BURAK, Jacob << back to list Jacob Burak is the author of DO CHIMPANZEES DREAM OF RETIREMENT, which appeared for nine months on the Israeli best –sellers list, and is to be published in five other languages. He graduated from the Technion, Israel’s highest institute for technology, with a BA in industrial and management engineering, and studied in the Program for Management Development at the Harvard Business School. In 1987 he founded Evergreen, which would become one of Israel’s largest venture capital funds. Recently he has served as chairman of Ma’aleh, Israel’s Corporate Social Responsibility organization, and has a regular column in the leading financial magazine The Marker. Web site http://www.jacobburak.com/ Bibliography & Foreign sales DO CHIMPANZEES DREAM OF RETIREMENT? (Business Psychology) 35 weeks #1 bestseller (as of April 08) The story of the international business community is the story of the businesspeople who run it and therefore the story of human weaknesses. Ultimately, if stock markets behaved in a completely rational fashion, no one would buy or sell a single share of any stock. For every intelligent – but human – seller, who feels that the price of the stock he is selling is high, there is a buyer – no less intelligent, no less human – convinced that the price of the stock is attractive, ripe for purchase. The source of these human weaknesses is more integral to our nature than we are willing to admit. Thousands of research studies in behavioral science have documented the biases that ultimately determine our behavior in business. This book draws from these studies, mixing them with engaging stories and characters to uncover to what extent we control our own happiness and success. Rights sold to: Italy, Mondadori; Holland, Ten Have; Korea, Wisdom Publishing Ltd; Japan, Tokuma Shoten Publishing; China, Cheers Publishing; Brazil, Campus; Israel, Kinneret Zmora Bitan Reviews ”Burak, who certainly knows how to spin a good yarn,” has written, ”with clarity and painstaking accuracy” a ”lucid book, packed with interesting ideas and keen insights [that] needs to be read.” Amalia Rosenblum, Haaretz Books ”…a riveting collection of research from around the world combined with personal insights concerning the psychology of success…Unlike books by Iacocca, Walsh, Trump and others like them, the foundation on which Burak’s book rests is that businesspeople are not necessarily smarter. His message, which contains a measure of humility is something like, ’I made a lot of money, but I don’t have a lot to say about that.’ Once this matter has been made clear, it is easier to relate to the arguments Burak sprinkles through the book in favor of evolutionary psychology.” Rika Lichtman, Globes NOISE; The Profile of a Cultural Disorder #1 on best seller’s list one week after publication How can we be apathetic to the suffering of millions but are brought to tears by the fate of one individual “packaged” in a newspaper article? Why do we lose hours of sleep, upset with something we sputtered at dinner last night? Noise, that ceaseless rumble of intrusive thoughts, the malaise of indecision, the clatter of media, is everywhere in our lives. How we handle that noise defines who we are and how well we live. By examining internal noise, external noise, noise amplifiers and noise suppressors, this book helps the reader define his/her own ’noise profile’ and offers tools for coping -- and thriving. Israel: Kinneret Zmora Bitan, April 2009 English translation available