Mystery of mysteries
The fun thing about business studies (bear with me) is the fact that “no-one knows anything”. See for instance this great article in the New York Times (required reading). The reason publishing is such a great business to study is that we really cannot predict it. Sure, we can hook onto trends or try to create buzz, but in the end it is up to whether people like it or not — and that cannot be modeled. I recently talked to an interesting older gentleman who claimed that he had an algorithm that could predict whether a book should be published or not (he said he has the patent), and as far as I could tell this was on the basis of how original the book was. The problem I could think of with such an algorithm is that people are rather quirky in their behaviors, and that the notion of originality is rather wide. Was Harry Potter original? It is a rather simple story, really, and fairly little in the overall concept are particularly novel (for instance, similar themes can be found in Roal Dahl and Eva Ibbotson’s brilliant Which Witch?, not to mention in Terry Pratchett). In fact, I don’t think it was that original. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. But good is difficult to measure, and exists in our cultural mind — which is malleable. Sometimes we want something really novel and avantgarde, sometimes we want comfort food. Business studies studies the unknowable, at least in part. That’s why it remains interesting. Those who think it should be about finding out “correct things” or “what works” really don’t understand it all too well.
