Now & Z/Yen - May 2004
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Now & Z/Yen - May 2004
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Volume Four, Number Twenty-six "Zest for Enlightenment" The Irregular Newsletter of Z/Yen Limited May 2004 Standard Practice
ISEAL Alliance is an association of leading international standard-setting, certification and accreditation organisations that focus on social and environmental issues, and includes members such as one of our favourite clients [That’s not allowed! – ed] the Marine Stewardship Council. The retreat helped to set out the Alliance strategy on a number of issues and covered a lot of ground in just two days. Sadly, while the retreat was billed as being ‘in Rome’, Michael had to fly in, bypass the eternal city, spend two days in a remote conference centre and return. Strangely, few at Z/Yen were concerned. Yo-Ho-Ho & a Barrel of Rum
We designed Smuggler’s Choice so that teams could see, in a relaxed way, how to make tough decisions under uncertainty, how to cooperate, when not to cooperate and how to gather information through negotiation. Smuggler’s Choice illustrates two particular theories - the Prisoner’s Dilemma and Prospect Theory. The Prisoner’s Dilemma is met by teams having to decide whether to cooperate or not!! This has been a fertile research area for games theorists & computer boffins, e.g. the promotion of Tit-for-Tat as the best way to deal with most real-life situations. Prospect Theory, for which one of the proponents, Daniel Kahneman, won a Nobel prize in 2002, explains how framing problems is crucial. Teams who feel behind tend to take riskier decisions than teams who feel they are in the lead. The first two games proved highly popular with the Blue Beards winning both. Is this a trend?? Up Up and Away
Although the meeting schedule was tight, Jeremy and Francesca found time to shop and visit one of New York’s less austere institutions, namely “Jeremy’s Ale House”. Rumours of M&A activity would of course be denied by the parties concerned. As Predicted by PropheZy
In April 2004, Time Magazine published “Revenge of the Bean Counters” highlighting, amongst other things, a 38% annual increase in audit fees paid by large US companies. There’s little more irritating than hearing Mainelli and Harris saying “told you so” ad nauseum, but it seems that PropheZy will be helping them to do just that in more and more areas.
Ian Harris, for example, is currently working with two grant-making foundations extending the use of PropheZy to predict the potential effectiveness of charitable grants. Early indications show that their grant-giving could be better targeted using what is effectively a “score card” in PropheZy. The technique can similarly be used to help evaluate financial investment propositions. Ian claims that he anticipated a favourable result for his PropheZy tests. “Told you so”, he said. [I saw that punch-line coming – Ed.]
An International Cast of Stars
In London, Mark Guerriero and Rohan Wardena have joined Giles Wright, Francesca Birch and James Pitcher. In New York, Jonathan Davies and Nicole Avrami Blomfield will be working on Z/Yen projects while Rob Long will be kicking off Z/Yen’s first Asian survey from Kuala Lumpur.
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