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by: Nancy Baym
I spent the latter half of this week in Princeton. I was invited by the Center for Information Technology Policy and spoke on the topic “Understanding the Networked Audience.” Here is a super-short summary of my talk:
by: Idris Mootee
Every individual in this world shares one commonality which is we all have stories to tell. Some have very interesting ones and some are sad. It is like we all have a photo albums or a 60 minutes documentary that talks about our life. The older we get, the more repetitive these stories become. The true role of story and storytelling is much greater, older, and elemental than Hollywood.
Continue reading "Transmedia Story Telling - The Next Brand Building Super Engine?" »
by: Michael Hoexter
In Part 1 of this post, I started to construct a scenario where a medium-sized farm would do most or all of its work using electric farm equipment. This model of a farm had 1 large tractor with 250kW(335 hp) maximum power output and 4 smaller tractors with 50kW (67hp) maximum power output (though working at 50% power on the peak energy day).
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part VIII.2: The Electric Farm - 2" »
by: Roger Dooley
Big companies often find great ways to aggravate their customers, and cell phone giant Sprint proves the point. John Wall of the Ronin Marketing blog posted a rant about Sprint’s advertising for their Centro Palm smartphone, Screw Your Customers.
by: David Armano
I can remember a time not so long ago when the notion of "strategy" seemed nearly divorced from the design and/or creative process. Strategists performed competitive analysis or "landscapes", talked to stakeholders—aggregated industry reports and trends and did stuff with lots of charts, metrics, bullet points etc.
Continue reading "Developing an Experience Strategy in 4 Parts" »
by: John Caddell
Following on to yesterday's post on political storytelling--in the December Harvard Business Review, Peter Guber, best described, I guess, as a Hollywood mogul (former head of Columbia Pictures, producer of "Batman" and "Rain Man," among others), writes about "Four Truths of the Storyteller" (link - $$).
Continue reading "A Hollywood Producer's Master Class on Business Storytelling" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Stanford Magazine has a terrific article about Kiva
called “Small Change, Big Payoff” by Cynthia Haven. This is the story of how Matt and Jessica Jackely Flannery created it to enable people to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world.
by: John Caddell
The podcast is back, this time featuring Tony Ulwick, author of the book "What Customers Want" and CEO of Strategyn, a consulting firm helping companies improve their innovation processes.
by: Dick Stroud
I have worked with Jo Rigby, the head of Insights at OMD, to research the way that different lifestyle groups of the 50-plus respond to advertising creative. If you are a member of WARC you download the report. For those of you who are not, you can apply for a trial membership and hopefully access the report.
Continue reading " WARC Report About the 50-plus and Advertising Creative" »
by: Alain Thys
Every day thousands of people die from bad marketing. Neither Google nor I remember where I read these words. Perhaps I never read them at all. But as I was flying from Zurich to Amsterdam I couldn't get them out of my mind.
I had just read about Sir Bob Geldof badgering a number of CEO's on their moral obligation to get involved in poverty. And while - bless him - he probably saved quite a few lives by guilting them into a donation, I doubt whether anything beyond "token money" will change hands.
Continue reading "Marketing Challenge: Can We Profit From Poverty?" »
by: John Caddell
There's a fascinating interview at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge with HBS professor Alan MacCormack, covering innovation and how it's moving away from Corporate R&D and into a collaborative web of partnering & alliances. (You can find a working paper on the subject here.)
Continue reading "Innovative Companies Must Excel at Partnering" »
by: Dominic Basulto
In the current issue of Portfolio magazine, former Intel CEO Andy Grove suggests that corporate behemoths - sometimes, but not always - may be better suited to disruptive innovation than smaller, more nimble upstarts:
Continue reading "Andy Grove on How Large Companies Can Become Disruptive Giants" »
by: Gary Hayes
At the Cross-Media Storytelling conference a few days ago I witnessed a strange event with one of the categories of speakers. There were three groups of speakers, forward thinking practitioners, catch-up heritage media representatives and theoretical, reflective academics.
Continue reading "Web 2.0 and the Myth of Non-Participation " »
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
A new Canadian online digital magazine, Second Slice, focuses on issues of marketing in virtual worlds (click here to download)
According to its publisher and VP at One Up Marketing, Mario Parisé. Second Slice is “an attempt to give marketers who are active in virtual worlds a stronger and more unified voice. It all got started when the more mainstream business press decided to go on a Second Life bashing spree, ridiculing marketers and businesses going in-world.”
