The science of visual storytelling

Exploration of the science behind how we learn. A conversation with Reshan Richards, educator, writer and co-founder of Explain Everything whiteboard.

We humans are storytellers. It’s the stories that carry ideas no matter what technology we support ourselves in the process. In the conversation we look into five pieces of scientific research to explore correlation between the nature of representation and clarity.

Listen to the conversation:


Transcript

B.A. Gonczarek

I’m here with Reshan Richards, welcome Reshan. 

Reshan is a researcher, educator, and a writer of two books on technology and leadership, with the last book titled Make Yourself Clear on how to use a teaching mindset to be understood. Reshan also co-founded a whiteboarding platform used for teaching in many schools across the glob and it’s where we teamed up. And this cross-roads of technology and education is something that I’m sure will be inspiring for our listeners when we discuss the science of how we learn. Was my introduction of your background accurate Reshan?

B.A. Gonczarek

I’m here with Reshan Richards welcome Reshan.Reshan is a researcher, educator, and a writer of two books on technology and leadership, with the last book titled Make Yourself Clear on how to use a teaching mindset to be understood. Reshan also co-founded a whiteboarding platform used for teaching in many schools across the glob and it’s where we teamed up. And this cross-roads of technology and education is something that I’m sure will be inspiring for our listeners when we discuss the science of how we learn. Was my introduction of your background accurate Reshan?

Reshan Richards

Oh, I think so. It was a very kind and generous introduction. Thank you. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Great. So, to begin, let me confront you with this thought. We humans are storytellers no matter what technology we use in the process. The stories are very efficient keras for ideas, would you agree?

Reshan Richards

I would absolutely agree with that statement.

B.A. Gonczarek

There are two interesting avenues to explore: On the receiver’s end – there’s the question of “how we learn”, on the presenter’s end – how do we provide stories?  The right combination of both is essential in education, to learn things, it is also essential in persuasion outside educational realm. The better we tell our stories the more we improve chances for being understood. Right?

So my goal for today is then to explore with you the scientific foundations of visual storytelling. Let’s try to provide for the benefit of our listeners. What are the underlying facts of storytelling, we gathered scientific papers were inspired with and we’ll use those for our discussions will be doodling and sketching while exploring the papers. So if any listener would want to see us doing that, please use YouTube link provided with the podcast. 

Now we’re Reshan, we have five stunning articles to discuss and I’m looking for a good starting points, maybe let’s cover the difference between the verbal and textual first. 

So, this one comes from knowledge Media Research Center in Germany, and the article asks what improves learning results, text or pictures, while the bulk of existing research is focused on the sequence in which text or picture is provided in learning. This paper, however, operates under the assumption that it is not the sequence rather the function of text or picture in the process of learning. So they look at the function and they defined text. It’s actually in this part here. Then define text as verbal coat in a short or long prose Or instructions, let’s say. However, pictures come in different forms as less or more abstract representations of objects that still contain some similarities. So pictures in the research can be a photo, but also a doodle, or a map diagram, graphic organizer, or let’s say concept map. And the conclusion the way I see it is that the type of information to be learned dictates the way it should be presented. Basically, some materials are better one learned when provided us text other if they come in form of a picture, or they also suggest that the complexity of information is the key. And they conclude, acknowledging that their work is more of a guideline for future research server. Reshan, what’s your perspective as a teacher and a graphical facilitator at the same time, what your experience tells you about using pictures versus text?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it’s a great kind of area of thought. And I’m chuckling as I’m looking at the closing statement from this research, because to degree, almost all new contemporary research on emerging phenomenon always include this idea that hey, well, this should now be extended into a further study, which it’s, it’s so true, right? Like not, nothing is conclusive yet. And I think what’s also interesting about what you shared in thinking about the, you know, that it’s about choice, right? So if you’ve got an idea or concept or some bit of knowledge or understanding that you’re trying to convey or build in somebody, you’re certainly going to make choices about, you know, either the sequencing or even the more binary choice of text or image as like, well what’s the best medium to convey that, but I think, you know, that that’s still to a degree one directional so as a teacher The other thing that we’re also going to be thinking about is about the receiver. And the reality and kind of the emerging research that validates it that people have different modalities that depending on the concept or content that they might be more dominant in. So for example, you know, there might be some people who for certain types of topics or disciplines that are much better auditory listener, so we’re and then some people, while they might be highly visual, they might be visual towards text and reading narrative. And another visual learner might also be much more into photo and imagery. So ultimately, as as people who are trying to communicate to teach trying to persuade, as you mentioned before, there’s just it starts with a baseline understanding that you do have to be really intentional about the format that you’re presenting the content information in. And then you also need to be really thoughtful about the learning styles and channels of that audience member.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, when looking from my perspective, when I learned complex things, I like picture to form a structure and then leave the details to sit inside of a picture inside of picture as a text. So it’s essentially the same idea as infographics, where we, we mix graphical form with textual content. So  this “blending” thing is it’s something that there is no clean part between one modality and the other that you suggested is rather at blend to convey an idea, isn’t it?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it. Blended media, mixed media, mixed modalities. I think anybody who’s interested in, you know, the types of things we’re talking around here. Those would be those would be good. words to describe it like and, you know, yeah, this blend this mix of, of a representation or presentation of information.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. So let me present you a second piece of research that discusses the suitability of medium again, pictures of loads when communicating with either people we know, or strangers. It turns out that we’re inclined to use different medium. When sharing thoughts with someone that is known to us and different when we communicate with someone we don’t have much in common. So the authors here, they describe six experiments to build the evidence that it is, in fact, the distance that sets our preference for choosing between using text and pictures. And again, in this paper as before authors looking to unique characteristics of both pictures and text. Pictures are defined as concrete representation as analogies of the real world. While words nearly always are abstract, with arbitrary relationships to their corresponding subjects. They even stayed that the word is actually a category that refers to a broad range of concrete objects. Words carry the essence of an object, but usually not its properties. So in result, it turns out that pictures are more often use among friends. And the use of words translated better over distance. What’s your reaction to that?

