Small data : the tiny clues that uncover huge trends

Title	Small data : the tiny clues that uncover huge trends
Author	Martin Lindstrom
Call Number	HF5415.32 .L5576 2016
Location	3rd Floor Business and Economics
Rating	Not Recommended
Book Review	This may be the worst book I’ve ever read. The premise sounds very promising; using ethnographic approaches to discovering the needs of communities and using that info to shape business strategies. As it turns out, the author has missed an important principle about doing ethnographic research: stereotyping and essentialism must be absolutely avoided. Instead, the author details his method of spending some short amount of time with a small segment of a population, picking up on whatever meaningless details happen to capture his attention, and then creating ideas that supposedly reflect all of the people of that cultural group. It’s an offensive and misguided strategy. Furthermore, as a librarian I can’t abide his reliance on non-scholarly sources in the few instances when he bothered to read existing literature at all. For instance, he seems to put a lot of weight on an article published on a blog that showed what emojis are most used in different countries. According to this author, the fact that people in Saudi Arabia often use water or plant-based emojis somehow ties into a fear of fire and a desire for water. So yeah, it’s not a good book.
Submitted By	Taylor Greene
Department or Major	Leatherby Libraries
Status	Staff
Chapman Email	tgreene@chapman.edu