Continue reading "Second Slice: Serious Games Embed Ambitious Marketing" »
by: John Caddell
Once, in my days running sales and marketing for a software company, the VP of Technology was growing agitated with my complaints about our product's hardware and database architecture. "OK," he said in exasperation, "if you don't like [proprietary platform], what platform do you want the product to run on?" In imitation of a Qwest ad from that time, I said, "I want it to run on any operating system, on any database, from any provider." I then glanced at him to make sure he wasn't winding up to smack me in the head. "You asked."
Continue reading "IT Risk - Platform and Architecture Matter" »
by: Idris Mootee
Continuing on this topic. Let's start with some key findings from a recent McKinsey survey. According to the survey, a company's main challenge with innovation today is finding enough talented people.
Continue reading "Innovation and Design Thinking - Is It A Mindset, Process or Profession?" »
by: Christian Smagg
When thinking about factors that distinguish top performing companies, the root of their success often can be traced to the human equation. But how many companies are able to tap more than a fraction of their workforce potential? How many are able to take advantage of latent talents, ideas and contributive strengths waiting to be switched on? How many are able to unleash the power of remote collaboration & virtual team management? The companies that find the means to use a larger fraction of their human resources will undoubtedly supersede their competitors. That is their edge in the global economy.
Continue reading "Unleashing the Power of Remote Collaboration & Virtual Team Management" »
by: Alain Thys
We probably all know the trouble Vincent Ferrari's had to go through when trying to cancel his AOL account over the phone. But to vindicate him and all other victims of the telephone terror direct marketers often inflict on us, Tom Mabe created a rather cruel, yet hilarious method of dealing with any tele-marketer that dares to invade his privacy.
Continue reading "Telemarketing Calls ... the Customer Strikes Back" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Via: NanoMission - 3 Games Modules Available For Download!
Following my prior post Serious Games To Understand Nanotech, PlayGen has made 3 game modules available for download:NanoMedicine, NanoScaling and Nano Imaging.
Continue reading "Serious Games To Understand Nanothech Available For Download" »
What
do mathematicians, architects, sculptors, biologists, and graphic
designers have in common? They all use what is perhaps the most
interesting number in mathematics: the Golden Mean, also called the
Golden Ratio and the Golden Section.
This has been a crazy week. And worse we missed out flight by 5 min yesterday and ended up spending the afternoon in O'Hare eating really bad food. Here's a photo of us between meetings. I realized I have not posted anything since last week. It is not usual as I always try to do that at least every other day. Here we go, back to our topic of "design thinking" and "innovation". Both topics are getting popular but least understood in the executive officesContinue reading "The 4 Ps of Innovation and Design Thinking" »
by: Roger Dooley
Wine and coffee seem to be common topics here at Neuromarketing. Perhaps it’s because I enjoy both, but also because each of these beverages comes in an infinite variety of flavors and is available in varied methods of delivery.
by: Eliane Alhadeff (via Business & Games)
For most people, video games mean entertainment, like TV or the movies. But their true meaning may be much bigger, impacting every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
IBM explores how video games may impact every aspect of our world, from education to business, society and culture.
Continue reading "Serious Games Pioneering How We Will Learn & Work In The Future" »
by: Dick Stroud
Research (from Alliance & Leicester) has looked at the goals and ambitions of the UK’s 50 plus and shows that travel is at the top of their agenda. Over half (54%) want to travel more regularly and to long-haul destinations and a further (22%) want a “once in a lifetime holiday” in the next decade.
Continue reading " Some Research about Travel and the 50-plus" »
by: Roger Dooley
Burger giant McDonald’s has the lucrative upscale coffee market dominated by Starbucks clearly in its sights. According to an AP report, McDonald’s Eyes Ballooning Coffee Market,
Continue reading "Starbucks vs. McDonald’s: Coffee War Heating Up" »
Ok the secret is finally out and one of the reasons why I have been “extra” busy during my down time!
by: Yann Gourvennec
All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players … (1)
Our friend Markus Giesler is assistant professor of marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, ON, Canada. He is also the author of a previous article on Napster (the anthropology of file sharing, consuming Napster as a gift). Here is his new opus in which he compares marketplaces with drama.
by: Dick Stroud
According to Gartner, in 10 years the largest influence on all purchases will be the virtual experience associated with them. By 2015, more money will be spent marketing and selling to multiple anonymous online personas than marketing and selling offline.