Reshan Richards

That’s so interesting, because I would have expected it to be the inverse and mostly because when trying to have the challenges of distance and proximity or lack of process activity, you would think that the more concrete representation would be helpful for kind of eliminating misunderstanding. So this is really interesting that it’s actually, at least for people’s preferences, what they measured in practice, that those who were working with known people tended to use more images. But part of that also, I’m so curious that like, in their work, is it also that familiarity means that in one ways, you’re being concrete but you’re also not doing some of the formalities as far as supplying kind of preamble or context for the thing that is sent. Whereas with a stranger or across distance, you almost do have to use more words to kind of set up somebody for whatever is trying to be communicated. I also thought about you know, I’ve done a lot of work and teaching across distance and having meetings and conversations and you know, small and large video conference. rooms. And I have found that those types of meetings are always more effective when either there’s an existing relationship that you have had some closer in person time with the parties so that your first meeting isn’t the one that’s there, or if it’s going to be like a regular ongoing thing that you you find a way to blend it together. And I what I mean by this is, you know, a lot of companies are certainly looking to do more sales motions, more customer service, customer success types of things online, but I almost I think it becomes a mistake based on like, some of the things you’re describing here to think it can be 100% substitute for that real kind of close on connected engagement. And I think the companies who are succeeding are realizing you can be more selective about when you do have those in person content. But then you can still do a lot of the other work using digital media light, like, you know, video conferences or what we’re doing a collaborative whiteboard to still like maintain and strengthen that relationship. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. I think in that setting, you would want to find a solution to close the gap to get you closer to the to the recipient of your information. And I agree that the findings here are kind of counterintuitive, but there’s a good reason why is it so. The authors  refer to CLT (Construal Level Theory) that states that people increasingly use more abstract representations when communicating with those they don’t know that match. And the reason for that is that people seem to be afraid to provide too much personal information to those that are not yet considered friends. Therefore, they use disembodied  linguistic representations of text while leaving concrete contextualized pictures for communicating with those that they have already. something in common? You see the point here?

Reshan Richards

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, when you describe it that way like I can, I can fully relate that there’s this, this the psychological element in in detaching any potential clues or to specific or to accurate details because of not being too familiar with the audience. So that’s that that makes sense, even though as you said it on the surface feels very counterintuitive.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. The visual representations seem to be more appropriate when we already share a piece of reality with the person on the other end. That’s, that’s basically what they found.  But I wonder, in teaching environment, I guess being specific and being clear, is the goal, right?

Reshan Richards

Oh, absolutely. I mean, that that’s the thing, can you not only you know, transmit or share some idea or concept but clarity comes from confirming understanding, and that with the most efficacy or efficiency, that that understanding was built. I mean, that’s really what what clarity happens, like I have something that I want to convey or to build in somebody else. And clarity comes when that is done with the least amount of friction.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. But does that actually says the preference for using pictures instead of woods?

Reshan Richards

 I think that anytime you can be more concrete… Let me let me rewind that. I do believe there could be a correlation between the concrete nature of a representation and clarity. I think so. So here’s, here’s an example where the mix of pictures and words in a professional setting can can often get to get in the way of that clarity. So often when doing kind of employee or, you know, supervisor evaluations and review comments are often left in text, right? So, a supervisor might write text comments typed up in a narrative added to a file, dot, dot dot. And so it’s immediately already a couple of degrees away from the actuality of the work, right? Because it’s the supervisors interpretation of what might have been observed and communicated, but then re re put out in text form. Whereas if somebody just had a simple snapshot, or a video of that behavior, action, or whatever somebody being, their performance is being evaluated in you almost removing all of that abstraction. It’s like super concrete, like, how does someone so lead a small group meeting? You know, I could write a narrative about it. Or I could just make a 32nd clip of here’s how somebody kicked off their meeting. And that concrete thing will actually get to that greater clarity of the situation. But I still as a supervisor, would want to be able to comment What’s interesting or important about that thing, but if I’m both describing it and then commenting on it, it’s immediately a few degrees of separated away from what you might have been trying to look at in the first place.

