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  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 06/30/2011 • 4 Comments

    Women Business Travelers' Wants

    The number of women business travelers has been growing rapidly, and for 40 years, hotel operators have attempted to discern and meet the needs of this specific group, usually by looking at the features and amenities offered by the hotel. A new study by Cornell School of Hotel Administration Professor Judi Brownell proposes a more holistic approach that takes into account the overall emotional effect of clusters of features and amenities. 

    "When hotel operators ask what women want, the answer is not so much specific features as it is an overall outcome relating to how the experience makes them feel," Brownell said. "In this context, we have found that women want to feel secure, comfortable, empowered and valued. When I tested this insight in a model, the result was clusters of amenities and features that contributed to these critical affective outcomes."

    To fill a gap in existing research, Brownell conducted a survey of hotel managers to determine their perceptions of what women business travelers sought in a stay. The managers rated safety as a top concern. As an example, specific features that contribute to a feeling of safety include covered parking, secure locks, well-lit hallwaysand thoughtful room locations.

    "Over time, I believe we are seeing a greater industry consensus on how to serve this rapidly growing market segment," Brownell said. "What is clear is that the overall emotion or affect is more important than a particular amenity or hotel feature."



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 03/01/2011 • 0 Comments

    More Creative at Helping Strangers

    Solving problems for others will help you if you're tied up in a creativity knot. According to research by Evan Polman (New York University) and Kyle Emich (Cornell University), we're more creative when helping strangers more than ourselves. 

    "It's been shown, for example, that greater physical and temporal distance lead us to think more abstractly, such that you're more likely to solve a problem if you imagine being confronted by it in a far-off place and/or at a future time," wrote Christian Jarrett on the BPS Research Digest. "Now Polman and Emich have shown that social distance can have the same psychological benefit."

    In the first study, participants carried out a structured imagination task by drawing an alien for a story that they would write, or alternatively for a story that someone else would write. 

    "As expected, drawing an alien for someone else produced a more creative alien," the researchers wrote in the study's abstract. "In Studies 2a and 2b, construal level (i.e., psychological distance) was independently manipulated. Participants generated more creative ideas on behalf of distant others than on behalf of either close others or themselves."

    In the third study, a classic insight problem was investigated. 

    "Participants deciding for others were more likely to solve the problem; furthermore, this result was mediated by psychological distance," the researchers wrote. "These findings demonstrate that people are more creative for others than for themselves and shed light on differences in self–other decision making."

    Polman and Emich say there are practical implications of their findings. 

    "That decisions for others are more creative than decisions for the self is not only valuable information for researchers in social psychology, decision making, marketing and management but also should prove of considerable interest to negotiators, managers, product designers, marketers and advertisers, among many others," they said.

    This information is extremely valuable and advantageous for meeting and event professionals, because you're consistently called on to solve problems for strangers.  



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 02/23/2011 • 2 Comments

    Bias Against Creative Leaders

    This is kind of sad news for creative folks wanting to lead. Cornell University research finds that creativity can block people from attaining senior leadership positions in companies. 

    “Our three studies show that when people voice creative ideas, they are viewed by others as having less leadership potential," said Jack Goncalo, assistant professor of organizational behavior in Cornell's ILR School. The research will be published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology in March 2011.

    Its implication: “Creative people are getting filtered out on their way to the top.”

    The reason is that deeply held expectations of “creative people” and “effective leaders” often clash. Creative people are viewed as risky and unpredictable, while leaders are expected to reduce uncertainty and uphold the norms of the group. Although people claim they want creativity, when given the opportunity, they actually preserve the status quo by sticking with unoriginal thinkers, data suggest.

    This might help explain why many of the 1,500 leaders surveyed in 2010 by IBM's Institute for Business Value doubted their abilities to lead through complex times, Goncalo says.

    Perhaps promoted for their unspoken promises to preserve the status quo, leaders are often expected to change the status quo when they arrive at the top—an uncanny mismatch that was previously unidentified.

    Bias against selecting the most creative thinkers for the highest jobs was pinpointed through three studies, Goncalo says.

    One study included 346 employees working in jobs that required creative problem solving. The other two, at universities in the northeast United States, involved more than 180 students each. Jennifer S. Mueller of the University of Pennsylvania and Dishan Kamdar of the Indian School of Business conducted the research with Goncalo.

    This raises the question: What can we do to change perceptions of creative people and leadership ability? 

    (Story materials provided by Cornell University.)



  • Posted by Jason Hensel at
    12:00AM 02/17/2011 • 0 Comments

    Know Your Appitype

    The applications you add to your smart phone can label you as a specific “appitypes,” said Trevor Pinch, a professor of science and technology studies at Cornell University, who worked as a consultant for the Finnish telecomm giant Nokia.

    Pinch used survey data on app usage from 5,000 smart phone users in 10 countries to create appitypes to help define user profiles. Appitypes play into people’s desire to project an identity and could be of use to developers and users alike.

    For example, Pinch says an “appcentric” is an extreme user who uses the mobile phone as their main computing device for anything from data management to playing games. The “appthusiast” is someone who feels the need to search out and download the latest apps. The “live wire” downloads a mix of fitness, social and travel apps.

    The Creator appitype is “The Picasso of personality types when it comes to app habits,” Pinch said. “Creators are very expressive and carry a multitude of apps that allow them to be spontaneously creative. They could be art teachers, therapists with a penchant for drawing or heavy metal heads. The entertainment industry is full of Creators.”

    The survey found that Germans were downloading flashlight and alarm clock apps, Pinch says, while Brazilians download lots of music and social networking apps. The Chinese download news apps. South Africans prefer social networking apps. India goes in for business apps.

    While previous data had been collected on the number of apps users have, there was no global survey of smart phone users, until now.

    “Think about connections between humans and technology,” Pinch said. “You can have smartphones with you all the time. You can sleep with the thing if you want. These apps capture people’s imagination and add mobility. There is nothing inevitable about the path technology takes. We need more research on how people and technology together can produce meaningful change in our lives.”

    Know your appitype: http://blog.ovi.com/dailyapp/appitype/

    (Story materials provided by Cornell University.)