Savvy: Navigating Fake Companies, Fake Leaders and Fake News in the Post-Trust Era

We grew up believing that we could trust our friends, teachers, newspapers, social media feeds, corporations and politicians. That's not the case anymore. Misrepresentation, exaggerated truths, and outright fake news have become a world-wide phenomenon. Finding truth in today's world is like searching for a needle in a haystack and it is only getting harder. As we move to a future dominated by artificial intelligence, where cars drive us better than we can drive ourselves and robots become our managers, who we trust and how we build businesses, engage customers and motivate employees (real or artificially created ones) is going to be markedly different. Drawing upon principles from psychology, real-world business experiences and with a peek into some of the technology advances taking place in innovation hotspots like Silicon Valley, this book explores how we get through this muddled state and what we all need to do to succeed in tomorrow's world.

Fake news is nothing new. Technology has turbo-charged its spread leaving us inundated with misrepresentations, exaggerations, and outright lies. Finding the truth is like searching for a needle in a haystack. We are in a crisis of trust--no longer knowing who or what to believe.

In the post-trust era, so much is out of our control, and yet there are ways in which we can inoculate ourselves. Savvy is a book about the human glitches that cause us to fall for alternative facts and what we can do to override them. In Savvy, we meet the social scientists who questioned the behavior of Nazi war criminals, Ivy League football fans, John F. Kennedy and more to better understand why human beings often suspend critical judgement and readily fall for fakeness. We also meet current CEOs, politicians, media moguls and artificial intelligence engines to examine why we put our trust in people, organizations and information that is biased (or blatantly deceptive) while doubting credible sources.

Through examples from today's political and business headlines, Savvy guides you out of the post-trust era and includes science and analysis that makes you more informed and savvy in the business world and your personal life.