B.A. Gonczarek

 I think that’s a, that’s a great example. So moving on to the two pieces of research that you provided it on memory and meaning making, which one you think should come first, which one would you like to tackle?

Reshan Richards

So I find that that this picture of superiority effect body of research is really important because I want I think it’s connected to the two studies or articles which you referred to, and what I like and it took so first of all, it’s already building off of previous research that to a degree validated, you know, in in pretty controlled experimental studies where somebody was given just an audio representation of some Something, something that had audio plus text, and then something that had audio plus image in these controlled experiments, the retention. So this is really about like recall and memory call. But the audio plus picture almost always outperformed any of the other two groups, right as far as people’s retention and recall. So that’s interesting, right as a baseline, but you can’t make too many generalized conclusions just based off of you know, these kinds of experimental studies. This particular one that I selected and pulled out that builds deeper into it was looking between correlate or looking for correlations between the sorry, it was looking for correlations of the extent of this effect and age. So as you get older, how much more pronounced is this picture superiority effect over the other two modes. And this particular study did find that there is absolutely a correlation, we’re not going to call it causality. But as people get older, this picture superiority effect actually escalates and gets reinforced even stronger. And it’s because when you add your days and months and years of life experience, you’ve had time to reinforce these mental images or mental models or visualizations of different things that you’re capable of having certain retention and recall in a greater degree because of all your prior knowledge. So while it was still present in younger people, it was the the difference of the the extent of this effect was far less pronounced than in their older subjects. 

B.A. Gonczarek

You know, that’s quite fascinating, you know, it also proves how much we learn about the picture superiority effect recently. You know, the last time I checked her there were like 40 articles on the subject and the number is growing rapidly these days, too. So it shows that this area still needs further inquiry to what I personally like about picture superiority effect is its linkage with our spatial memory where location of elements help understanding and I was taking by illustration explaining the historical logic using just one picture I don’t know if you if you know that one.

Reshan Richards

Now tell me more about that.

B.A. Gonczarek

It’s the picture that describes the entire logic of Aristotle. Once you familiarize with it, the beauty of that is that you can literally close your eyes and the recall by location each bit. It’s a breathtaking example of how of how this effect works yet, we don’t know for sure still, why it works and in what age group would work the best. Let the quickly pull the example of this illustration real quick to our whiteboard here.

Reshan Richards

Yeah, I’d love to see that. Yeah.

B.A. Gonczarek

Okay. That was something that was used for teaching students a long time ago, though, but it’s still a real life example of using picture superiority effect. I don’t know for which age group, but still, I still love more of those visuals and photographing being used in schools for stimulating retention and recall of information. I’m sure you’re on the same with me on that. 

Reshan Richards

Yeah. This is a really cool example here.

B.A. Gonczarek

And the other material that you provided to the canvas was on doodling, right?

Reshan Richards

Yeah, so this one is  connected and it’s actually a little bit more about both the the presenter, but also the idea of inviting other to kind of doodle and visualize along with you. Now in this study, which also again, it, it has its limitations because of its experimental nature. But it was, it was having people listen to the audio, and that the group one was, as they were listening, they weren’t doing anything else. And then they had to do kind of like a rent attention and recall. And the other group was doing, as they were listening was also just asked to draw and doodle on whatever like notepad they have. And somehow, the kind of externalization of, of just kind of like sketching, jotting things down I believe some of their notes were relevant. Some of them were just kind of like random, like the things that you might see in a in a middle school, child’s notebook. But there was still a measurable effect on retaining When other kind of expressive channels were active at the same time that somebody was hearing some audio. And what’s interesting to me and the things that I like to dive into is that this in this study, there was no real guidelines around the doodling. But in thinking about situations where you’re trying to build understanding and somebody and you presented some information, having them activate more channels, and then just their listening and their visual, cognitive channels, but actually starting to a little bit of like haptic or even kinesthetic action, and at the same time and this so I put this notice here about random versus purposeful doodling that I think there’s so much to be learned and considered that when you’ve got people engaged, that you’re trying to trying to help them learn. Have them activate the same positive principles around visual visual storytelling in their own note taking and reception and consumption. The information right so it shouldn’t all those benefits that we’ve kind of highlighted and talked about from the delivery standpoint to me have just as much value in the recipient or participant and I felt like this study in particular is kind of a stepping stone or starting point in considering how the recipients channels can be activated towards building that  greater clarity and understanding

B.A. Gonczarek

Right, but you know, for me, this shape-shading task also reveals something that is counter intuitive, you know. How come one might recall better if the thing he or she is drawing is not directly connected to the subject of the discussion, right? I find it surprising and I would wish to know more about what was at work on the cognitive level. 

