Touchgraph presents this beautifull, simple representation of the complex world of Insurers.

This tool allows users to visualize possible connections between concepts and labels in the Web. According to the official site:

“TouchGraph’s clustering algorithm automatically divides insurance sites into car insurance (blue), life insurance (orange), financial insurance (green), and health insurance (purple).”

I love the way it allows us to visualize the concepts, clustering them…
It feels like the real Bull’s Eye. Producing this graphic doesn’t mean you’ll find what you’re looking. It means you see what you’re targetting. Like any stochatstic effort. Peter Kennedy puts it this way:

The word “stochastic” comes from the Gtreek “stokhos”, meaning target or bull’s eye. A stochastic relationship is not always on target in the sense it predicts the precise value of the variable being explained, just as a dart trown at a target rarely hits the bull’s eye.

Shall we <a href="Kennedy, P. (2003) A guide to Econometrics. Edição de MIT Press. pp. 3“>play?

Bibliography:
Kennedy, P. (2003) A guide to Econometrics. Edição de MIT Press. pp. 3

Smith, A. (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments. A Universal Download Edition: pp.231.

“Why does complexity still abound whether you are booking a flight, buying a vacuum, or calling a bank? Why is it so rare for a product or service to be launched with simplicity baked into it? Why is it always a case of retrofitting?”

When simple things work they allow our imagination to flourish. Simple ideias are often the most inspirational. This is the case of the latest Ipod presentation from Steve Jobs (see here).

Of course a simple presentation isn’t enough to evidence my argument that Empathy can be a powerfull, simple, business solution. But the work Wired to Care from Dev Patnaik is. He suggests that employers that hire hardcore customers to design their products have good chances to succeed. After all, no one knows the customer better than… the customer itself. Simple. Inspirational.

There are more fundamental topics to Empathy and Business. Etzkorn suggests the following rational:

“So how can companies create an empathetic design, not just a functional, cost-effective one? I suggest three actions:
• Anticipate real-world circumstances. Make the dosage instructions large and clear.
• Cater to customer wants, not just needs. Include a message on my bill if I would benefit from another plan or product.
• Build in flexibility, don’t pigeonhole. Let me choose what day of the month I pay my mortgage.”

And moreover it is suggested that:

“To empathize with the customer, consider where and when the item will be used including:
• Location and accessibility
• Age and health of user
• Frequency of use
• Likelihood of danger”

Yet there are limits to this imagination process. Everyone knows that. On top of that, market research based on questionnaires seems to be a doubtfull methodology too. The GUUUI! team is clear: forget what customers say they want. Remember people always think highly of themselves. Here, an interesting Design article. It is said:

“To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.”

Now, this is all good but how does it ensure our companies and the Economy take the proper decisions toward a brigther future? Let’s take the Financial Services Industry for an example:

Banking, as well as Inusrance, companies manage risk. They do this internally as well as externally.
Now Risk is both desirable and not. Why?
On the one hand, Risk is desirable for financial institutions because it is the other side of return. Without risk there cannot be… Return.
Yet there are different kinds of Risk. See, internal risks are most of the time damaging for the company. External risks may not be.
Internal risks result of a control decision process, where employees, on a normal routine, may make mistakes and thus indulge in losses for the company. External risks are often systematic risks, risks that occur in the market place and thus a conscient structure in the investment decision of the company. For example, by choosing the right clients, those who will not default, the company will reduce its risk level and keep the expected return. Having said this it is interesting to note that Financial Institutions will benefit from widespread Empathy on the two referred accounts.

On the one hand, they will benefit by reducing costly mistakes. An empathetic company will correctly predict the necessary controls and impactfull risks and take proper measures to satisfy the employee’s difficulties. A minimized stress environment is a fruitfull, positive workplace.
On the other hand, choosing the right clients is an age old economic problem companies face. Assymetrical information: Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard.

