The first virtual event in theMeet the Authors series will be Wednesday, Jan. 27, on LinkedIn, and will stream live at 11:30 a.m. on the Wharton School LinkedIn page. It will be hosted by Wharton Professor Peter Fader, author of “Customer Centricity” and coauthor of “The Customer Centricity Playbook.”
“I’m thrilled to host Wharton School Press’s Meet the Authors Series and help bring Wharton faculty thought leadership to the global business community through lively, engaging conversations,” he says. “While so many of us remain physically separated, this event series gives us the opportunity to join together with leading authors to discuss books that provide lessons and inspiration for these challenging times.”
The first of the series will feature a new book by Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Michael Platt, “The Leader’s Brain: Enhance Your Leadership, Build Stronger Teams, Make Better Decisions, and Inspire Greater Innovation with Neuroscience.”
“I’m really excited and honored to be featured first on Meet the Authors,” says Platt, who is also the James S. Riepe Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor of Marketing, Neuroscience, and Psychology and director of the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative. “Neuroscience is new for business and brings great disruptive potential, so it’s great to see Wharton School Press swinging for the fences.”
In his book, Platt explores how the latest neuroscience insights can help us become better leaders. Topics include how to connect with teams in virtual meetings so our social brains don’t starve; why a protein-rich breakfast can help us to make better decisions; why some companies (such as Apple) build strong social and emotional connections with their customers and others do not (such as Samsung); and how some of the most significant events in sports history, like the “Miracle on Ice,” contain insights for how to build a team.
Over two decades as a professor and practitioner in neuroscience, psychology, and marketing, Platt’s pioneering research has deepened the understanding of how key areas of the brain work—and how that understanding can be applied in business settings.
“My goal in writing ‘The Leader’s Brain’ was to get the key insights and technologies of neuroscience out of the lab and the clinic and into the hands of people who can use these tools to create new value for companies, for employees, for customers, and for society,” says Platt.
In March, the Wharton School Press series will feature author Jonah Berger and his book, “The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind.” In his book, Berger, a Wharton marketing professor, explains why persuasion is so difficult. The book also illustrates why so many attempted messages of persuasion have practically no chance of working, and provides some strategies that make persuasion possible, while demonstrating that all persuasion is self-persuasion.
The series will feature Katy Milkman, author of “How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” in May. Milkman, a Wharton professor and Choiceology podcast host, has devoted her career to the study of behavior change. With a foreword from Penn psychology professor Angela Duckworth, the best-selling author of “Grit,” Milkman writes about how she has discovered a crucial thing many of us get wrong: our strategy. Change, she’s learned, “comes most readily when you understand what’s standing between you and success, and tailor your solution to that roadblock.”
July’s featured author is Mauro Guillén, author of “2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything” and a soon-to-be-announced book from Wharton School Press. Guillén, the Dr. Felix Zandman Professorship of International Management at Wharton, provides an analysis on global trends, including on how COVID-19 will amplify and accelerate the global changes.
“Once upon a time, the world was neatly divided into prosperous and backward economies,” he says. “Babies were plentiful, workers outnumbered retirees, and people aspiring towards the middle class yearned to own homes and cars. Companies didn’t need to see any further than Europe and the United States to do well. Printed money was legal tender for all debts, public and private. We grew up learning how to ‘play the game,’ and we expected the rules to remain the same as we took our first job, started a family, saw our children grow up, and went into retirement with our finances secure.”
That world—and those rules—are over, says Guillen.
Register here for the Jan. 27 event.