Reshan Richards

Yeah, and you know, like for me as somebody who you know, does practice graphic facilitation or sketch noting or however, visual note taking all these different terms that it can be described it I do find sometimes that even when I’m trying to be a very active listener, that I will do some random doodles or shapes, kind of in the meat in the midst, or in the middle of maybe some things that were a little bit more purposeful or relevant. And sometimes they’re just these kind of, in between or bridge moments between like, big concepts. And it’s almost this like, continuation instead of like being like, on off on off. You’re just constantly like in a flow. And yeah, sometimes they just become things of the background or filling the page. But in, in your, in my own review of the things that I might have taken notes on. I remember when I see like a random structure like this, oh, that was an in between moment. And I don’t have to admit, I’ve actually visualize something that I know I don’t have to worry about later, which is kind of almost like how often do you take notes on things you don’t want to remember? But but it brings back recognition of the like the setting or the scenario. So like, I don’t know, in some weird way, maybe maybe this is like the words of a maniac, but like I actually find it helpful to have useless notes, but be able and like they actually helped me filter out the things that are more meaningful on that same page.

B.A. Gonczarek

Right. So actually font something that is related to this, but actually speaks about drawing representations of concrete scientific phenomena instead of just, you know, shading something or, as you mentioned, doing useless drawings. This is an inquiry wood drawing does when we learn science, and it’s an article that comes from August 2011 issue of the Science Magazine, and the authors here… they make a point that visuals are crucial for learning. They suggest that the proficiency in science requires learning to develop representational skills. And I don’t know about you but I’m easily persuaded by that as I cannot imagine how anyone could cope with, let’s say, a concept of particles or chemical reactions without abstract visual representations, right?

Reshan Richards

I mean, what’s so interesting is I think we could probably like do a little bit of like historical digging that any kind of scientific phenomenon or principles, it was probably easier to pass those down in Britain, because of like the printing press, the printing press can much more easily replicate, you know, the written or the printed form word than it could have with graphics, right? Because you didn’t have type sets to pull from to create, you know, highly complex visual drawing. So, you know, the original researchers and publishers from back in the day probably had to default to very text heavy ways of transform, transferring and scaling out information and then it just became a default. I think maybe only in recent times has the technology. And the formats of publishing become a little bit more accessible to let’s call, let’s call them lay people that, you know, these visual representations as a dominant form as far as impacting science proficiency, like you said, I mean, seems obvious, like, of course, how could it not?

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah. I also remember that from from Dürer’s perspective, Albrecht Dürer’s. During his times, were the times when the printing press was brand new, and he was already trying to find a way to incorporate those hand drawings into the printed materials just to inspire thinking, you know, to inspire this  mode of exploration. What is interesting in this article, though, is that it mentions the surveys that indicate that those students that drew to explore to coordinate or to justify understanding where more motivated to learn in the end. So basically we can improve understanding, in other words, by working on graphical representations of what we start to know or what we already know. So that’s something that I actually really like –  stating that the drawing is in fact, way of reasoning. And it’s a different kind of reasoning than, let’s say, argumentation. It’s the creative reasoning to engage and explore ideas by refining your drawings of concepts. So instead of looking at the picture, as some sort of fixed universal illustration, we begin to see it as an artifact of cognition. So I’m sure Michelle, that this is essential from the perspective of a teacher, isn’t it? What are the opportunities for having such a window into students thinking?

Reshan Richards

So the thing that was resonating or stirring curiosity in me as you were sharing that were these connections between drawing As a form of reasoning, but the the embedded layer which I jotted down in my margins here is around intrinsic motivation. And I think through reasoning via drawing, I think I would surmise that the reason that students might be able to perform or share or achieve greater proficiency might be because the process of drawing as a form of reasoning is like an intrinsically motivating exercise. There’s a reward in being able to communicate and demonstrate understanding and kind of untangle complex things. That’s kind of harder to do in a more abstract setting, like trying to use the constraints of text and paragraph and sentence structure and all of the other elements that are part of printed text that again are separating the learner from you know, The true expression or representation of what is being thought. And it doesn’t surprise me. And I absolutely think there’s connections to what we’re trying to as what as teachers were trying to achieve in classrooms, which is to instill this kind of love or intrinsically motivated joy around learning, so that it’s not seen as transactional, but rather, it’s it’s fundamental. It’s pure and natural curiosity. 

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah. Yeah. And what is also astonishing that drawings actually lay a foundation for future learning. So it helps students to discern key features and also understand challenges as they go. Right.

