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Business Buzzword Bingo

December 16, 2010, 10:08 pm

When I was at HBS, a bunch of us who sat in the back row (the "skydeck" in HBS parlance) would play buzzword bingo based on the class discussion.

Google books has a way of querying their books database for word frequency.  I laughed when I saw this chart for "incentivize."  It's the hockey stick!

Tags: ,
Category: General Business
  • greg

    it's a cool feature. I've never seen that before.

    HA!! Put in the terms 'liberty' and 'communism', then try not to cry too hard.

  • Scott

    Greg, if you search those two terms separately, it does look pretty bad. Search for "liberty,communism" to see both at once, and you'll be laughing instead of crying. Add "socialism" and it's even better.

  • morganovich

    search for "unprecedented".

  • caseyboy

    I always liked paradigm, win-win, buy-in, and a Microsoft Corporate favorite, tee-it-up.

  • Douglas2

    I searched for "microphone" and discovered a prescient text published by NASA in 1712.

  • Earle Williams
  • http://www.cogfactory.net colson

    Yes, my favorite drinking game word: "sustainability". Definite hockey stick. This rate of usage is entirely unsustainable and must be stopped.

  • joshv

    Search for "tulip mania" the results nicely track, and predict, the US economic boom/bust cycle.

  • http://www.rashynullplanet.com/blog/ Matt

    Some other fun things to plot there:
    objectivism
    police brutality
    vagina
    stateless society
    principle
    selfownership

    Note that you can manually change the "smoothing" value in the URL.

  • me

    This one gives me hope: ("learnings": http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=learnings&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3)

    I cringe every time I see that un-word in print. What's wrong with "lessons" (or, when I have a forgiving day, "teachings" or "take-aways")?

  • me

    This one gives me hope: ("learnings": http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=learnings&year_start=1700&year_end=2008&corpus=5&smoothing=3)

    I cringe every time I see that un-word in print. What's wrong with "lessons" (or, when I have a forgiving day, "teachings" or "take-aways")?

  • me
  • IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society

    You may find this tool of particular interest:

    Wordle

    An example of an interesting usage (not my idea):
    SOTU 2010

    Fodder from which to make your own:
    All the former SOTU addresses

  • What Me Worry?

    You may find this tool of particular interest:

    Wordle

    An example of an interesting usage (not my idea):
    SOTU 2010

    Fodder from which to make your own:
    All the former SOTU addresses

  • IgotBupkis, President, United Anarchist Society

    You may find this tool of particular interest:

    Wordle

  • IgotBupkis

    An example of an interesting usage (not my idea):
    SOTU 2010

  • IgotBupkis

    Fodder from which to make your own:
    All the former SOTU addresses

    ----

    Sorry for the triple post, stupid %^*%*% spam filter wouldn't allow a unified post through.

    Clearly, anyone who wants to link to (GASP!!) three things MUST be spamming!
    Equally obviously, you couldn't possibly program a spambot to do what I just did...