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Fellow designer blogger csven has written a great article on his observations on the state of Intellectual property and its future impact on Design and of cause Industrial Design as well.
Continue reading "The Future Relationship of IP and Industrial Design" »
Continue reading "Scary Thoughts on Business and Social Change" »
Continue reading "Trend: Neuroscience Infiltrates Society" »
by: Nancy Baym
Web 2.0 is supposed to be all about harnessing the wisdom of crowds, playing simultaneously off the glorification of the individual via personalized profiles and services and the algorithmic magic that happens when individual data is mined.
by: Karl Long
Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path has just posted a presentation on the topic “The Experience Is The Product” on slideshare, even better he has synced the recording of him presenting this in the UK. In this presentation Peter does a great job of explaining that the experience is everything, it’s the branding, it’s the marketing, and how often our approaches to design screw this up.
by: Dominic Basulto
A big hat tip to Satish Nambisan and Mohanbir Sawhney, who have just released The Global Brain. The book provides a roadmap for innovating faster and smarter in a networked world. Here's a blurb from the book's website:
To innovate more effectively, you must harness powerful new sources of creativity from both inside and outside your company.
Continue reading "The Global Brain and Networked Innovation" »
by: danah boyd
In business, the economic concept of "externalities" has tremendous salience. In short, an externality is a cost that a third party must bear due to the actions of others. For example, air pollution is considered an externality of manufacturing. In theory, as protectors of the public good, reasonable governments should regulate corporate externalities through imposed taxes. (In reality...) More and more, discussion of environment externalities is a core part of business.
by: David Wigder
“We will not be measured by our aspirations. We will be measured by our actions”
– Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott in making sustainability part of his core strategy
by: Roger Dooley
Which is scarier - undergoing a potentially fatal surgical procedure that has a 95% survival rate, or one that causes death in 1 out of 20 patients? If you are like most people, you would find the latter statistic far more worrisome, even though mathematically the two statements are the same. A variety of research shows that marketers should choose carefully when throwing numbers at their customers.
by: Alain Thys (via Business & Games)
Now marketers have finally caught on to this interactive thing and seem to be ever more shy of places to put their new found digital 2008 budgets, gaming finally seems to be hitting the radar as well. An excellent time to seize the day, the guys at IAB must have thought as they just released the first of a series of papers to establish some standards in the chaotic world of advergaming (or was it gamevertising?).
by: danah boyd
For this year's Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) conference, I put together a paper reflecting on my methodological choices in pursuing an understanding of how youth engage with networked publics. In it, I try to lay out my decisions, my successes, and my failures. This paper is written in loving memory of my advisor Peter Lyman.
Enjoy!
Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2007/10/25/choose_your_own.html
Continue reading "Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass - Week Seven - Global Branding" »
by: Dick Stroud
Research from Ipsos shows that Canada's 50-plus have the same intentions as their Brit counterparts and are setting up their own businesses in droves.
Continue reading " The Entrepreneurial over-50s - Same Message from Canada" »
by: Roger Dooley
What’s the first thing a manager teaches a new retail or food service employee? Maybe “Don’t steal the cash!” is first, but right after that is, “Smile at the customer!” It turns out that this is probably even better advice than one might think. Continuing our exploration of subliminal stimuli and their effects on behavior, I wanted to share an intriguing study that shows that exposure to brief images of smiling or frowning faces - too quickly for the subject to consciously process - actually affected the amount test subjects were willing to pay for a drink!
by: C. Sven Johnson
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my primary interest in tracking the intellectual property issues currently plaguing the music and movie industries, waiting in the ebook wings for book publishers, and even frustrating hordes of bloggers whose content is appropriated and used to create spamblogs, is that at some point their problems become my problems; becomes the problem of anyone who designs and fabricates real products for a living.
Continue reading "The Looming Dark Horizon: When the IP Mess Hits Industrial Design & Co." »
by: Dominic Basulto
The Japanese Web site Information Architects has once again created a wonderful graphical representation of the most popular Internet destinations. (click to enlarge)
by: Karl Long
Todd linked to this excellent viral homage to some of the notable viral videos of the last few years. Believe me they list a hell of a lot, but what I found interesting was the number of deliberate commercial “virals” for want of a better word. These are the companies/people that managed to achieve what I believe is quite a feat, to launch a deliberate campaign that “goes viral”.
Continue reading "We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes" »
by: Dick Stroud
For the past couple of years I have been banging on about the fantastic marketing opportunity to provide products and services to assist the 50-plus who are starting their own business.
by: Idris Mootee
I was surprised to receive so many responses from my last post on "management buzzwords", including dozens of emails, I guess that resonates with many of you guys. I personally think the underlying reason for that behavior is simply because many people simply have no idea of how to deal with their business challenges, so they resort to using buzzwords to give the perception that they have the answers.