Reshan Richards

Yeah. And I mean, there’s, there’s some like really interesting, like papers and articles that talk about how drawing traditionally in schools and I’m talking about K to 12 schools, and I mean, certainly even higher ed, that there’s a perception that Using imagery using doodle sketching things out, is childish or juvenile and not academic or scholarly enough. I think it’s exciting because of conversations like these and pulling scholarly research and really trying to surface all of the values and true like cognitive benefits of visualization and doodling that it might contribute to changing that perception that, hey, I can write my dissertation in the form of a graphic novel, right? And somebody has done that before. And you and I have talked about some somebody who went to who did their doctorate at Teachers College at Columbia University, in that form. Now granted, that person may have been purposefully trying to brush up against norms, but it was completely valid and you want you need kind of pioneers and people to do things like that. To set the example like there are other ways to convey excellence to convey scholarly work to convey findings from research that don’t have to fall into kind of these traditional formats. I mean, all of the articles that were pulled up here, if you look at them, they look like very traditional papers, right? Because that is kind of the societal norm for conveyance of knowledge. So that almost brushes up against what we’re talking about here, which are the many other ways that people are able to transfer into to receive information.

B.A. Gonczarek

Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re spot on here Reshan. Before we close. Let’s try to briefly summarize what we’ve learned from those papers that we discussed. I can try to do that unless you’d like to start first.

Reshan Richards

All right, let me try to zoom out on the big picture here. Okay. And so, let me try to think of like three overarching cues, thoughts that that anybody who’s engaging in this, this conversation might take away. So the first is, there is a growing body of contemporary research. that’s helping make clear the links between visualizing information and better proficiency and understanding it exists and it’s increasingly valid. Second would be that people who have the job or charge the responsibility of communicating to others have to consider the ways that people learn and receive information in their design. There’s never going to be one strict way. But there’s going to be many modalities and modes and today there are far more tools and choices for being able to do that kind of communication. And the third one would be around kind of challenging traditional constraints and norms around what professional what academic communication is supposed to look like, when in the end. It’s really about being clear and getting to a point of under Standing as effectively as possible.

B.A. Gonczarek

Well, I think I fully agree with you. One additional thought to the second point that you mentioned. For me, I’m most excited about this concept of drawing as a form of reasoning. And the reason I’m excited about is that because technologies now are so good at broadening concept of growing with, let’s say, motion or ad-hoc provided animations. The technology makes it easy to transform existing digital assets into something I like to call “smashing bits & pixels” to represent what you need from what you have in your documents or photo library. So a collage, a digital collage is one example of that, but also, our use of the whiteboard here during this conversation is  another example. I just think that the phenomenon of Visual Thinking is empowered by the use of digital medium. So before to be a digital thinker, one needed to acquire at least basic drawing skills, right? But now with digital tools that we have, that seems completely optional, as instead of drawing, one can rearrange existing representations to perform, as we call it here, creative reasoning, and be open for all benefits that we discuss here. Would you agree?

Reshan Richards

I agree. Absolutely. And I would say that so many people, when they think about having these kinds of open ended visual experiences, say, Well, I can’t draw so I can’t participate, but all you need to everybody, if they’ve got, you know, you know, their, their, their hands and arms or whatever else they can manipulate to create something on a piece of paper or on a screen, can draw a line can draw a circle can draw an arrow. These are not advanced, you know, you don’t have to go to art school to be able to construct those things. And because as you said, the technology helps make it easier to bring in different types of visual content. This isn’t about being a great artist. This is about putting visual information together in order to help things make more sense.

B.A. Gonczarek

Well, Reshan, thank you for sharing your perspective. I’m positive that are many ways we could further explore the scientific foundations of learning and visual storytelling. So let’s pause here for now here the reaction of our listeners and perhaps continue in the future, shall we?

Reshan Richards

That sounds great. Thanks very much.

Resources

Here are the resources we discussed during our conversation:

