Kathleen Eisenhardt explains simple rules: short sets of guidelines tailored to people and situations. She uses Michael Pollan's eating rules, Stanford football, and crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo to show how different rule sets shape behavior and outcomes.
Chapters
There are 3 key features of Simple Rules. The first one is Simple Rules are simple. That means Simple Rules are maybe 2, 3, 4, 5 rules. Second, Simple Rules are unique. Your rules aren't necessarily my rules. And then finally, Simple Rules relate to something, a defined activity, not some sort of general thing like be nice to your mother. Although with Mother's Day coming up, I am into that. Let me give you an example of what simple rules are. Michael Pollan, Michael Pollan, UC Berkeley professor and author of Botany of Desire, Omnivore's Dilemma, other great books, has some simple rules for eating. Eat real food that your mother— grandmother would recognize. Eat mostly plants and not too much. All you have to do, not too much plants and things that are not processed. So you can eat blueberries, kale, cantaloupe, whatever you want. That's simple. Second idea is simple rules depend on the person and the situation. Stanford football team versus Michael Pollan. Michael Pollan, middle-aged guy, he's got his rules. Stanford football team, this portion control is not really working for them and this no protein is not really working for them. Rather, what are their rules? Their rules are more around always be hydrated because they are busy boys, hardworking. Their second rule is eat breakfast because as students they have a tendency to stay up late and get up late and then rush to class and skip breakfast. So second rule is always eat breakfast. And the third rule is eat things that you can pick, pluck, or kill. So again non-processed, but you can move past plants for those guys. So it depends on who you are. And then the third idea is that Simple Rules— I shall give you one more example, give you Indiegogo and Kickstarter to get you more into the entrepreneurship realm here. Indiegogo, both of them crowdfunding sites. Indiegogo is from, again from Berkeley actually, and started with the mantra of the internet is for everybody. Or everybody deserves a rich uncle and that's your crowdsourcing friends. What are the rules at Indiegogo for projects? You can put anything on Indiegogo if it's legal. You want to fund your root canal, go to Indiegogo. You want to fund your in utero child, go to Indiegogo. You want your startup, you want to be the Jamaican bobsled team, you go to Indiegogo. Indiegogo does not curate. Indiegogo instead has an algorithm to pick their favorites. And it's based on effort which they regard as very important and it's based on what the popularity of the project is to the crowd. Contrast those rules with Kickstarter. Kickstarter starts out actually in film. They have as their analogy, we want to be like Amazon. Amazon starts in books, we start in films and then add categories. But not everything can be on Kickstarter. No root canals on Kickstarter. Rather the way Kickstarter works is, Your projects are curated, they're put into 13 buckets and about 25% of the projects that are submitted don't ever appear on Kickstarter. And then how do they curate in terms of what's the popular picks of the staff? The staff actually picks, not an algorithm. Overall, the point is two ostensibly the same businesses using fundamentally different rules. The Android rules of Indiegogo versus the Apple rules of of Kickstarter, open system, closed system. And then finally the idea is that Simple Rules relate to a defined activity, choosing the right food or picking crowdfunding projects.
