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Think Like A Freak
The third installment of the highly successful series and another New York Times bestseller, Think Like A Freak is Levitt and Dubner’s latest—and most revolutionary—book. Taking their successful Freakonomics ideas to the next level, Levitt and Dubner offer an engaging and innovative program sure to inspire and enlighten audiences. Each idea presented by Levitt and Dubner will be illustrated by a story or example, in their ever-popular counterintuitive style, that will provide your audience with illuminating thoughts for profitable thinking. With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, they take us inside their thought process and teach us all to think a bit more productively, more creatively, more rationally—to think, that is, like a Freak.
Business & Management Lessons from Freakonomics & SuperFreakonomics
In this engaging presentation, Steven Levitt addresses the fact that the old rules of business just don’t apply and therefore the ideas he and co-author Stephen Dubner have presented in Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics make even more sense now than they did a few years ago. It’s a new world, and that demands a new way of thinking. He offers audiences a way of getting beneath the surface of modern business practices. Using humor and first-rate storytelling he discusses the sort of topics that are on every business person’s mind these days: the ways to create behavior change, the incentives that work and don’t work, and the value of asking unpopular questions. The difference between the Freakonomics presentation and other "economic" presentations is that while most economics presentations present great tools for coming up with answers, they don’t come up with the interesting questions. This presentation offers both. Here is a sample of additional questions that Levitt addresses:
- Why is behavior change so difficult? How can I change the behavior of my employees? Why are our incentive programs not working?
- How can I capture more customers from my competitors? How can I influence current customers to increase loyalty?
- Why am I not getting the project outcomes I expected? How do I keep the tyranny of emotion, opinion and anecdote out of my project plan?
- Why is consensus building often a waste of time and resources?
Freakonomics and the Power of Incentives
No matter what your program theme, consider bringing Steven Levitt to put a unique spin on any topic as incentives are key to all of them. His presentations are as entertaining as they are illuminating as he offers data-based stories that show audiences how to inspire change in their own company and community. But in order to change aspects of our world, we first have to understand it. Believe it or not, if we can understand the incentives that lead a schoolteacher to cheat, we can understand how the global economic crisis has come to pass.
Steven Levitt hosts People I (Mostly) Admire Podcast
People I (Mostly) Admire is hosted by STEVEN LEVITT, the iconoclastic University of Chicago economist and co-author of the Freakonomics book series, who tracks down other high achievers and asks questions that only he would think to ask. Guests include all-time Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, Harvard psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker, and WNBA champion Sue Bird. The weekly show features conversations with a wide array of guests — from actresses to athletes, authors to inventors. “The perfect guest for me is someone who’s not only wildly intelligent, but also a little bit off the rails,” Levitt says. “Someone who thinks differently and who doesn’t care at all how the world perceives him or her.” Check out the latest episodes >>
VIRTUAL PROGRAMMING: Steven Levitt
STEVEN LEVITT is the bestselling co-author of the Freakonomics series, the business management and leadership phenomenon that has sold more than 7 million copies in over 40 countries. In a recent interview with CNN, Levitt discussed what matters when making big life decisions. In the wake of this new reality, he wrote an Opinion piece about how the country could address the pandemic so we reopen quickly and safely. At virtual and in-person events alike, audiences love him, "The session was fantastic." (Microsoft) "He was a hit! So authentic and has the best stories. He had a completely rapt and engaged audience." (The Growth Faculty)
Steven Levitt is a sought-out voice on the new rules of business
STEVEN LEVITT addresses the fact that the old rules of business just don’t apply and therefore the ideas he and co-author Stephen Dubner have presented in Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics make even more sense now than they did a few years ago. It’s a new world, and that demands a new way of thinking. He offers audiences a way of getting beneath the surface of modern business practices. Using humor and first-rate storytelling he discusses the sort of topics that are on every business person’s mind these days: the ways to create behavior change, the incentives that work and don’t work, and the value of asking unpopular questions. The difference between the Freakonomics presentation and other "economic" presentations is that while most economics presentations present great tools for coming up with answers, they don’t come up with the interesting questions. Sought out to speak everywhere from Microsoft to TED-- where his talk has over 3 million views and been translated into over 25 languages-- Levitt receives rave reviews at each of his engagements such as:
