Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life

Understanding what is going on subconsciously is vital here

When hiring, we should understand that unconscious motivation and rational good sense overlap, but they do not completely coincide.

The psychological complexity of human behaviour is reduced to a narrow set of assumptions about what people want, which means they design a world for logical rather than psycho-logical people.

we simply don’t have access to our genuine motivations, because it is not in our interest to know.

most of the achievements of consumer capitalism were never planned

People cherish local ingredients, and willingly pay a premium for foods produced without chemical fertilisers. By contrast, when we made the food industry logical, we lost sight of the reasons we value food at all.

In the physical sciences, cause and effect map neatly; in behavioural sciences it is far more complex. Cause, context, meaning, emotion, effect.

Sometimes human behaviour that seems nonsensical is really non-sensical

psycho-logic as a neutral and non-judgemental term. I