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by: John Caddell
Last night I was reading a new book, "X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate and Succeed" and I got this weird lightness in my stomach, a small vacant feeling just beneath the rib cage. The authors, Deborah Ancona of MIT's Sloan School and Henrik Bresman of INSEAD, were describing a common phenomenon: teams that worked hard to improve their performance had more fun, became happier but often failed miserably at their missions.
by: Dick Stroud
UK internet users aged 55-plus are set to overtake 35-44 year olds as the demographic age group with the largest representation online. Those aged 55+ accounted for 22% of UK visits to all categories of websites in the four weeks to 12 May 2007, up 54% since 2005 and 40% since 2006. This compares to 23.5% of Internet visits from 35-44 year olds.
Continue reading "More 55+ Internet users than 35-44 year olds" »
by: Lynette Webb
I really like this quote because, to me, it explains in a nutshell how “tagging” - which has emerged as one of the Web 2.0 standard functionalities - is connected to the broader long-term direction of web development.
Click image to enlarge.
Continue reading "web 2.0 is messy way the semantic web is happening" »
by: Idris Mootee
There are many disruptive innovations happening these days and unlike the dot.com days, these are nimble start-ups powered by an open innovation software ecosystem and exploding networks. With any disruptive business models, the key challenge they face is how do you drive adoption and how fast can you do it? Marketing innovative products and technologies are very different from conventional product marketing.
Continue reading "Marketing of Innovative and Disruptive Technologies" »
by: Idris Mootee
The demand for interactive (I am not sure this is the right word) services is growing. That's good news for our industry and may stay that way for a while. Even with this high demand, I still hear a lot from business development folks explaining that why we did not get the business... either because we are too expensive or we did not comply with their needs or they choose a partner with an established relationship. Here I want to help us to think about the behaviors and not only the words of customers and they not necessarily are the same.
by: Roger Dooley
We’ve covered the concept of buying pain here frequently, but haven’t seen much about how giving away money affects the brain. Two new studies shed some light on the neuroscience of charity and altruism. These studies indicate that the cerebral cortex, the area of the brain responsible for our most advanced cognitive functions, is involved in altruistic behavior.
Continue reading "The Joy of Giving vs. the Pain of Buying" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
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My buddy, Glenn Kelman
, the CEO of Redfin, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote. by: Dominic Basulto
After a flurry of recent deals over the past month involving Google, Microsoft and WPP Group, it is no longer clear which companies are at the top of the digital advertising food chain.
by: Idris Mootee
Today's consumers have a large array of choices for brands, products and services. On top of that they have unprecedented any-time, anywhere, any-network, any-device access to information and content that comes from other consumers In this hyper-competitive, rapidly evolving environment, marketers must develop their differentiation based on experience because it is less replicable and more sustainable. It's true CX innovation starts from finding what customers want that's not currently available to them: these are customers' key unmet needs.
Continue reading "CX Innovation Summit Jun 10-12 - Experience-based Diffferentiation" »
by: Lynette Webb
The photo comes thanks to Kazze www.flickr.com/photos/kazze/225952584/
The quote comes from googler Matt Cutt’s blog www.mattcutts.com/blog/my-thoughts-on-recent-google-tips/ I’ve been meaning to put it up for a while, as something about it just rang true. Across all their services, Google are I believe held to a higher standard by your average web searcher because of their track record and the trust that's built up.
by: Dominic Basulto
Apparently, young Americans have little or no idea of where the best innovation in the world is taking place. When in doubt, they simply assume innovative high-tech products come from Japan or the U.S.
Continue reading ""Japanese innovation" that's actually from Finland, Korea or America" »
by: Joel Makower
If you've been tracking the green marketplace lately, there's a good chance your head is spinning. It's not just the endless polls and surveys, which continue their relentless march toward the trivializing of just about any environmental concern or issue.
Continue reading "The Many Shades of the Eco-LOHAS-Sustainable-Green Consumer" »
by: Dick Stroud
What a strange headline in Advertising Age. The tag line explains: “Marketer Spies Goldmine in the Often-Overlooked Baby-Boomer Consumer”.
Continue reading "Unilever Resuscitates the Demo Left for Dead" »
by: Stefan Kolle (via Business & Games)
20th Century Fox has acquired the movie rights to The Sims, the most succesful computer game franchise of all times. I'm not quite sure what to make of this. We know of the desperate (and often misguided) hunger of Hollywood to turn existing properties into movies. We've seen some great comic book adaptations recently (Sin City, anyone?), but in the gaming field I'm going to be generous by calling the results 'mixed at best'.
And the best of it? It's going to be live action....
by: Michael Hoexter
In the first 4 posts in this series, I’ve started an outline of the bright future for an energy delivery system that will meet our increasing demands for power/energy and also tread more lightly on the planet than the current fossil fuel dependent system.
