Page 69 - How to Drive the Bottom Line with People

The Emerging Career Model

I first met Dr. John Gourville in 2003 while I was
attending an executive education program in market-

ing at Harvard Business School. Harvard’s reputation
for assembling great thinkers is well known, but until
you enroll in a program, you might not fully appreci-

ate the school’s remarkable commitment to knowledge.
During our marketing discussion, Dr. Gourville
spent time describing his ideas regarding the psychol-
ogy of gains and losses, developed from source mate-
rial from Amos Tversky, the late Stanford psychology

professor, and Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton psy-
chology professor and Nobel laureate.
45
The psychology of gains and losses describes the =

challenges involved in identifying predictable behav-
ior. Drs. Tversky and Kahneman’s study findings sug-
gest that human beings are constantly evaluating the
outcomes of gains and losses. Additionally, their find-
ings show these three interesting facts:

1. There is a decreasing marginal utility of gains
and losses.

2. There is a greater fear of loss than desire for
gain.
3. There is a reference point, and it is often the
“status quo.”