One of the toughest Marketplace dificultties for these companies is to select the good from the bad clients. I argue that empathizing with customers is one way to break this barrier. Acknowledging their routines, referred supra, understanding their emotions and developing the right incentives to attract the good ones is Empathy at work. I argued supra that this process is different from traditional Marketing research strategies.

Having said this, there is another relevant obstacle for a company’s success for which Empathy can be a solution.
Moral Hazard.
Imagine you’ve selected a bounch of customers. Apparently good ones too. How can you motivate them to be compliant?
How about interacting with a group of representative customers? Not through phone… Real life conversations between CEO and regular, compliant and non-compliant customers, and discovering their fustrations and aspirations… This empathetic relationship is fruitfull in all accounts. It sends a message of concern, compassion, from companies to clients and ultimately informs the company about the behaviour of its clients. Like a good profiler, it is then possible to track the good behaviours and build a satisfactory mechanism of proximity and positive empathy between the company and its customers.

The methodology that applies Empathy to business is a major insight upon which this reflexion was built upon, and it is based on the book Wired to Carefrom Dev Patnaik .
Next post I will try to enter a Banking Client’s mind. We’ll see what happens

be the eager buda, dare
to question why is all not fair:
all is none and none is part
of all the fractions, i dare too far…

dream of shadows,
none of laws,
none of righteous…
emptyfull my thoughts

i result in…
a fashionable nano blister centered in an oldman’s (odd) hole

2 farts and lighters
please do see: do light her
cigerette while i hold
an old man’s blistered fart.hole

in awe

I’ll say…
free headed-borned fights
going round, like mill,
For this is poetic jargon
and the smell is golden shit

the storm is what i am
And though forever it may last

I am stunned but i forget
that to remember all the steps
I must faint to hold a breath

The storming nights will surely come
but no doubt the storming lights
have reflected my inner joy

of my dreams for all my storm
is the insight

Before advacing though, I searched inside for an intuition. My intuition told me buddhism was built on empathetic abilities but at the same time rejects the overflow of empathy. It demands a balanced approach to empathy. In resume, I was looking for a: Welcome Empathy, but take it cool!
First because buddhism states that the optimum state is to be at one with our selves and others, one must also learn to be at one with nature. That means understanding the circumstances, and being able to look into the feelings of others. Let me give you and example. Generally, there are two types of meditation. One where you relax your muscles – including your brain waves – and think of nothing at all; and another where you focus on some object or feeling and try to become that object or feeling. How do you do that? Imagining how it would FEEL like to be that object, or in other words, being at one with that object, or in other words, establish an empathetic relation with that object or abstract concept.

To write is to express the vibrating reality that surrounds us: le mots are its buildings, le lettres its inhabitants and le metric poetic its public and private roadways.
To paint is to open the gateway between my inner self and the outter objects and completely Release my self out there. an incredible sensation being exposed to that creative manifestation, which is not I or the outter world, but ONE. I plot painting to the instinct vibrations of abstract self. the release of the day to day pain. And so i call it “painstinct”…
To listen to music to be at one with the rythms of our culture. It is to have a instant contact with a repository of universal and eternal culture. Music is the immediate answering bridge to our long forgotten nmemory of being at one with every and all things: Bliss.

quando arrefece a noite
a sociedade escurece
e julga o saber: penetrar?

Foi um mal entendido diz ela
Só outros esquecidos sorriem
protegem atentos definem
como a brisa do próprio luar

quando munidos de inocência,
na ciência dos olhos
perdidos desse “penetrar”