Finally some fashion design with meaning. However it strangely comes from a non-fashion designer. It’s about time that fashion design started to get a little more “serious” rather than seasonal. Hmm…read on.
by: Idris Mootee
Experience design is an emerging discipline. This is a relatively new term and does not yet have a common definition. Here I am referring to "experience" to include "service" design and not simply usability. Service management existed for ages but mostly in the fields of operations management or hospitality management. They often involved non-designers and mostly owned by business managers or engineers. Today, with complex integration between human and technology interface, it is becoming less clear whether this should become a discipline on its own.
by: Roger Dooley
Hitachi has introduced a wearable brain scanner targeted at a variety of applications, one of which is neuromarketing. The halo-like device is portable, allowing it to be worn while performing normal activities - perhaps even shopping.
by: Roger Dooley
I recall the first mega-store that opened locally - it happened to be a Meijer store, though now Super Wal-Marts, Super Targets, and other stores that sell everything are common.
by: Guy Kawasaki
Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com. Every day someone tells her that he or she has been “burned” by a PR firm, and Margie’s goal is to help small business find the right PR firm. I asked her to provide the top ten reasons why PR doesn’t work:
Continue reading "The Top Ten Reasons Why PR Doesn't Work" »
by: Dick Stroud
Nearly a third of potential first-time buyers (31%) anticipate financial help from their parents, according to new research commissioned by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. But even more (35%) say that they would need financial help to be able to enter the housing market.
Continue reading "'Bank of Mum and Dad' lend £18,000 on average for first homes" »
This is an interesting presentation by Yves Behar from Fuse Project on designing in the near future. He talks about his work with Swarovski, his controversial Leaf Lamp with Herman Miller and the One Laptop Per Child project (my favorite discussion topic!)
by: Joseph Mann
In case you missed the news, the top priority for marketers in 2007 is to quantify the value of marketing programs and investments, according to the CMO Council's Marketing Outlook 2007 survey. 44% of respondents said this was their primary goal in 2007, a change from 2006 where the emphasis was on building sales.
Click image to enlarge.
Continue reading "Take Me to Your Lead Generation Optimization Leader!" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
I was googling around when this set of AdWords came up (see if you can find the right search string yourself):
by: Dominic Basulto
When (or if) you think about innovation within the chemicals industry, names like DuPont, Dow Chemical or maybe a big conglomerate like GE come to mind.
Continue reading "Eastman Chemical's innovation & design site" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Who knew? Apparently, the opposite of "shoplifting" is "shopdropping." According to The Consumerist, shopdropping is when people print out "improved" labels at home and attach them to items in retail stores.
by: Joel Makower
What to make of the recent onslaught of green-living websites? There's been a steady stream of launches coming from both small and large organizations. Even some old stalwart sites have taken on a new green sheen, sporting slick new features. And there's more to come.
Continue reading "Green Living on the Web -- Will Martha and Oprah Join the Fray?" »
I was reading through the blogosphere tonight and came across a piece on Greg Verdano's blog about Urban Spam and that led me to several other postings, all linked here. The quoted section below is from PSFK, which has some good thoughts on the whole concept of urban spam. The second video lists the prices for a variety of OOH ad buys in NYC too.
by: Alexander Osterwalder
I just finished a draft presentation for a workshop on the topic "Competitive Advantage through Business Model Design and Innovation". I'm facilitating the workshop next June with about 100 executives in Guadalajara, Mexico. The workshop is hosted by the Tecnologico de Monterrey (ITESM). Your input regarding the slides is most welcome:
by: John Caddell
Every product company wants to sell solutions. Packaging products with useful complementary services can elevate a firm above commodity-provider status and provide more value to customers. Customized solutions also are more difficult for competitors to replace than standalone products.
Continue reading "For solutions providers, Account Management is king" »
by: Roger Dooley
We’ve discussed priming - the idea that an attitude or concept can be activated in an individual by subtle cues without conscious awareness - multiple times (e.g., Priming by Order, Priming the Customer, Thinking about Money) and others). Now, researchers have found that something as subtle as a two-foot difference in ceiling height can alter the way the brain works.
Continue reading "Send in the NeuroArchitect - Two Feet and The Brain" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Anastasia Goodstein covers Generation Y in her blog YPulse
. She has worked for Current TV, AOL, and Oxygen TV. She recently published a book that will help you understand the online activities of young people called Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online
Continue reading "Ten (Nine) Questions with Anastasia Goodstein" »
Last November, the Swedish designer Samir Alj Fält organized the interactive design project Ultravåldsdesign (~ ultraviolent design), in which he examined the relation between creation and destruction.
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
At the early stages of the "Serious Game" movement, in many cases they were made available to users free of charge or distributed within the client organization, which means there was usually no sales revenue stream for the developer.
by: David Wigder
An interview with C.J. Kettler, Founder and CEO, LIME
Green marketers are challenged to efficiently and effectively target consumers that are receptive to their message. Green marketers are not alone in their quest: According to a Jupiter Research report regarding the European market, “targeting audiences better” is the primary challenge faced by more than two-thirds of advertisers when planning and buying online media.
by: Dick Stroud
The French have just had their presidential election that was won by Sarkozy by a 53% share of the votes. Sarkozy is a man of the ‘right’ - the loser, Ségolène Royal, is of the ‘left’ - if such political descriptors have any meaning.
Continue reading "'Averages’ are misleading and dangerous" »
