Politics and Business

There are a million self-help books out there reminding us that success is all about bouncing back from our failures. We're kind of sick of hearing it, to be honest.

But what most people don't realize is how many successful businesses only happened because of a sudden disaster. These are the global empires that only struck gold because fate forced them to at gunpoint.

“For an advertiser to make its pitch to more than 116 million viewers at once shows that the Super Bowl remains the single largest television platform for marketers,” said Pat McDonough, senior vice president for insights and analysis at Nielsen. “And with Super Bowl advertisers adding thousands – if not millions – of commercial views through online and social media exposure, they are able to extend their multi-million dollar investments beyond the game itself.”

Most Viewed Ads During Super Bowl XLIV
RANK	Commercial	Time of Air (ET)	# of Viewers
1	DORITOS/Gym	9:30:01 PM	116,231,920
2	AUDI/Green Police	9:26:29 PM	115,647,840
3	ELECTRONIC ARTS/Dante’s Inferno	9:15:22 PM	115,063,760
4	HONDA/Squirrel	9:20:20 PM	114,771,720
5	TACO BELL/It Rocks	9:27:29 PM	114,771,720
6	BUD LIGHT/Book Party	9:32:13 PM	114,771,720
7	HYUNDAI/Built By Hand	9:32:43 PM	114,771,720
8	BUDWEISER/Horse Fence	9:15:52 PM	113,603,560
9	US CENSUS BUREAU/Production Mtg	8:49:23 PM	113,019,480
10	E*TRADE/5 Babies	9:33:13 PM	112,727,440
Source: The Nielsen Company

Audi’s “Green Police” ad earned the title of second most viewed ad with 115.6 million watching. Electronic Arts’ spot for its new game Dante’s Inferno drew 115.1 million.

It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline. And those government figures do not take into account movies, music and television shows bought through iTunes, or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for more sophisticated smartphones.

Google doesn’t have Mark Zuckerberg. Mark gets how to hook people in through social tricks that very few people understand. FriendFeed, for instance, didn’t get it. Neither does Twitter. Most people think of Mark as an awesome businessperson or a tech genius (his major at Harvard was computer science), but most people don’t know his minor was Psychology. He studies how people work and how they get addicted to things at a level that Google’s founders struggle to understand. Google’s founders are also not nearly as comfortable around other people as Mark is. Everytime I meet Larry Page or Sergey Brin it’s tough to get them to talk socially. Mark, on the other hand, hugs people and is easier to just hang around and be personable with. That difference translates into the software that Facebook makes and how it hooks people in. Look at the tags on photos in Facebook, for instance. They hook people in in a way that no other service has yet.

This gifting economic system wasn't based on pure altruism.  It did have an enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance with the system over the longer term.  On the positive side, there was an intangible increase in the social status (using personal or societal metrics) of a tribal member that gifted an item.  On the negative, a failure to offer hospitality or gifts to those in need was considered a mortal slight that could incite violence or expulsion from the tribe.

There were also a considerable number of drivers for gifting at the tribal level.  Here are some:

• The survival of the tribe, as a group, was more important than the survival of any individual.  However, the loss of any individual could put the tribe at risk.
• The generation of surplus and innovation was highly uncertain.  Sharing reduced that uncertainty to manageable levels.
• Sharing reduced internal friction that could put the tribe at risk.

“The Super Bowl remains the premier television event of the year, and is one of the few programs in an era of fragmented TV viewership that can still attract a huge national audience,” said Dave Thomas, Nielsen President, Media Client Services.  “This year’s Super Bowl had a compelling narrative, with the underdog New Orleans Saints coming from behind against powerhouse Indianapolis Colts.  There was tremendous interest in both the game and the advertisements leading up to last night and the excitement of the game itself translated into record ratings.”
 