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    Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses maplike structures to build a model of the world-not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know, and the origin of high-level thought
  • Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life
    “The ultimate guide to using the magical power of funny as a tool for leadership and a force for good.”—Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author
  • The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values
    How computer scientists and philosophers are defining the biggest question of our time - how will we create intelligent machines that will improve our lives rather than complicate or even destroy them?
  • Data teams
    How to integrate data teams into organization in an effective way, enabling executive data science practices.
  • Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History
    An account of the cultural and intellectual history of how Americans have lived with image and information since XXI century. It blends historical synthesis with insightful orienting narratives of eras, analyzing particular dimensions of them.
  • The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene
    A grand narrative of human history in which knowledge with is multiple facets serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution.
  • How We Learn: Why Brains Learn Better Than Any Machine . . . for Now
    An illuminating dive into the latest science on our brain's remarkable learning abilities and the potential of the machines we program to imitate them
  • The Next Enlightenment
    The Next Enlightenment argues that most of humanity’s problems are the result of a limited level of consciousness. It is both a political manifesto and a practical manual on how to create social conditions that will allow each of us to achieve our true purpose
  • The Study of Language
    Introduction to the study of language, its origins along with linguistic relativity, cognitive and social categories.
  • Zero to One
    In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1.
  • The Creative Thinking Handbook: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Problem Solving in Business
    Based on long-term research and testing of the creative thinking process, The Creative Thinking Handbook helps to generate more ideas and find brilliant solutions for any professional challenge.
  • Strategic Intuition
    William Duggan has conducted pioneering research on strategic intuition and for the past three years has taught a popular course at Columbia Business School on the subject. He now gives us this eye-opening book that shows how strategic intuition lies at the heart of great achievements throughout human history.
  • Make Yourself Clear
    Make Yourself Clear explains the many parallels between teaching and business and offer companies, both large and small, concrete advice for building the teaching capacity of their salespeople, leaders, service professionals, and trainers.
  • Skin in the Game
    "Skin in the Game” provides a meta guide to risk exposure and how the fragility works. It’s not so much exploration of strategies for dealing with uncertainty, it’s more of a deep intellectual dive into origins of thinking about risks and its impact on politics, businesses, belief systems - across different magnitudes of scale.
  • The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation
    An insightful exploration of the relationship between technological advances and work, from preindustrial society through the Computer Revolution.
  • Data Politics: Worlds, Subjects, Rights
    The book explores how data has acquired such an important capacity . Expert international contributors consider political questions about data and the ways it provokes subjects to govern themselves by making rights claims.
  • Theory of the Image
    The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The current „Age of Image” author calls a „Copernican revolution in our time”. Theory of the Image offers the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition.
  • Superminds
    Superminds shows that instead of fearing the rise of artificial intelligence we should be focusing on what we can achieve by working with computers – because together we will change the world.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Group Creativity and Innovation
    The book covers recent theoretical, empirical, and practical developments that provide a solid basis for the practice of collaborative innovation
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity
    The handbook introduces creativity scholarship by summarising its history, major theories and assessments, how creativity develops across the lifespan, and suggestions for improving creativity.
  • Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
    How our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. A synthesis of history, philosophy, anthropology, genetics, sociology, economics, epidemiology, statistics, and more
  • The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
    Drawing on a vast body of experimental research, Iain McGilchrist argues that the left brain makes for a wonderful servant, while the right side takes the position of the more reliable and insightful master.
  • Possible Minds on AI
    Intellectual impresario, John Brockman, assembles twenty-five of the most important scientific minds, for an unparalleled round-table examination about the mind, thinking, intelligence and what it means to be human.
  • Surveillance Capitalism
    The book delivers an abundance of information, insights, and counsel on, what Shoshana calls, the darkening of the digital age. It is about the challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, and un unprecedented new form of power.
  • Humanomics
    Smith and Wilson show how Adam Smith's model of sociality can re-humanize twenty-first century economics by undergirding it with sentiments, fellow feeling, and a sense of propriety - the stuff of which human relationships are built.
  • Team Human
    Douglas Rushkoff wrote this book to help as many people as possible who now struggle in the world of today. It feels as if civilization itself were on the brink, and that we lack the collective willpower and coordination necessary to address issues of the very survival of our species." He then asserts, "It doesn't have to be this way."
  • When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures
    A set of practical strategies to embrace differences and work successfully across increasingly diverse business cultures. Publication coming from a chairman of an international institute of cross-cultural training with offices in over 30 countries and founder of the quarterly magazine Cross Culture
  • AI superpowers
    On how China caught AI fever and implemented government goals (with benchmarks) for 2020, 2025 in an attempt to become the world center of AI innovation by 2030.
  • Living in a Real-Time World: 6 Capabilities to Prepare Us for an Unimaginable Future
    We have less and less time to think, less and less time to get in sync with what's happening. We cannot trust conventional wisdom to guide us. The book explores explores six conversational capabilities that we can cultivate to navigate uncertainty
  • Visual Consulting
    Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change shows how visual practice can combine with dialogue and change methods to get more creative and sustainable results. The practices can be applied to organizational and diverse, cross-boundary consulting projects.
  • Postmodern Theory and Progressive Politics
    the postmodern moment was a necessary one, or will have been if we rise to the occasion to arrive at a new and more textured humanism.
  • The book of Why
