In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition is National Lampoon meets Peter Drucker. It's a funny and well-written business book that takes a look at some of the most influential marketing and business philosophies of the last twenty years. Through the dark glass of hindsight, it provides an educational and entertaining look at why these philosophies didn't work for many of the country's largest and best-known high-tech companies. Marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes you on a hilarious ride in this book, which is richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now-famous meetings and events), In Search of Stupidity, Second Edition examines the best of the worst marketing ideas and business decisions in the last 20 years of the technology industry. This second edition includes new chapters on Google and on how to avoid stupidity, plus the extensive analyses of all chapters from the first edition. You'll want to get a copy because it: Features an interesting preface and interview with Joel Spolsky of "Joel on Software" Offers practical advice on avoiding PR disaster Features actual pictures of some of the worst PR and marketing material ever created Is highly readable and funny Includes theme-based cartoons for every chapter

Describes influential business philosophies and marketing ideas from the past twenty years and examines why they did not work.

"Selling Steve Jobs' Liver: A Story of Startups, Innovation, and Connectivity in the Clouds" follows the adventures of two serial-failure entrepreneurs who obtain the late technology titan's original liver and embark on an exciting entrepreneurial journey to build a new company and technology that will disrupt the market's current model of interacting and communicating with those in the post life.In 2003, Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. By 2009, the cancer had spread to his liver. Near death, Jobs flew to Tennessee, where he underwent an organ transplant. The fate of the discarded liver remains a mystery, one that is revealed in "Selling Steve Jobs' Liver: A Story of Startups, Innovation, and Connectivity in the Clouds.""Selling Steve Jobs' Liver" takes place today and begins when two serial-failure entrepreneurs, Nate Pennington and Ignacio Loehman, are contacted by a mysterious man who sells them the technology titan's lost liver. The opportunity inspires them to ideate, innovate, and finally create a new company, Reliqueree, whose mission is to reposition death and dying in the market's mind by replacing current 20th century mortuary processes and concepts with fresh thinking and new technology, enabling the living to enjoy the benefits of enhanced remembrance, connectivity and interactivity with those in a post-life state.Determined to change the world, Nate and Ignacio create the uLivv, the first device designed to leverage the IoDT (Internet of Departed Things). As part of their launch strategy, Nate and Ignacio repurpose Steve Jobs' genome and liver to create a compelling value and promotional proposition for their new family of products and services."Selling Steve Jobs' Liver" takes the reader on an exciting entrepreneurial journey as our heroes draw on the legacy and lessons of Steve Jobs for inspiration and guidance as they strive to build their new company.

Functional stupidity can be catastrophic. It can cause organisational collapse, financial meltdown and technical disaster. And there are countless, more everyday examples of organisations accepting the dubious, the absurd and the downright idiotic, from unsustainable management fads to the cult of leadership or an over-reliance on brand and image. And yet a dose of stupidity can be useful and produce good, short-term results: it can nurture harmony, encourage people to get on with the job and drive success. This is the stupidity paradox. The Stupidity Paradox tackles head-on the pros and cons of functional stupidity. You'll discover what makes a workplace mindless, why being stupid might be a good thing in the short term but a disaster in the longer term, and how to make your workplace a little less stupid by challenging thoughtless conformity. It shows how harmony and action in the workplace can be balanced with a culture of questioning and challenge. The book is a wake-up call for smart organisations and smarter people. It encourages us to use our intelligence fully for the sake of personal satisfaction, organisational success and the flourishing of society as a whole.

"Avital Ronell's work studies the fading empire of cognition, modulating stupidity into idiocy, puerility, and the figure of the ridiculous philosopher instituted by Kant. Investigating ignorance, dumbfoundedness, and the limits of reason, Stupidity probes the pervasive practice of theory-bashing and related forms of paranoid aggression. A section on prolonged and debilitating illness pushes the text to an edge of a corporeal hermeneutics, "at the limits of what the body knows and tells.""--BOOK JACKET.