Douglas Goldstein, CFP®, Financial Planner & Investment Advisor
Michel Koopman is the chief executive officer at a fascinating company called Get Abstract
which helps people to compress knowledge.
Douglas Goldstein, financial planner & investment advisor, interviewed Koopman on Arutz Sheva
Radio.
Douglas Goldstein: What does it mean to compress knowledge?
Michel Koopman: Get Abstract is an online media company and we help individuals compress
knowledge and really they are not doing it themselves, we’re doing it for them. We
are a company with really three-key core competencies. We are really good at fining or curetting
most relevant knowledge out there, focusing specifically on business, summarizing it really
well and then making it available on demand so that individuals can make better business
decisions and become more successful in their careers, ultimately helping their companies
even though our economy thrive.
Douglas Goldstein: Are you a book summarizer?
Michel Koopman: Certainly this is one of the things we do. We don’t only stop at books
actually. We are really focused on business content and that can come back from books
and certainly large part of our content that we share with our clients come from books
but also economic reports and online videos, economic reports from the likes of the IMF,
World Bank and Central Bank, keynote speeches from conferences like TED, and others. So
really as long as we believe there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s helpful for our clients
to make decision to develop their own career, we seek it out and make it part of our offering.
Douglas Goldstein: Why would someone use a service like yours instead for example going
to TED.com and watching the TED talk or buying the book?
Michel Koopman: You would think that you could just go buy the book and you can certainly
to that and we encourage people to do so. There are number of reasons. One, people today
they live in a world of information overload. Everything is available to you but finding
the most relevant knowledge is very difficult. Second, everyone is actually dealing with
their own talent gap. It’s not only at the economic level where we see unemployment in
almost every economy but companies are still in the hard time finding the right talent
but also at your own level. You are being asked by your boss or the environment that
you’re operating this environment to do things you weren’t asked to do let’s say
three months ago. Last but not the least, you’re dealing with resource scarcity and
that comes in the form of you have less time, less money, less resource to do more things.
So in that world that I described, people and companies who learn and consume information
and knowledge differently are generally more successful than those that do not and that’s
merely what we’re focused on helping people.
Douglas Goldstein: I have in the past read book summaries here and there and one of the
things especially when you talk about business books or management books is I find that when
someone summarizes it, you lose all the inspiration. If I read the book about business marketing
and the summary says it’s important to network and when you go to a conference make sure
you put business cards and follow up. That’s not the same as when you really read a book
and you get the whole sense and the feeling. How do you guys deal with that gap between
getting the point across quickly and getting the point across in a meaningful way?
Michel Koopman: There’s a big part of our production process that creates a high level
journalistic integrity and journalistic pride. So this is not done by machine, it’s done
by very experienced writers and authors who are experts in fields coupled with a production
team and a publisher’s input. So that’s first. Second, I would say that as you highlight
it, a book has many points and has done illustrations and stories and quotes and examples that allow
you to remember a story. So we also make sure that we continue to include some of those.
Third, the organization of the abstract themselves, we’ve [read] 12,000 of them, it’s a very
proven way of summarizing with key points and things you could allow on the [cycle],
something about the authors and what you will learn, editorial comment on it and ratings
and so forth.
Having said all of that, if you read a book its in entirety, you will get more deeper
knowledge about that particular topic. We actually recently did a study and found out
that when people use the abstract, they actually buy more books. If that wasn’t the case,
the 450 publishers wouldn’t allow us to do what we do because we do require the rights
to summarize books and economical port and so forth. However, I would add on top of that
is that in today’s world, the world I describe earlier, if you have the time to read maybe
three books on a topic of innovation over the course of let’s say a year because a
normal person who might not read as much as you won’t read as many as 10 books a year,
they might read three to four. If you read on innovation, you still haven’t enough
perspective. So the nice things about summaries is it’s not only can I use it as its own
intrinsic value, it’s a wonderful way to supplement a debrief with other perspectives
on the same topic.
Douglas Goldstein: If someone reads a book abstract, can he say that he read the book
when he is talking to his friends?
Michel Koopman: Obviously when you read a summary, you should be comfortable to say
you read the summary. I would actually like to argue that if you read abstract summary
that you have a very good understanding of the book, that’s what we pride ourselves
on and therefore you shouldn’t be embarrassed to say “I read it and I read these other
three as well and I picked up out of those four summaries I read. I picked this book
and I’m reading it in detail.” Yes, you certainly can walk away with feeling very
educated and knowledgeable on the topic. Generally the people and the companies, I should say
that we did business with over a thousand enterprise customers including 40 of the Fortune
100. These companies they employ individuals who are generally fairly experienced. So if
you pick up a summary on management you’ve never managed before, it’s one thing but
if you are a manager wanting to be better, you can read the summary and put it in perspective
in your own world and it really is incredibly helpful.
The books are used really for two things and the summaries of the economics report as well.
It is both a tool to prepare yourself for the next activity but also to help develop
yourself for the next role or goal that you might have. It is a little bit of a mix there.
Douglas Goldstein: You also make these into audio books. When someone absorbs the information
in audio book, do you say I read the book or I heard the book?
Michel Koopman: Technically people say “I read the book” but actually “I listen
to an audio summary” is probably more accurate.
Douglas Goldstein: When someone finishes listening to or reading a book abstract, does he really
know what the book is about or he is just getting a piecemeal outline?
Michel Koopman: They get a real deep understanding of the actual original artifact if it is a
book or a report or a video. Yes so could actually walk away not just with a review
of what is in the book, you walk away with the lessons, the key important points, the
key examples and quotes and even a little bit about the author and also a little bit
about what we think is good or bad about the book. We put mostly objective five pages together
with the paragraph on our subjective review of what we think of it as well.
Every single summary we have links back the full original piece. Sometimes those pieces
are behind a tool gate or you have to buy them on Amazon. In some cases they are actually
completely accessible like a TED video for example. The linkage between those two is
very important and again we really try to curette the right things to the right individuals
in a way that they can digest them in this very busy world. That’s really what it’s
about but then if you want to reserve the time to go deeper, we should give that option
and that’s what we’re doing.
Douglas Goldstein: How can people follow you and follow your work?
Michel Koopman: We are easily traceable. You go to our website at www.getabstract.com.
You can follow me at @mkoopi on Twitter. I regularly post readings that I recommend everyone
should take a look at.