TOP FIVE MOST WATCHED SUPER BOWLS OF ALL TIME
Super Bowl	Date	Network	Teams	Avg. # of Viewers (000)
XLIV	Feb 7, 2010*	CBS	New Orleans-Indianapolis	106,480
XLIII	Feb 1, 2009*	NBC	Arizona-Pittsburgh	98,732
XLII	Feb 3, 2008*	FOX	NY Giants-New England	97,448
XXX	Jan. 28, 1996	NBC	Dallas-Pittsburgh	94,080
XLI	Feb 4, 2007*	CBS	Chicago-Indianapolis	93,184
Source: The Nielsen Company    * Live + Same Day Viewing Estimates Include DVR Playback On The Same Day, Defined As 3AM-3AM

Not surprisingly, New Orleans and Indianapolis earned some of the highest ratings among local markets, with averages of 56.3% and 54.2% of TV households, respectively, tuned to the game. This weekend’s Mid-Atlantic snowstorm kept many viewers inside their homes, leading to impressive ratings in Washington, DC: 

In a recent essay in Nature, Doyne Farmer and Duncan Foley have made a strong case for the use of agent-based models in economics. These are computational models in which a large numbers of interacting agents (individuals, households, firms, and regulators, for example) are endowed with behavioral rules that map environmental cues onto actions. Such models are capable of generating complex dynamics even with simple behavioral rules because the interaction structure can give rise to emergent properties that could not possibly be deduced by examining the rules themselves. As such, they are capable of providing microfoundations for macroeconomics in a manner that is both more plausible and more authentic than is the case with highly aggregative representative agent models.

Among the most famous (and spectacular) agent-based models is John Conway's Game of Life (if you've never seen a simulation of this you really must). In economics, the earliest such models were developed by Thomas Schelling in the 1960s, and included his celebrated checkerboard model of residential segregation. But with the exception of a few individuals (some of whom are mentioned below) there has been limited interest among economists in the further development of such approaches.

Farmer and Foley hope to change this. They begin their piece with a critical look at contemporary modeling practices:

Today, there's another surprise in store for network connoisseurs courtesy of Maksim Kitsak at Boston University and various buddies. One of the important observations from these networks is that certain individuals are much better connected than others. These so-called hubs ought to play a correspondingly greater role in the way information and viruses spread through society.

In fact, no small effort has gone into identifying these individuals and exploiting them to either spread information more effectively or prevent them from spreading disease.

The importance of hubs may have been overstated, say Kitsak and pals. "In contrast to common belief, the most influential spreaders in a social network do not correspond to the best connected people or to the most central people," they say.

At first glance this seems somewhat counterintuitive but on reflection it makes perfect sense. Kitsak and co point out that there are various sceanrios in which well connected hubs have little influence over the spread of infromation. "For example, if a hub exists at the end of a branch at the periphery of a network, it will have a minimal impact in the spreading process through the core of the network."

By contrast, "a less connected person who is strategically placed in the core of the network will have a significant effect that leads to dissemination through a large fraction of the population."

The question then is how to find these influential individuals. Kitsak and co say that the way to do this is to study a quantity called the network's "k-shell decomposition". That sounds complicated but it isn't: a k-shell is simply a network pruned down to the nodes with more than k neighbours. Individuals in the highest k-shells are the most influential spreaders.

One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.

Anand explained that a number of factors contribute to the success of the zero rupee notes in fighting corruption in India. First, bribery is a crime in India punishable with jail time. Corrupt officials seldom encounter resistance by ordinary people that they become scared when people have the courage to show their zero rupee notes, effectively making a strong statement condemning bribery. In addition, officials want to keep their jobs and are fearful about setting off disciplinary proceedings, not to mention risking going to jail. More importantly, Anand believes that the success of the notes lies in the willingness of the people to use them. People are willing to stand up against the practice that has become so commonplace because they are no longer afraid: first, they have nothing to lose, and secondly, they know that this initiative is being backed up by an organization--that is, they are not alone in this fight.