"The session was fantastic, the line for autographs was crazy long and we’ve gotten rave reviews for the luncheon." – Microsoft
"He was a hit! So authentic and has the best stories. He had a completely rapt and engaged audience. Thanks so much for helping us make this happen!" (The Growth Faculty)
"Steve Levitt was wonderful, definitely the hit of the conference. He is so nice, down to earth and easy to work with. I would recommend him highly." (Flexible Packaging Association)
Steven Levitt challenges the status quo in an unconventional experiment
Author of the bestselling Freakonomics series and economics professor at the University of Chicago, STEVEN LEVITT recently conducted an experiment that had the whole country buzzing. Known for his fresh ideas and unique approach to real-life economics, Levitt has a vocal following on his weekly podcast and Reddit, and tapped into his fan base to answer one question: What happens when people make major life decisions based on random chance? For his experiment, Levitt recruited nearly 20,000 people to make life-changing decisions—like getting married or leaving a job— based on the flip of a coin. “As a basic rule of thumb, I believe that people are too cautious when it comes to making a change,” said Levitt, who was interviewed about the experiment in dozens of outlets including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Economist. Levitt turned conventional wisdom upside down; his use of curiosity and charisma to connect with audiences proved so powerful that he managed to get “hundreds of people to quit jobs, break up or have kids based on coin flips”.
Read more about Levitt’s groundbreaking experiment >>
When mild-mannered economist Steven D. Levitt published a paper linking a rise in abortion to a drop in crime, it set off a firestorm of controversy and had both the conservatives and liberals up in arms. But Levitt has no political agenda and is the last person to be called a moralist. He is a brilliant but uncomplicated man who uses simple questions to reach startling conclusions. The Wall Street Journal has said “If Indiana Jones were an economist, he'd be Steven Levitt,” he has shown other economists just how well their tools can make sense of the real world.
Steven Levitt is a tenured professor in the University of Chicago's economics department (he received tenure after only two years) and was the 2003 recipient of the American Economic Association’s prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, given to the country's best economist under 40.
When Stephen Dubner (co-author of Freakonomics, SuperFreakonomics, Think Like A Freak and When To Rob a Bank) profiled Levitt in The New York Times Magazine, he was beset by questions, queries, riddles and requests—from General Motors and the New York Yankees and U.S. senators but also from prisoners and parents and a man who sold bagels. A former Tour de France champion called him to ask his help in proving that the current Tour is rife with doping; the CIA wanted to know how Levitt might use data to catch terrorists.
Originally published in the U.S. in 2005, Freakonomics instantly became a cultural phenomenon. Hailed by critics and readers alike, it went on to spend more than eight years on The New York Times bestseller list, having sold more than seven million copies around the world, in more than 40 countries. Levitt and Dubner have appeared widely on television and maintain the popular Freakonomics blog, which can be found on The New York Times website. Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt shows how economics is, at root, the study of incentives— that is, how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Freakonomics showed that the modern world, despite a great deal of complexity and downright deceit, is not impenetrable, is not unknowable, and—if the right questions are asked—is even more intriguing than we think. All it takes is a new way of looking.
A book that was even bolder, funnier, and more surprising than the first, SuperFreakonomics retained that off-kilter sensibility (comparing, for instance, the relative dangers of driving while drunk versus walking while drunk) but also tackled a host of issues at the very center of modern society: terrorism, global warming, altruism, and more. Released in October 2010, the illustrated edition of SuperFreakonomics employed photographs, drawings, and graphs that led readers to see the world in a bold, fresh way.
Levitt’s third book with Dubner, Think Like A Freak, was released in May 2014 and also became an instant New York Times bestseller. Their latest book is called When To Rob A Bank and was released in May 2015.
Steven Levitt has an enormous curiosity and is set on course by personal experiences and the incongruities he sees in everyday life. He is an intuitionist. He sifts through a pile of data to find a story that no one else has found and devises ways to measure an effect that veteran economists have declared un-measurable.
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