Eu sei não diz ele

A tese que apresento pretende construir a ponte entre o que alguns pensadores nos disseram, ao longo dos séculos, acerca da Natureza Humana e os resultados científicos alcançados recentemente. Sem, no entanto, esquecer que a ponte será unida porque existe uma barreira que as separa: a metodologia.
A pedra basilar e unificadora entre estes dois mundos é a curiosidade. O facto do ser humano ser curioso acerca da sua Natureza é paralelo à sua existência. Teve início no momento em que a espécie humana ganhou a capacidade neurológica para reflectir e transmitir pensamentos de forma organizada, agilizada pela linguagem, e há-de continuar até à sua extinção. Felizmente, nesse sentido este artigo está condenado a ser revisto ad eternum.
A curiosidade, inata no Homem, ganhou forma “científica” por volta do ano 600 BC na Grécia Antiga – com o nascimento da Filosofia. É comummente aceite que o primeiro período de pensamento filosófico, o pensamento pré-Socrático, teve início com os filósofos Thales e Pherecydes, – curiosamente sem darem conta desse facto (só mais tarde Pytagoras, discípulo de Pherecydes, apelidou esta curiosidade “científica” de “paixão pelo saber”, de Filosofia).
Como referi anteriormente a metodologia a priori separa estas duas visões da Natureza Humana. Durante séculos a Filosofia foi dispersando o seu âmbito por várias metodologias – o que no início era uma só disciplina tornou-se muitas outras; e aquele que outrora foi apelidado de filósofo,- i.e. Aristóteles – hoje chamaríamos de filósofo, biólogo, político e astrólogo.
Temos duas formas de olhar para este facto: considerar que outras ciências, através de desenvolvimentos e insights próprios, foram entrando progressivamente no campo que antes era Filosófico, alegando que hoje o espaço da Filosofia tem tendência a desaparecer no mundo contemporâneo. Alternativamente, podemos encarar esta dispersão do conhecimento percebendo que duas metodologias podem ser complementares, e que da fusão de insights de diferentes disciplinas deve resultar um resultado mais interessante e robusto para a Ciência.
Este artigo está construído a partir da segunda interpretação, isto é, a ideia de que a concepção filosófica da Natureza Humana, nomeadamente a de Adam Smith, é fortalecida, não substituída, pelos contributos de áreas como a Neurociência, Biologia e Psicologia para a explicação do impacto que a Natureza Humana tem na teoria e funcionamento da Economia.

O que ponho em causa?

Em primeiro lugar não estaremos a falar de um caso novo se discutirmos a ligação do Homem com a Economia…. No entanto, não será altura de rever os parâmetros subjacentes às bases oscilantes sobre a qual a teoria económica se encontra edificada? Penso que sim.
O argumento desta tese é o de que este edifício, construído sobre o pilar do interesse próprio, não reflecte as provas dadas que a reciprocidade, entre-ajuda e capacidade empática são características existentes no Homem e inerentes ao seu normal comportamento.

Assim, o que ponho em causa, é uma realidade nova. Uma realidade assente na generalização do conhecimento da nossa capacidade de Empatizar além comunidade científica, uma realidade que expõe as instituições sociais que subvertem essa mesma potencialidade humana. À partida esta teoria pode parecer ter uma forte componente ideológica, mas ela na verdade tem como fundamento a própria destruição do sistema de crenças de forma a pavimentar o caminho para a realização das necessidades humanas na sua extensão máxima. Trata-se de um novo paradigma que tem princípio básico a ausência de escassez no sistema económico.

Para esse efeito o entendimento científico da Natureza Humana, traduzido na verdadeira felicidade, na união com o ambiente – em oposição à alienação, isolamento e fragmentação promovidos pelo actual sistema (algo provado no capítulo sobre interesse próprio ) – está no core do Sistema Económico, no core das decisões políticas e no core da sociedade (agora revista e revisitada).

Finalmente, acredito que este tipo de artigo deve abrir, e não fechar, oportunidades de novas descobertas. Deve abrir espaço a novas questões, escancarando as portas da Economia à Ciência Global, sem preconceitos ou proteccionismos. No fim do dia, o objectivo da minha investigação é clara: que este artigo permita aguçar a curiosidade do universo científico para uma questão própria do século XXI:

Qual o impacto potencial de uma consciência alargada sobre as características do ser humano na actividade económica?