The source of real competitiveness in Korea

Recent game in WBC 2009, Korea beat Japan by 4 to 1 making its entry into final 4.
How this can be natural (not surprising) news to koreans?
Japan has about 5,000 high school baseball teams, but korea only has 50 high school teams.
With 1% of numbers playing baseball game, how this is possible. They practice the game much
harder than anyone in the world. Maybe in theory 100 times harder...

I was in high school in 1980s. I can only get out of the school after 10 pm. We usally go to school
before 8 am. In the recent book of Outliers, the story of success, Malcolm Gladwell points out
10,000 hours of dedication (investment) to be really efficient at something. In korea, a lot more
people do practice this 10,000 hours from early on whether you study or play music/sports, etc.

So the extent to "work hard" is quite different between Korea and other nations. I don't know where you are, but note that there is a nation that practice this kind of hard to imagine hard work.

How to make memorable message

http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/03/13/2009031300862.html (Chosun daily's article in Korean)

From weekly biz (3/14/'09) in Chosun dailly newspaper, there was an article about Standford professor Chip Heath's popular book "Made to Stick."

Things I found useful in the articles are;

- State the key idea/message first in writing email (just avoid burying the lead)
- 6 principles: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotion and Story
- Biggest ROI is "Concreteness"
- becareful in using "Unexpectedness"
- Please avoid "Curse of knowledge" meaning that you don't have to use difficult message or wording to look you know a lot more than others... it just makes other people don't get what you say. What matters is Simple and clear message.

Insight from Cialdini's new book

Recently read "Yes: 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive." this book again, as I learned a lot about marketing from his 1st book "The influence: The science and practice," gave me
some useful insights in marketing.

- When a loser becomes a winner?
--> When GM pulls out automobile, its sales soared like rocket because it became scare (Scarcity Principle)
- Explanation of New Coke Big flop
--> During the taste test, new coke was scare and it was more popular. But when it (new) was introduced, the old coke got scare and due to the "Loss Aversion," people get crazy about old coke.
- Never use "Negative Social Proof"
--> If you use negative social proof, it only results in negative actions against your original intention to cause positive action (e.g. not taking towels from hotel, etc)
- If you run restaurant or await RSVP for your guest inviting event
--> Don't say "pls call if you can't make it." It has no effect. You have to ask "Would you pls call
if u can't make it?" If you get Yes answer to it, it will increase your response rate from 10 to 30%. (Commitment principle)