Blinkist Summary Book

2021-09-29 06:39:54 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 12/36

l these discoveries came together and the age of the Earth became known. In that year Clair Cameron Patterson worked out a precise dating method using ancient meteorites. He determined that the Earth was around 4.55 billion years old – plus or minus 70 million years. That’s much older than what James Ussher estimated! 
Einstein’s special theory of relativity states that time is relative.
We all know Albert Einstein to be one of the most famous scientists of all time. Yet Einstein’s early life was far from brilliant. As it turns out he wasn’t a great scholar and even failed his first college entrance exams. At university the young Einstein actually studied to become a high-school science teacher but then couldn’t land a teaching job.
Einstein eventually found himself working in the Swiss patent office. It was in 1905 in this humble role as a patent clerk that Einstein first made his mark on the world. And it was quite a mark! The papers he published that year would change science Open / Comment

2021-09-29 06:39:54 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 11/36

century that the Earth’s age was discovered. And the tool that finally unlocked this secret was radioactivity . 
The concept of radioactivity dates back to 1896 when Marie and Pierre Curie discovered that certain rocks release energy without showing any change in their size or shape. They named this phenomenon radioactivity. The Curies’ work caught the interest of physicist Ernest Rutherford. Rutherford discovered that radioactive elements decay into other elements. For example one kind of uranium – Uranium-235 – decays into a type of lead – Lead-207. What’s more this decay always happens at the same speed. It always takes the same time for half of the elements in a particular sample to decay. This process is known as half-life and it’s very useful for estimating the age of something. 
When you know the half-life of Uranium-235 and that it decays into Lead-207 you can calculate the rock’s age by measuring the current amount of these two elements in it. 
It wasn’t until 1956 that al Open / Comment

2021-09-29 06:39:53 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 10/36

-standing question: Just how old is the Earth?
Using information contained in the Old Testament and a few other historical documents Ussher got to work. After careful deliberation he came up with a very precise answer: the Earth was created at midday on October 23 4004 BCE. 
Ussher’s answer didn’t really catch on. Most scientists at the time believed the planet to be much much older. The only problem was they had no way of determining its exact age.
The key message here is: Rocks and fossils showed that the Earth was old but radioactivity showed just how old it was .
Geologists in the nineteenth century could tell a lot from the Earth’s rocks. By looking at layers in the rocks they could tell there had been many geological periods in Earth’s history. They could tell which rocks were older and which were more recent and that it must have taken millions of years for each layer of rock to build up. But they couldn’t be sure of exactly how long.
It wasn’t until well into the twentieth Open / Comment

2021-09-29 06:39:50 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 9/36

ss asserts a much smaller gravitational pull. This is why you don’t see your pens and pencils orbiting around it. 
Principia helped scientists understand a great deal about the universe as well as more about planet Earth. For example Newton’s laws allow us to estimate the weight of the Earth – it’s about 5.9725 billion trillion metric tons if you’re wondering. 
It also helped us discover the true shape of the planet. Newton’s laws proved that the Earth is not spherical. The force of the Earth’s spin causes it to flatten slightly at the poles and bulge at the equator. So to be precise the Earth is an oblate spheroid rather than a true sphere. 
Yet while Isaac Newton helped us learn more about the motion and shape of our planet he didn’t tell us anything about its age which we’ll explore in the next blink.
Rocks and fossils showed that the Earth was old but radioactivity showed just how old it was.
In 1650 an Irish archbishop named James Ussher decided he’d try and answer a long Open / Comment

2021-09-29 06:39:50 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 8/36

ds who ever lived.
The key message in this blink is: Isaac Newton was focused on making sense of how the universe and Earth moved.
Many consider Isaac Newton’s most influential work to be Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
But this title won’t find its way onto most people’s summer reading lists. It’s incredibly difficult to understand. Newton deliberately made it almost impossible for the layperson to grasp. He didn’t want to share his ideas with mere amateurs. But to those who can understand it Principia is one of the most important scientific works of all time.
Contained within this work are many groundbreaking ideas. Take Newton’s universal law of gravitation. This states that all bodies in the universe – large and small – exert a pull on every other body. The extent of their pull is proportional to their mass. So take two examples: Stars which are huge have a gravitational pull strong enough to bring planets into orbit. But your desk lamp with its relatively tiny ma Open / Comment

