featuring Laura Huang.
In EDGE: Turning Adversity into Advantage, Harvard Business School Professor Laura Huang shares the practical implications of her revolutionary research on advantage and disadvantage, showing us how we can all improve our chances of achieving our dreams. Arguing that personal success depends on more than our ideas and credentials, or even hard work and effort, Huang writes, “To get ahead, you need an edge—and if you don’t have one, you can make one.”
EDGE illuminates how success in all arenas of life—whether it’s landing a job, getting a raise, closing a deal, or acing a presentation—hinges not only on working hard and amplifying our strengths, but on shaping how others see our perceived flaws. Huang begins with the recognition that the world isn’t a level playing field. Some people have inherent advantages; others have to create advantages for themselves. Stereotyping, bias, and superficial perceptions, fairly or not, play a big role in how we’re seen by others and how far we can go, and we all have biases—about race, gender, age, religion, ability, sexual orientation, and more—that work for us or against us. The good news, Huang argues, is that we can turn adversity into advantage by harnessing the very stereotypes and qualities that seem like shortcomings and reframing them as assets that work in our favor. We can each find and create our own unique “edge.”
Laura Huang discusses:
· How hard work matters, but it takes more than effort to achieve and maintain success.
· That judgments about us are made quickly and can be difficult to shift.
· That bias doesn’t have to just be a setback; it can work to our advantage.
· The tools that we need to tap into what makes us special, with real-life examples that show how to turn weaknesses into strengths and create a personal edge, such as:
o Female entrepreneurs can flip investors’ biased questions to get deserved funding
o A first-time political candidate overcame voters’ doubts about his physical disability
o Patients can help guide patient-physician interactions to take control of their own health outcomes.
o To read subtle signals and cues in the workplace and change damaging perceptions.
EDGE gives readers the tools they need to be strategic about tapping into what makes them special. Using a combination of her extensive and profound research, her own experiences overcoming obstacles and bias, and the illuminating stories of others, Huang shows us how to turn weaknesses into strengths and create a personal edge in any situation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:LAURA HUANG is an associate professor at Harvard Business School and was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature. Her research has won awards including a 2016 Kauffman Foundation Fellowship. Her speaking and consulting clients include Google, Uber, BlackRock, Keystone, Bionic, and the Level Playing Field Institute. EDGE is her first book. For More Information: https://laurahuang.net/
