Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

by Rory Sutherland

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Sutherland, an ad executive turned behavioural evangelist, argues that the biggest breakthroughs in branding, policy, and design come from psycho-logic, not logic, and that ideas which look irrational on paper often outperform optimized ones. He champions counterintuitive nudges (making trains feel faster, not actually faster) as the highest-leverage levers in business and life.

Published:: 2019
Pages:: 384

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In the Conversation

In this collection, Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life references 5 other books.

It draws on Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nudge and Misbehaving.

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What This Book Draws On

The books Sutherland references and why each one mattered to the argument.

Frames the book around Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 and interviews Kahneman directly about the limits of conventional rationality

References

Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman

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Draws heavily on Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge, praising choice architecture and libertarian paternalism as core tools of psycho-logical design

References

Nudge

by Richard Thaler

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Cites Thaler's Misbehaving account of the rise of behavioural economics when defending psychology-first over neoclassical economics

References

Misbehaving

by Richard Thaler

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References Ariely's Predictably Irrational experiments on anchoring, relativity, and free when explaining why customers are not rational maximizers

References

Predictably Irrational

by Dan Ariely

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Draws on Taleb's The Black Swan on uncertainty and convex payoffs when arguing for portfolio-style experimentation with irrational-looking ideas

References

The Black Swan

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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What Other Authors Say About It

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Intellectual Lineage

How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.

Builds on (2 layers deep)

Directly cites

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Nudge

Misbehaving

Predictably Irrational

The Black Swan

2 steps back

Stumbling on Happiness

Unexpected Connections

Books from completely different categories that share citation overlap with this one. These are the reads you would not find by browsing a single shelf.