Overruling the public’s wishes, NERC named the craft after British naturalist Sir David Attenborough. The public was outraged; newspaper editorials decried the lack of democracy, and citizens protested the unfairness of it all on social media. So much for having a little marketing fun with the public.

Boaty blowback highlights the potential danger of giving consumers the power to vote, even though customer engagement is a primary goal of almost every social media strategy.

The problem: Even though NERC never explicitly promised it would name the boat after the winner in the online poll, the agency implied that it would respect the public’s wishes, say Michael Norton and Leslie John, both professors at Harvard Business School.

“When firms conduct online polls, people frequently submit ridiculous entries; and with social media, those entries will go viral,” says Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration. “But even when firms never guarantee that consumers will choose the winner, consumers infer an implicit contract and are upset when that contract is violated.”

[theartofthecover]

Grumble #1 (2018)

Art by: Mike Norton

[harvardbusinessschool]

Shaky Business: How Handshakes Win Negotiations

A handshake before a negotiation can have a surprisingly strong effect on the outcome, according to Michael Norton, Francesca Gino, and colleagues.

Humans have lots of rituals to choose from when greeting each other—embrace or no embrace? Kiss one cheek or two? But one ritual that is remarkably consistent across cultures is the handshake.

“That form of physical contact is surprisingly ubiquitous,” says Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton, Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration. “We shake when we say hello to someone, and we shake again after a deal is done.”

Centuries ago, the handshake may have originated as a way for people to show each other that they were unarmed. Norton was curious: Is the handshake today seen as a mere formality or does it still serve an important purpose in modern society? He joined with HBS Professor Francesca Gino, Juliana Schroeder of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and Jane Risen of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in conducting a series of experiments to see whether handshaking might still help with negotiating deals.

[deutschtulips]

Exactly! It was precisely because he had no hope. It’s the death of hope—the conviction that nothing is really of any use, that there is no way out, no light at the end of the tunnel—that gives birth to the most destructive forms of madness.

Michael Norton

[deutschtulips]

Even when I seemed to be thoughtful and kind, I’ve been acting like a character in a book or a movie, watching myself and congratulating myself.

Michael Norton

[theartofthecover]

The Question? vs. The Answer! commission (2020)

Art by: Mike Norton