Sensemaking

The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm

By: Christian Madsbjerg

Narrated by: Jeremy Maxwell

Based on his work at some of the world's largest companies, including Ford, Adidas, and Chanel, Christian Madsbjerg's Sensemaking is a provocative stand against the tyranny of big data and scientism, and an urgent, overdue defense of human intelligence.

Humans have become subservient to algorithms. Every day brings a new moneyball fix - a math whiz who will crack open an industry with clean fact-based analysis rather than human intuition and experience. As a result, we have stopped thinking. Machines do it for us. Christian Madsbjerg argues that our fixation with data often masks stunning deficiencies, and the risks for humankind are enormous. Blind devotion to number crunching imperils our businesses, our educations, our governments, and our life savings. Too many companies have lost touch with the humanity of their customers, while marginalizing workers with liberal arts-based skills. Contrary to popular thinking, Madsbjerg shows how many of today's biggest success stories stem not from "quant" thinking but from deep, nuanced engagement with culture, language, and history. He calls his method sensemaking.

In this landmark book, Madsbjerg lays out five principles for how business leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals can use it to solve their thorniest problems. He profiles companies using sensemaking to connect with new customers, and takes listeners inside the work process of sensemaking connoisseurs like investor George Soros, architect Bjarke Ingels, and others. Both practical and philosophical, Sensemaking is a powerful rejoinder to corporate groupthink and an indispensable resource for leaders and innovators who want to stand out from the pack.

©2017 Christian Madsbjerg (P)2017 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Many have decried the widespread conclusion that the humanities have lost relevance, but few have proposed how to respond. Offering neither a rearguard defense of the humanities as we have known them, nor an unrealistic plea to other fields simply to take them seriously, Christian Madsbjerg offers a ringing endorsement of how humanities knowledge is still critically necessary to make sense of the world and its problems. With roots in Aristotle, Sensemaking calls on humanists to reinterpret their contribution while showing others how they cannot do without it. It is a book of the first importance." (Samuel Moyn, author of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History; and Jeremiah Smith, junior professor of law and professor of history, Harvard University)

Stimulating book with some academic limits

Interesting book and worth the read, but doesn't address limitations of his approaches, over-assumes, and generalizes (a lot). The generalizations are particularly annoying; he makes a lot of claims about how quantitative thinkers view the humanities and about how "people" think about either quantitative or qualitative reasoning. There's little evidence to support many of his claims, which is frustrating as a scientist. However, if you can be aware of (and look beyond) these things, the book does make a wealth of interesting points about the unique value of humanistic thinking. In particular, there are a lot of great examples, references, and arguments here. Overall worth the read if you can maneuver the "take you like and leave the rest" approach.

Worth your time

What I liked about this book is the way I which it expands your thinking. Give more weight and acknowledges the value of education outside of STEM.

Humanities matter!

perhaps one of the most eloquent ways to understand that in a modern world of algorithms and speed, there is no substitution for the human element. anyone in tech, especially on the engineering side and leadership roles needs to read this as life is not a science, but an art.