HZGRT 117th Sharing: Range & Positioning in the 21st Century

The 117th meeting of the club took place on Jan 2nd, 2021 in our regularly visited vegetarian restaurant. Two books are presented and widely discussed amongst our readers. One is "Range" shared by Jasmine and the other is Positioning in the 21st Century by Mike. 

Range - Why Generalist Triumph in a Specialized World 

David J. Epstein

This book is inspring and highly recognized due to its reseach based on real stats and in-depth study on individual cases. There major illustrations were picked up for wide discussion.

1. The Cult of the Head Start 

From the auther: A head start might also lead to low momentum in the second part of the long run. The curvy way to success lasts much longer.

Tiger Woods & Roger Federer: Difffferent Path to Success

Tiger Woods was a born genius. He tried to play with golf club when he was only 10 months. He showed on TV when he was two because he played golf. He started to win games when he was three.

Roger Federer played sports of many kinds when he was a boy. His parents were not so into training their son because they thought he was not going to be a good player. Roger didn’t have any professional tennis training until the age of 16. Compared to a lot of sport players who have a head start in their career life, Federer had a late start, only much longer. At the age of 37, He still shows in many sport games and has brilliant performance.

In a more general sense, the writer pointed out, in the field of sport, music and many other fields, it’s necessary and important to have an attempt period at a young age before focusing on one field. However, win at the start line is not scientififically evident. Early education such as unwillingly started to learn piano or language at an early age might not be of much help for success of future. This phenomenon not only applies in the fifiled of music and sport, but also in our daily life. 

2. Learning, Fast & Slow 

Conclusions made upon experiments: Practice randomly makes students much more adaptable to various situations. (Setting connections)

An experiment at United States Air Force Academy on Course of Calculus I

TeacherA: Teach according to the textbook, and how to pass the exam. Much drilling in class. Teach in high effiffifficiency.

TeacherB: Teach physics and related knowledge in other fifields. Set up connections between knowledge. 

Observations: students in class A had higher scores in exams but had much trouble in Calculus II and engineering in the next semester; while for students in class B, although not have high score in the fifinal exams of Calculus I, they performed much better in many other courses the next semester.

The result is that students who follow the second way of practice performed much better.The rule also applies in training of piano and sports.  

3. Width VS Depth 

Conclusions made upon data and sorts of experiment by David: A super individual competes in a world of sectors without borders. Setting up connection between knowledge to form your system is rewardable. Cross-disciplinary learning is important. 

Group Discussion topic:

Is being a Generalist much more competitive than being a Specialist in future?

Positioning in the 21st Century

With 50 years experience in the advertising industry, the author AI Rise introduced us the concept of "Rock" inherited from the 20th century, one significant idea that was instantly accepted by prospects. In working with his clients, Rise proposed that every advertisement needed a 「Rock,」 in order to leave a lasting impression in prospects』 minds. The 「Rock」 was the idea that helped us create many effective advertising campaigns.

Arriving at the 21st century, aiming to differentiating his practice to others, Rise promotes to focus on the objective of the advertising, the mind of the prospect, not just the products. "You win the mind of the prospect. And that insight led us to a different way of thinking about advertising. Instead of basing an advertising idea on the product to be advertised, why not base the idea on the mind of the prospect?"

A Rock would be the idea you would try to put into prospects』 minds. There are no rocks in the mind. So we changed the word to 「positions.」

Here are some extracts that Mike shared with us,

Group Pic