    The subject of causation has preoccupied philosophers at least since Aristotle. The absence, however, of an accepted scientific approach to analyzing cause and effect is not merely of historical or theoretical interest. The book covers how understanding causality has revolutionized science so far and will revolutionize AI.
  • The Meaning Revolution
    Bringing together economics and conflict resolution, counselling and mindfulness, Kofman provides a leadership framework that is counterintuitive to the regular MBA practices but based on a very firm foundation - the meaning.
  • Applied Artificial Intelligence: A Handbook For Business Leaders
    A practical guide for business leaders looking to get value from the adoption of machine learning technology.
  • Measure What Matters: OKRs
    One of the best books on management, tasks, goals and their measurement. Full of stories from successful companies (like Google).
  • Data Science
    Data science primer explaining its evolution, relation to machine learning, current uses, data infrastructure issues, and ethical challenges.
  • Cultural Evolution People’s Motivations are Changing, and Reshaping the World
    Regarded as one of the most important works in the social sciences in decades, Cultural Evolution argues that people's values and behavior are shaped by the degree to which survival is secure.
  • Reinventing Capitalism in the age of Big Data
    Data is replacing money as the driver of market behavior. Big finance and big companies will be replaced by small groups and individual actors who make markets instead of making things
  • Enlightenment Now
    Steven Pinker argues that humanism (a reasoned commitment to maximizing human flourishing), science, and democracy have resulted in substantial, measurable human progress over the last 500 years.
  • Human-in-the-loop Cyber-Physical Systems
    An essential primer on a rapidly emerging Internet-of-Things concept, focusing on human-centric applications. An indispensable resource for researchers and app developers eager to explore HiTL concepts and include them in their designs.
  • The Qualified Self: Social Media and the Accounting of Everyday Life
    The Qualified Self offers a new perspective on how social media users construct and distribute 'self-portraits' through media technologies. A truly original revision of 'mediated memories' and a much-needed update to the age of connectivity.
  • The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life
    The book brings together research on various topics of limited reach that, when combined, speak to the outrageous gall of the mind in recreating reality to its own liking, and then covering its tracks.
  • The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts
    Scientific management asked us to be efficient. Now, we are asked to be agile. But what does this mean for the everyday lives we lead?
  • Verbal and Visual Communication in Early English Texts
    The book investigate how visual and material features of early English books, documents, and other artefacts support - or potentially contradict - the linguistic features
  • No ego
    The book challenges the traditional beliefs on employee engagement and traditionalist leadership. It explains why it is time to move on and take on alternative takes on employee engagement.
  • Visual Thinking: Empowering People and Organisations through Visual Collaboration
    The book provides an informative, easy to follow and fun introduction into the basics of visual thinking and drawing. It is unique by applying these visual thinking and drawing techniques to everyday business settings.
  • The Cultural Dimension of Global Business
    The book provide an essential foundation for understanding the impact of culture on global business and global business on culture.
  • The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment
    Delving into the intersections between artistic images and philosophical knowledge in Europe from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries, The Art of Philosophy shows that the making and study of visual art functioned as important methods of philosophical thinking and instruction.
  • How to Take Smart Notes
    The Take Smart Notes principle is based on established psychological insight and draws from a tried and tested note-taking-technique.
  • From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds
    In From Bacteria to Bach and Back, Daniel C. Dennett builds on recent discoveries from biology and computer science to show, step by step, how a comprehending mind could, in fact, have arisen from a mindless process of natural selection.
  • Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters with Cultural Difference
    A collection of dialogues on interpreting conversations from the founder of intercultural communication training and consulting firm. 1998 text revised as second edition
  • The Real Internet of Things
    The book provides a view into our future reality. The amount of data we have today and will have in the future will be leveraged to augment our daily lives.
  • Whiteboard: Business Models that Inspire Action
    Hand-drawn by the author, this creative collection of illustrations, inspirational quotes, and savvy business models shares one purpose: to spark conversations and evolve companie
  • Utopia for Realists
    The book provides set of new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable
  • Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe
    The book investigates the evolution of scholarly practices and the transformation of cognitive habits in the early modern age with the use of technology
  • Small Giants
    Wonderful book about belief systems and how bringing in personal beliefs and values into a business can positively affect the success and impact of businesses.
  • Self-tracking
    What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking.
  • Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation
    An illustrated version that conveys the main ideas of the original book "Reinventing Organizations" that shares many of its real-life stories in a lively, engaging way.
  • The Qualified Self
    The Qualified Self offers an excellent overview of the breadth and depth of issues related to self-tracking cultures.
  • Introducing Multimodality
    An accessible introduction to multimodality. Illuminates the potential of multimodal research for understanding the ways in which people communicate. Key concepts and methods in various domains while learning how to engage critically with the notion of multimodality.
  • e-Learning and the Science of Instruction
    4th edition of essential reference for evidence-based guidelines for designing, developing and evaluating asynchronous and synchronous e-Learning for workforce training and educational courseware.
  • The Master Algorithm
    A comprehensive overview of the entire field of Machine Learning that is better than most of the book on the topic. Author also explores an idea, related to his scientific research, of a master algorithm which could explain everything given enough data.
  • Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy
  • Nonviolent Communication
    If "violent" means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then judging others, bullying could indeed be called "violent communication." Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things: Consciousness, Language, Communication, Means of influence, Empathic Connection and Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit
  • Data-ism: The Revolution Transforming Decision Making, Consumer Behavior, and Almost Everything Else
    Data-ism is about this next phase, in which vast, Internet-scale data sets are used for discovery and prediction in virtually every field
  • Unflattening
    Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge. A dissertation in a form of a comic book.
  • The Oxford Handbook of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
