【推荐2】A new idea called ‘business at the speed of thought’ is quite popular in the business world. It makes quick marketing progress, but it also proves to be a/an ________ way of running a company. Here’re the main ________ : The businesses today that will succeed are those able to jump around in high spirits. Chances must be seized immediately and decisions made quickly. Everyone needs more immediate answers, and the window of expected ________ to any questions has dropped from weeks to days even to hours.

The problem with this way of thinking is that too often such quickness comes at the cost of ________ understanding the details of a situation. Sure, the networked society allows us to gather information within a short time, but does it really ________ up our ability to make better decisions? How do you balance the ________ for speed with sharp and correct thinking? That’s the ________ on the minds of a lot of people these days, including Future Shock author, Alvin Toffler, who studies the idea in our cover story. It’s also a/an ________ of a new study by Kepner Tregoe. It reports that 77 percent of managers believe that during the past three years the number of decisions they made each workday has increased. But 85 percent of those same people say the time given to making those decisions has either ________ or stayed the same. Result: Speed kills. Different opinions are not shared. Other choices are ________ too easily. Aims never seem to be clear. ________, good records aren’t kept about how successful decisions are made. If your company really does well, the Kepner report suggests ________ the decision-making process and figuring out what you did right. Study your successes, as well as your failures.

Fast decision-making is a necessity sometimes —no question about that.But decisions are only as good as the ________ go into them. By that measure, many of today’s decisions are weak and could bring ________ to some companies. Business may keep the ________ as it is necessary for being competitive, but the company is likely to be torn to pieces if managers are not thinking with care and patience.

【推荐2】If you took the strengths of others, and compared them to your weaknesses, do you think this would make you feel good? The funny thing is, this is _________ most of us do at one time or another — and some of us do it pretty _________.

It’s surely a _________ for a drop in self-confidence and for unhappiness. Let’s say I take a look at someone who creates amazing artwork on their website and I look at my art, and realize I don’t come close to being _________ with him. In fact, I look pretty _________. But it’s not a fair _________. If I looked at my strengths — writing useful and honest posts — I can see that I have a lot to _________, a lot to be happy about.

That’s so important-being able to look at your own strengths, and see your true _________. It’s actually one of the keys to success and happiness.

I want to talk about this issue _________ an email from a reader recently: I have some teammates from very rich families, I can’t stop myself comparing my __________ with theirs. I must say that my financial planning is sound enough to take care of my __________ family; and I can take care of new family members also, at least for some time __________ I lose my current job. But __________ I see or hear them spending so much money after possessions, I start comparing again. How can I stop this habit, without changing jobs?

This is an excellent but tough __________. I think it’s __________ to compare ourselves to others, but it often makes us unhappy even if we have enough and should be __________ what we have. My quick __________: try to be aware of when you start comparing yourself to others. . . once you’ve developed this __________, stop yourself and tell yourself, “Stop that!” And then __________ thinking about all the things you do have, the things you love, the people you have and the blessings that __________ has given you. Make this a regular practice, and you’ ll start to be happier with your life.

【推荐1】When looking at ways to expand your business, does it make sense to go global? The answer is yes — expanding to international markets helps companies grow, increases buying power and diversifies market opportunities. It better prepares the company for changes in the _________ economy. It can result in increased profits, a diverse customer base and improved stability.

Before the pandemic, _________ expansion almost always meant international travel. _________ bias (偏见) in some countries historically made business expansion difficult for women, and international travel can _________ the delicate work-life balance entrepreneurs (企业家) of both sexes strive to maintain.

The Covid-19 pandemic _________ global e-commerce and opportunities. The world is conducting business _________ with far more success than anticipated. This shift to business by the internet presents tremendous global opportunities for women as it effectively makes the situation _________.

Conducting business on the internet _________ the complications of gender, race, religion, color and lifestyle, simplifying business down to the principles of supply and demand. This opens more doors for growth and enables entrepreneurs to study potential markets and the buyer’s journey from the _________of their own office.

So, how can you accomplish successful international expansion? First, identify your target market, and then develop an inbound marketing strategy.

This involves providing all the information your target consumers need on your __________ so consumers can find you and research the answers to their initial questions on their own. With a defined inbound strategy, well-written content and social media outreach, you can bring __________ buyers to you instead of continually searching for new buyers.

A vital part of your global inbound marketing strategy will be to translate important information from your website into your target consumer’s native language. Even if your target consumers are multilingual, most __________ to buy from sites that provide information in their native language.

Then how can you develop your inbound marketing strategy? The first step is to select a market that __________ your company goals and marketing strategy. Choose one country, one language, and develop a multilingual marketing strategy that defines your goals and prepares you to connect with prospective buyers. Once you create the plan and process for the first country, you can copy it when you’re ready to expand into __________ markets.