2021-09-29 06:39:49 A Short History of Nearly Everything
Part of 7/36

our galaxy alone!
But let’s not get too carried away. As we’ve established by now the universe is enormous. The average distance between any two hypothetical civilizations is likely at least 200 light-years. One light-year by the way is equivalent to about 5.8 trillion miles. So even if alien civilizations do exist they're probably so far away that it’s unlikely we’ll see them any time soon.
“So even if we are not really alone in all practical terms we are.”
Isaac Newton was focused on making sense of how the universe and Earth moved.
Isaac Newton was devoted to the advancement of science. And he was prepared to put his body on the line for the cause. 
Few others for example would try and explore the mechanics of human sight by pushing a needle into their eye. And many scientists likely wouldn’t stare at the sun to test the limits of our ability to well stare at the sun. 
Yes Isaac Newton was quite the eccentric. He was also one of the most brilliant and influential min Open / Comment

2021-09-23 06:39:59 Kotler on Marketing
Part of 18/18

ion. As the saying goes if you fail to plan you plan to fail!
Got feedback?
We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to [email Open / Comment

2021-09-23 06:39:59 Kotler on Marketing
Part of 17/18

act more visitors or a politician trying to cultivate her public image. There are five steps to any successful marketing campaign: research market opportunities choose your target market carefully decide on a unique positioning implement marketing tactics and audit the results. This method forms a circular process which you can continually put into action to adapt your marketing strategy to the ever-changing market.
Actionable Advice: 
Create a marketing plan.
Planning might not be the most exciting activity on the agenda but it gives managers an opportunity to brainstorm new ideas and communicate shared visions and goals with one another. Your marketing plan should be short and sweet – ideally no longer than a single page – so anyone in the company can learn the strategy at a glance. It should contain a summary of the current situation of the company and the market the marketing department’s main objectives for the year the chosen strategy an action plan and the methods for evaluat Open / Comment

2021-09-23 06:39:58 Kotler on Marketing
Part of 16/18

ance if you’re trying to evaluate how well your company understands customer needs and all you can procure is a customer survey from five years ago then clearly the category of “understanding customer needs” will receive a low score.
Once you’ve scored each marketing activity the next step is to rank the importance of each activity as either low medium or high.
With this done it should become instantly visible which marketing activities are strong – and which need immediate attention. For example if “new product development” is deemed to be an activity of high importance but received a low score then you’ll know you need to prioritize research and development in the next quarter.
A marketing audit is a reliable way to keep long-term marketing efforts improving.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks is that:
Marketing is the art of identifying and fulfilling consumer needs – whether it’s a corporation trying to increase its revenue a cultural institution trying to attr Open / Comment

2021-09-23 06:39:58 Kotler on Marketing
Part of 15/18

ut a mistake was made at some other point in the supply chain. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing campaign is if retailers still end up stocking your product on a hidden bottom shelf where it just gathers dust.
Whatever the cause of a disappointing campaign it’s essential to figure out what went wrong in order to make corrections in the future. The most rigorous and effective way to do this is to perform a marketing audit.
To begin a marketing audit start by making a list of all the marketing activities your firm engages in. For example you could write “targeting ” “pricing ” “product management ” and so on. Some larger firms include as many as 21 categories in their marketing audits but for most companies it should be sufficient to choose about 6–8 of the most important ones.
Now your aim is to rank each activity on a scale of 0–100. Ideally you’ll make this determination by looking at hard data in the form of management plans research results and customer feedback. For inst Open / Comment