    The publication integrate three interrelated literatures on Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. Chapters were provided by the leading scholars in these research areas.
  • The Nonhuman Turn (21st Century Studies)
    The first book to name, characterize and consolidate a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches in decentering the human in favor of a concert for the nonhuman in the humanities and social sciences.
  • Spatial Semiotics and Spatial Mental Models: Figure-Ground Asymmetries in Language
    The interplay between culture through language and practices presents new insights in the importance of combining cognitive semantics with cognitive anthropology
  • Seeing Ourselves Through Technology
    A goldmine of historical and contemporary case studies with which readers are invited to visualise the complexity of self-representation practices and artefacts.
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Cultural-Historical Psychology
    The volume systematically presents cultural-historical psychology as an integrative/holistic developmental science of mind, brain, and culture.
  • The Philosophy of Perception: Phenomenology and Image Theory
    If perception is real - what this reality means for a subject? Wiesing's methods chart a markedly new path in contemporary perception theory. As part of the argument, he provides a succinct but comprehensive survey of the philosophy of images.
  • The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning
    A comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of research and theory in the field, with a focus on computer-based learning.
  • Superintelligence
    In the longer run biological human brains might cease to be the predominant nexus of Earthly intelligence. It is possible that one day we may be able to create ʺsuperintelligenceʺ: a general intelligence that vastly outperforms the best human brains in every significant cognitive domain.
  • The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
    A book that illustrates the misunderstandings that can arise from clashing cultural assumptions
  • The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge
    A timeline of capsule biographies on key figures in the development of the tree diagram containing more that two hundred tree diagrams
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
    Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup
  • Reinventing Organizations
    Probably the most influential management book of this decade, inspiring to take a radical leap and adopt a whole different set of management principles and practices.
  • Crossing the Chasm
    Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers. The book illustrates existence of a vast chasm between the early adopters and the early majority in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle
  • The Second Machine Age
    The explanation of the technolgy revolution that is overturning the world’s economies.
  • The Sketchnote Handbook: the illustrated guide to visual note taking
    On how to incorporate sketchnoting techniques into your note-taking process--regardless of your artistic abilities--to help you better process the information that you are hearing and seeing through drawing, and to actually have fun taking notes.
  • Mapping Scientific Frontiers
    An interdisciplinary examination of the history and the state of the art of the quest for visualizing scientific knowledge and the dynamics of its development.
  • Managing Information Quality: Increasing the Value of Information in Knowledge-intensive Products and Processes
    The book examines ways in which the quality of information can be improved in knowledge-intensive processes (such as on-line communication, strategy, product development, or consulting
  • Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs
    Using a list of more than 2,000 successful innovations the book explores these insights to diagnose patterns of innovation, and to evaluate how firms are performing against competitors. The framework has proven to be one of the most enduring and useful ways to start process of transformation.
  • Who Owns the Future?
    How the concentration of data and distribution of risk by those who own the data creates a significant risk to our capitalist based economy and over the long term to the very companies that create the situation.
  • Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
    Big data is about predictions. Academic Mayer-Schönberger and editor Cukier consider big data the new ability to crunch vast collections of information and draw conclusions from it.
  • Turing’s Cathedral
    On how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of the WWII, the nature of digital computers, an how code took over the world by storm.
  • Outliers
    An intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
  • Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners
    Visible Thinking is a research-based approach to teaching thinking, begun at Harvard's Project Zero, that develops students' thinking dispositions, while at the same time deepening their understanding of the topics they study.
  • Student Successes With Thinking Maps
    The research, experiences from the field, vignettes, and work. A book that links research and practice and shows the true impact of a specific instructional approach on student learning
  • Imagery and Text: A Dual Coding Theory of Reading and Writing
    The first book to take a systematic theoretical approach to all of the central issues of literacy, including decoding, comprehension, and memory
  • Your Life, Uploaded
    The book explains authors' thinking on Mincrosoft MyLifeBits project predating the "Quantified Self" and "Internet of Things" movements
  • New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics
    Collection of essays on new thinking about matter and processes of materialization centered around reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges.
  • The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
    The introduction to Senge's carefully integrated corporate framework, which is structured around "personal mastery," "mental models," "shared vision," and "team learning."
  • The Race between Education and Technology
    A masterful work by two leading economists on some of the biggest issues in economics: economic growth, human capital, and inequality. There are fundamental insights in the book, not just about our past but also our future.
  • Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Economic Growth
    A comprehensive perspective on the micro- and macroeconomics of innovation. The book breaks new ground in identifying and analyzing the key ingredients driving economic growth.
  • Universal Principles of Design
    The Universal Principles of Design is a resource to increase cross-disciplinary knowledge and understanding of design. The concepts broadly referred to as “principles,” consist of laws, guidelines, human biases, and general design considerations.
  • Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory
    A collection of studies on the image offers both a case for the importance of image studies and a broad introduction to this area of philosophical enquiry in which author implies that "the image opens up a view on reality liberated from the constraints of physics"
  • Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge
    The book recognizes that the future of economic well being in today's knowledge and information society rests upon the effectiveness of schools and corporations to empower their people to be more effective learners and knowledge creators.
  • The Ego Tunnel
    The Ego Tunnel provides a stunningly original take on the conscious self, explaining it as the content of a model created by our brain.


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