Last night I had the good fortune of seeing Professor Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management speak at a private gathering of the Yale Club of Central Ohio. The lecture was held at the beautiful and historic Columbus Club, a by-invitation-only men's club that's been around Columbus since the 1800s (men's club as in stogies and cognac, not as in stripper poles).
So how did I end up there? In my work at Nationwide I've done some work with Young Isaac. The re-founder and chief strategist of Young Isaac is Artie Isaac. Artie Isaac is also an officer of the Yale Club of Central Ohio. Barry Nalebuff is a professor at Yale and is also on Nationwide's Board of Directors. So Artie asked Professor Nalebuff to speak to the Yale Club and then invited me and my boss. I think I just invented a new game: "six degrees of Barry Nalebuff."
Anyways, Professor Nalebuff lectured on his book Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small. In true collegiate form, I spent yesterday afternoon cramming to finish reading the book, which I checked out from the Nationwide library 3 weeks ago. Some things never change. This, of course, made me look like a smarty pants when he covered all the case studies and I knew all the tricky little answers.
The room full of Yale alumni was very engaging and intellectual, and I did feel a little out of my league. Apparently some people spent their college years in the classroom learning about important things instead of spending them in bed recovering from a hangover 5 mornings a week. I also felt very young and female. Approximately 45 people attended the lecture, and I counted about 7 women, including myself. I would also estimate that 85% of the people present were at least twice my age. Despite all this, I did have some lovely conversations with some fairly influential people in Columbus. Overall the evening was entirely intellectually stimulating, although he did lose me at the "maternity MBA" program.
Check this out for more info on Why Not?.
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Sorry, but it's not a new game. We played six degrees of Barry Nalebuff all through college. Nobody ever won though, because we all had zero degrees. You would've been awesome, now that you have Barry degrees and all.
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