Continue reading "When Did You Last Re-frame Your Business?" »
by: Lynette Webb
Ta da... after a stupidly long delay, finally the book is ready. :-) by: David Wigder
This week’s cover story in BusinessWeek featured the experience of Auden Schendler, corporate director of environmental affairs at the Aspen Skiing Company (ASC), as he tried to convince his senior management that going green was worth the investment (“Little Green Lies,” October 29, 2007).
By: Stefan Kolle
Although we usually tend to steer clear from pure news related events, as these tend to be discussed in so many other places, I do want to add a few quick comments on the Microsoft / Facebook deal. (In the rather unlikely case you have missed it - here's the story)
I'd like to make two seemingly contradictory obervations:
A. Facebook will be a disappointment in the long run, particularly from an advertisers perspective
B. Microsoft did a brilliant deal and will make it's money back several times over.
Continue reading "Some Comments on the Microsoft / Facebook Deal" »
by: Nancy Baym
In class this week I showed Stephanie Tuszynski’s recent documentary “IRL In Real Life” about an officially-sanctioned online community that formed around Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The film raises a number of issues about how the cast and production team (not least Joss Whedon) interacted with the fans.
by: Dominic Basulto
The current issue of Popular Mechanics has assembled a great list of the 10 Most Brilliant Innovations of 2007. At the top of the list, of course, is the new surface computing interface from Microsoft:
Continue reading "The Ten Most Brilliant Innovations of 2007" »
by: Roger Dooley
We are subjected to a constant stream of branding messages - company logos, brand emblems, and even distinctive designs are, quite literally, everywhere. In addition to conventional advertising media, it seems that just about every item that can be used to convey a message has been pressed into service. The net effect of this barrage of branding might seem to be “brand blindness.”
by: Karl Long
Guinness has added a little twist to its latest advertising campaign and have hidden it online somewhere for someone to find. In good old ARG (alternate reality game) tradition they have started this game off with a couple of clues, in this case a fictional Mayor called Juan Ramon has put a video on youtube and created a pdf letter to share.
by: Christian Smagg
You may have come across one of my posts entitled “Which consumer 2.0 are you?” urging marketers to develop a better understanding of their customers’ online behaviour and devise a coherent and adapted social strategy accordingly.
Continue reading "Word-of-Mouth or When the Unbiased Opinion Is Trusted Around the Globe" »
by: John Caddell
After last week's look at "The Future of Management," it seemed appropriate to look back at one of my favorite HBR articles, "In Praise of Hierarchy," by the late Dr. Elliott Jaques (link - $$). In this article, published in 1990, Dr. Jaques asserts that "35 years of research have convinced me that managerial hierarchy is the most efficient, the hardiest, and in fact the most natural structure ever devised for large organizations."
I will be speaking at the "Innovating the Business Model" conference organized by Enterprise Ireland, today, Wednesday 24th of October.
Continue reading "Conference Talk: Innovating the Business Model (Dublin, Ireland)" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I’ve just given Kinset, a 3D virtual shopping application, (Link) a spin. Before I offer my opinion, let’s start off with what it’s supposed to be. From the website:
by: Dick Stroud
I have written a lot about the Charmed Generation the group of 50-plus with high retirement income, lots of property wealth and no debt. I reckon that makes up around 2.5 million of the UK’s 17 million 55+.
by: Roger Dooley
At a conference presentation last week (see Neuromarketing in Montreal), I made the point that the most important frontier for neuromarketers may be product design. Why struggle to make ads more appealing when you could be making the product itself more appealing by tapping into the consumer’s true feelings and reactions?
by: Joel Makower
If you had asked me even a week ago whether Japan or the United States was further along in the greening of mainstream business, I'd likely have answered Japan. That country is, after all, the birthplace of the Prius and other eco-efficient vehicles and advanced technologies.
Continue reading "Green Business, in the Land of the Prius" »
by: Alain Thys
When listening to the case of TNT Post's sustainability efforts at Marktplein 2.0, I could only conclude that no good deed goes unpunished. And as it's a situation which many companies going "green" may be facing soon, it's one to start thinking about today.
by: John Caddell
Hamel talks frequently in the book of enrolling the entire company in innovation. Among all the obstacles to achieving this--the lack of democracy, the weight of inertia--the biggest one in my view is the information gap. Comparing the volume and depth of information I had access to when I was a senior executive to the paucity I had in any other position--the difference was staggering. (Note: you can find excerpts of "The Future of Management" here.)
Continue reading "On Gary Hamel's "The Future of Management" part 5 - Final thoughts " »
by: C. Sven Johnson (via: Business & Games)
by: Karl Long
So in the first week Radiohead’s album, In Rainbows, which they allowed customer to set their own prices 1 sells 1.2 million downloads and gets an average of $8 each. Next time I’ll just ask them to up the bitrate a little bit.
