No detail too small

BECK's book, for which he has done an impressive amount of research.

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY!

BECK - Something interesting is going on here, as Wason and Reich observed, but it's not entirely clear what it is. The most striking aspect of the problem is that it's so hard for people to recognize that it exists.

BECK You could translate these as something like All NOUNs, however small, [can or should] VERB. Thus the last one comes out "All occasions, however small, warrant a gift".

No detail too small

No business is too small to play a role.
No donation is too small to make a difference.
No amount is too small to benefit from compounding interest.
No country is too small to make it as a sovereign nation.

Great News:

To understand how BECK works, consider the positive statement "This occasion is too small to warrant a gift". This presupposes that we can set a value on the scale of occasion size, such that larger occasions BECK a gift, while smaller ones don't.

But now consider these examples:

And the corresponding positive assertions are already problematic in the same way, e.g. "This expense is too small to escape the finance chief's attention".

But examples like "No detail is too small to overlook" are very common. You see them all the time, even in the work of careful writers like Walter Kaiser, in well-edited publications like the New York Review of Books.

BECK So what's going on here? BECK

If you know where in the BECK Corpus this comes!

No detail too small

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For nostalgic hippies in the SF bay area, this was the 40th anniversary of 1967's famous Summer of Love. But for every Silicon Valley developer, entrepreneur, and VC who has a pulse it's been the Summer of Facebook.
While it's easy to put aside geeky exuberance over the latest insanely great technology, it's impossible to ignore the growing size and scope of Facebook, and the impact it's having on internet startups and traditional businesses alike. Over half of Facebook's 43 million users visit every day, spend an average of 20 minutes on the site, and view over 54 billion total page views per month.
In a few short months Facebook has quickly become one of the most impressive user acquisition channels on the web, rivaling SEO & SEM strategies for priority with new startups. Over 60 Facebook applications have more than 1 million total users, and over 40 have at least 100,000 daily users.
With the groundbreaking launch of the Facebook Platform this past spring, and the subsequent runaway growth of Facebook Apps adopted by millions of users this summer, the question on everyone's lips (including Google and Microsoft) has been: "So what's your Facebook strategy?". If you're still scrambling to figure out yours, read on.
Seven Steps to Graphing Social Patterns on Facebook
Personally I've become addicted to Facebook, and in particular with the Facebook Platform and the News Feed. I've spent hours upon hours experimenting with new ways it provides to connect and communicate, and recently began teaching a class at Stanford with Professor BJ Fogg on how to build Facebook apps. In this article i'll explain how to use Facebook to make a big impact on your business, and why it's substantially different than any other social network that's come before.
One of the best things about being an academic is being able to mold young minds and guide them to success. When one of my students, Andrew Leblanc told me he was entering the Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition, I told him to come and see me and do a practice run. After all, I had judged several of these contests at Duke and other universities. I thought I knew what worked.
After the eleventh iteration, Andrew got it right. He wasn't trying to pack his presentation with unnecessary details. He had slowed down his pitch, added a personal touch and was now exuding confidence. Andrew even researched the background of the judges and tailored his message to their interests. So after two hours of intense preparation, I had little doubt that Andrew would win.
Andrew lost. I was surprised. But what I told him afterward is that it really doesn't matter. Contrary to what the organizers of these competitions will tell you, university business plan contests don't produce winning companies. Yes, a number of companies have emerged from business plan bake-offs that have been moderate or small successes. But not a single home-run has emerged from this now-omnipresent practice.
This is not to say that the contests are bad. Instead, they educate students in entrepreneurship and motivate them to come up with interesting ideas. But for all of you out there who think a biz plan victory is a ticket to the big time, think again. And for all the engineering students who think any outcome but victory is a waste of time, you also need to think again. Even though he lost, Andrew met a potential partner and also got to speak with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, a priceless encounter. (Bill promised to introduce Andrew to the Google Power Meter team. Don't forget, Bill!).
In fact, let me throw out a radical thought. I submit that losing in a business plan contest is actually more beneficial than winning. There is a growing body of research that children who are praised too early and too easily end up under-performing peers who are not praised but are told, in constructive terms, they can do better. This is one of the core tenets of Po Bronson's new book on parenting, "Nurture Shock."

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