The Next Organization

IQ is not Predictor for Performance, Agreed Daniel Goldman

I have been busy lately with works and many readings so only hardly had time to read my feeds. Today, when I scanned through my Google Reader, I found an interesting note by Daniel Goleman, the initiator of Emotional Intelligence and author of the book with the same name. The thesis of the post is IQ is not a good Predictor for Performance.

Here is the extract of the part where Daniel presented the findings of some researches:

"The relation of IQ to exceptional performance is rather weak in many domains… For scientists, engineers, and medical doctors…the correlations between ability measures and occupational success are only around 0.2, accounting for only 4% of the variance (Baird, 1985)...

Hunter and Hunter (1984) found that only cognitive ability emerged as a useful predictor ... with early job performance. However, a recent review (Hulin, Henry and Noon, 1990) has shown that... ability tests can predict early performance on a job, whereas final performance is poorly predicted."

So if IQ is not good predictor, neither is cognition capability, what would be?

Most interesting stuffs I found last week - August 14, 2007

DarwinSuzsoft Closes $48 Million in Financing to Fuel in IT Outsourcing to China Market
An interesting move in IT outsourcing to China. Motivation? Neil Garfinkel, a founding partner of Francisco Partners, said China’s large pool of technical talent, its modern infrastructure and its tremendous cost position make China a compelling choice as a technology outsourcing destination for US and multinational companies. The full press release is here.

Virgin America: Like a Multimillion-Dollar IPod. That Flies.

Defining generational cohorts for Vietnam - Need reader's comments and inputs

The normal convention in Vietnam defining 8x and 9x is only generations, which does not guarantee a clear distinction for marketing or management. Generation cohort, defined by events that were happening during the "come of age" (16 - 22 years old), is a better way of classification. This post proposes a cohort system for Vietnam, and call for comments from readers.

Back in 2004, I talked to a few friends studying MBA and social studies about building up a generational cohort system for Vietnam, something similar to one of US. Nonetheless, we didn't come up with any clear plan due to many reasons. After that, I myself did some of the work, mainly from spending's and saving's point of view for multiple Vietnamese cohorts that I identified.

A year later, the concept of 8x generation started to be widely accepted in Vietnam. Now, people started talking about the 9x generation. However, when it comes to application, generation is in most cases used interchangeably with cohort, which makes it inaccurate.

First, let's look at the definition of generational cohort and make the distinction between cohort and generation. Cohorts are defined by Charles Schewe, Geoffrey Meredith and Stephanie Noble as "groups of individuals who are born in the same period and travel through life together. They experience similar external events during their late adolescent/early adulthood years. These "defining moments" influence their values, preferences, attitudes, and buying behaviors in ways that remain with them over their lifetime." The events that was happening during the "come of age" defining the cohorts, therefore the cohort can be long or short depending on these events.

The normal convention in Vietnam defining 8x and 9x is based on generations, i.e. the decade of birth, is unreliable. On one hand, there is no special reason why year of birth may cause the difference. On the other hand, the length of 10 years does not guarantee that the difference is significant between generations, especially among years close to the decade transition.

Proposed Vietnamese Cohorts

From all of these, cohort promises a better result in segmenting age groups than generation, even though the former is still a way to build stereotype of people. Based on the major events happening in Vietnam recently, I propose the following cohorts for people born and lived in Vietnam till their early twenties:

Social Networking Use is a Function of Culture and Internet Access

Analysis of the results from Ipsos Insight’s "The Face of the Web 2006" shows a high negative correlation between frequency of visit to Social Networking site of a number of countries and Hofstede's Individualism Index of these countries. However, outliers suggest that Internet access is another factor that influence Social Networking site access. For Vietnam, this means the country is a good prospect for Social Networking services, but will only realize its potential if Internet access situation is improved.

The Face of the Web, Ipsos Insight’s annual study of Internet and Technology trends, was based on a survey conducted in November and December 2006 in urban Brazil, Canada, urban China, France, Germany, urban India, Japan, urban Mexico, urban Russia, South Korea, the UK and the US. Among the results is the frequency of visitation to Social Networking Websites like show above.

Popular analyzes focused mainly on the "South Korean" and Cyworld phenomena. However, from my observation and a conversation with a friend, Minh Do, the most notable result was a high visitation by South Koreans, urban Brazilians, urban Chinese and urban Mexicans than by the Brits, Americans and Canadian. Intuitively, I immediately thought of culture as an underlying factor.