You might believe that your business is too small to get involved with __________ — but consider this: When you make use of the power of the internet, it doesn’t matter if your company is large or small. The key is to shift your focus from outbound to inbound marketing — and bring buyers to you.

【推荐2】The Lipstick Effect Absent During This Pandemic

With customers stuck inside their homes, they don’t seem to be________to wear or purchase lipstick and instead are stocking up on sheet masks and hand sanitizer (消毒液). This is a change from typical customer behavior, with lipstick sales________ experiencing a boom during economic crises.

In the four years from1929 to1933, industrial production in the United States halved whereas sales of cosmetics rose. A(n)________pattern emerged around the turn of this century. An executive at cosmetics giant Estee Lauder________a “lipstick index” after sales of expensive lipstick jumped following the 9/11 terror attacks. More________, sales of lipstick at John Lewis department stores in the United Kingdom rose 31 percent in the three months leading up to the end of June last year in the wake of Brexit.

________not everyone is counting on the lipstick effect to work this time around. With beauty retailer Mecca forced to close its 100 stores across Australia and New Zealand, owner Jo Horgan________that it’s still too early to tell whether this effect will lead to sales growth.

In the past few months, Ms.Horgan’s focus has been on Mecca’s online offerings in an attempt to ________a portion of last year’s $444 million turnover (营业额 ). She has launched a(n)________host experience of free and personalized beauty consultations via FaceTime for Mecca customers.

“My gut feeling is that while people are self-isolating at home, they will start trying to look for ways to________ themselves and really enrich their soul by focusing on their skin, body and hair treatments, ” she says.

A similar trend has been________in sales at online beauty retailer Adore Beauty, which has seen a considerable increase in new customers. This increase, however, has failed to________into lipstick sales. Founder Kate Morris said Adore Beauty had seen three times as many new customers as normal but that lipstick and lip gloss sales were down 24 percent.

“While everybody is talking about the lipstick effect, it is not what we are currently seeing.________we are seeing big jumps in anything hygiene related. People have got the________about washing their hands. We are selling triple the amount of hand wash and hand sanitizer than we were a month ago,” she said.

Adore Beauty turned over more than $100 million last year and employs a staff of 170. Ms. Morris is looking to hire an additional ten staff members to cope with the increased demand while also trying to fund the further________of her brand.

She said the online retailer has also recorded big jumps in “essential” categories, with moisturizer up 73 percent last month and hair treatments up 43 percent.

【推荐3】Investors probably expect that following the suggestions of stock analysts would make them better off than doing the exact opposite. _________, recent research by Nicola Gennaioli and his colleagues shows that the best way to gain excess return s would be to invest in the shares least favored by analysts. They compute that, during the last 35 years, investing in the 10 percent of U. S. stocks analysts were most _________ about would have yielded on average 3 percent a year. _________, investing in the 10 percent of stocks analysts were most pessimistic about would have yielded a surprising 15 percent a year.

Gennaioli and colleagues shed light on this _________ with the help of cognitive sciences and, in particular, using Kahneman and Tversky's concept of representativeness. Decision makers, according to this view, _________ the representative features of a group or a phenomenon. These are defined as the features that occur more frequently in that group than in a baseline reference group.

After observing strong earnings growth—the explanation goes—analysts think that the firm may be the next Google. “Googles” are in fact more frequent among firms experiencing strong growth, which makes them _________. The problem is that “Googles” are very _________ in absolute terms. As a result, expectations become too optimistic, and future performance_________. A model of stock prices in which investor beliefs follow this logic can account both qualitatively and quantitatively for the beliefs of analysts and the dynamics (动态变化) of stock returns.

In related work, the authors also show that the same model can _________ booms and busts in the volume of credit and interest rate spreads.

These works are part of a research project aimed at taking insights from cognitive sciences and at __________them into economic models. Kahneman and Tversky's concept of “representativeness” lies at the heart of this effort. “In a classical example, we __________ to think of Irishmen as redheads because red hair is much more frequent among Irishmen than among the rest of the world,” Prof. Gennaioli says. “However, only 10 percent of Irishmen are redheads. In our work, we develop models of belief formation that show this logic and study the __________ of this important psychological force in different fields.”

Representativeness helps describe __________ and behavior in different fields, not only in financial markets. One such field is the formation of stereotypes about social groups. In a recent experimental paper, Gennaioli and colleagues show that representativeness can explain self-confidence, and in particular the __________ of women to compete in traditionally male subjects, such as mathematics. A slight prevalence of __________ male math ability in the data is enough to make math ability un-representative for women, driving their under confidence in this particular subject.