rob zand

Show Navigation

For prompting creativity, few things are as important as time devoted to cross-pollination with fields outside our areas of expertise.

How To Be Creative — online.wsj.com

2 months ago

A study has found that people who appear to be constantly distracted have more “working memory”, giving them the ability to hold a lot of information in their heads and manipulate it mentally.

Children whose minds wander ‘have sharper brains’ - Telegraph

2 months ago -

22

The thing I like best about my smartphone is the absence of the thing I like least about it: I just want it to work, dammit, and when it doesn’t—when I need to recharge it and I can’t—it’s worse than useless to me.

It’s the battery, stupid: The looming 4G smartphone crisis

2 months ago

Creativity is a more whole-brained activity than we’d like to imagine,” Davis said.

The Columbia Chronicle

2 months ago

Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analytics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.

How Companies Learn Your Secrets - NYTimes.com

2 months ago

This still leaves the physical branch to play an important role, but it will be much more tightly defined going forward. Across all customer segments, survey respondents said the branch remains the number one destination for high-value banking activities, such as opening new accounts, buying products and obtaining advice. There is a strong marketing aspect as well, with two-thirds of respondents saying they simply would not choose a bank that did not have a local branch presence.

Articles: Consumers in Motion: Stepping Away from Branches

2 months ago

The reality is that advisors outsource a lot. Advisors using mutual funds, SMAs or ETFs outsource the investment management function, even if they determine the asset allocation. Investment managers investing directly in stocks and bonds often outsource much of the research that informs those decisions. Advisors utilizing a custodian or broker-dealer outsource many of their middle- and back-office functions and delegate the safe holding of securities to another entity. RIA firms regularly and systematically outsource many of the processes related to compliance, though, in the end, they are accountable for the activities of their firm and for adhering to regulatory requirements.

Turning Inside Out

2 months ago

But if we can somehow foster more trust in investment professionals, a full spectrum of people — whatever their I.Q.’s — might adopt a more successful approach toward investing.

What High-I.Q. Investors Do Differently - Economic View - NYTimes.com

2 months ago

Today, according to Morningstar, 336 index funds and 1,148 ETFs hold $1.24 trillion, or fully one-third of all the money in U.S. stock funds

The Intelligent Investor: Are Index Funds Messing Up the Markets? - WSJ.com

3 months ago

Research by Professor Brynjolfsson and two other colleagues, published last year, suggests that data-guided management is spreading across corporate America and starting to pay off. They studied 179 large companies and found that those adopting “data-driven decision making” achieved productivity gains that were 5 percent to 6 percent higher than other factors could explain.

Big Data’s Impact in the World - NYTimes.com

3 months ago