Continue reading "Ditch Your Age Segmentation - Target Generation V" »
by: Alain Thys
If I were responsible for corporate PR at Unilever, I'd be getting little bit nervous about the chatter in the blogosphere these days. A few weeks ago, there was the video by Rye Clifton (see below) in which he challenged the company's dual position on women. With Dove they take the high ground, and defy the beauty industry's push for übersexy women. With Axe, they then do exactly what they condemn.
Continue reading "Should You Talk to Your Daughter before Unilever Does ?" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
I caught a whiff of this piece on the Guardian earlier this month, and having finally read it, all I can say is, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster someone else is starting to talk about the impact virtual worlds will almost certainly have on real world commerce. Victor Keegan has fired a nice warning flare in his article, “Virtual China looks for real benefits” (Link). From the piece:
Is green marketing just a series of lies?
That's one conclusion to be drawn from a new study that examines hundreds of environmental labeling claims and found pretty much all of them wanting, suffering from sins of either omission or commission.
Is it any wonder that consumers are overwhelmingly wary of green marketing and view it as "just a sales tactic"?
by: Alex Eperjessy (via Business & Games)
They call themselves a hot new advergaming company. Blogger opinions are already split on this, with some calling it a great idea and others arguing that it’s nothing but a fishy scheme. Last week, Moola’s CEO, Arlen Ritchie, gave me a presentation that stretched slightly over one hour. He gave the demo, I asked the questions. The result is below, God help us all.
Continue reading "Interview with Arlen Ritchie, Moola's CEO" »
by: Dominic Basulto
Companies that innovate at a snail's pace may not be in quite the competitive mess that some experts think they're in. Forget rapid prototyping and rushing beta versions of products to markets.
by: David Wigder
BBMG recently reported that US consumers increasingly say that words like “socially responsible” (88% say these as words describe them “well”, 39% as “very well”) and “environmentally friendly” (86% well, 34% very well) describe them. It should not be surprising then that many leading companies today are aligning their brands with more socially reponsible and eco-friendly activites and attributes. (See “Defining Green Brand Leadership”, Marketing Green, October 29, 2007)
Continue reading "Waning Opportunity to be Early Mover on Green" »
by: Alain Thys
A few weeks ago I spoke in the Netherlands at a Marktplein 2.0: A Little Less Action, A Little More Conversation, a conference, which essentially wanted to encourage (direct) marketers to engage in conversations with the consumer, rather than just shout at him. Confronted with the hyperbolic language of the conference brochure indicating the "'newness" fo the conversation phenomenon, I couldn't resist the jab of inverting the title of the conference for my keynote. In stead of talking about conversations with customers, I think it's time marketers got out of their office and actually had them.
Continue reading "A Little Less Conversation ... (slideshow)" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
by: danah boyd
For peculiar historical business reasons, Americans and Canadians pay to receive text messages. This creates a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 (or use up a precious token msg in your plan) simply by deciding to send you something. You have no choice. There's no blocking, no opt-out. Direct to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
by: Idris Mootee
My friend Dr. Peter Coleman posted last week said he was interested in my thoughts on how traditional corporations are responding to the innovation agenda. He also asked if we are seeing design thinking etc. embedding itself within the mainstream corporations thus affecting their operating models and recruitment strategies. This is a great question. So here are my thoughts and there are more to come. I did plan to write on this one anyway.
Continue reading "Design Thinking and the New Model of Strategic Innovation" »
by: John Caddell
I can't wait for the upcoming book by Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch (his blog is here) and Katherine Jocz called "Greater Good"--because I am fully expecting to disagree with it.
by: Guy Kawasaki
TechCrunch published a great guest post by Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, called “Entrepreneur 2.0.” It inspired me to piggyback on his idea that investing in “serial entrepeneurs” who have already been successful might not be all that it’s cracked up to be and write this post.
by: David Armano
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question. Should digital agencies be blogging? I mean, we are out there advising clients on "social media" and how it's evolving the way we interact with brands and each other. Some folks felt that the question was silly. Isn't this a no brainer? Well, not exactly. The best part of the post came in the comments (no surprise) and the post itself got picked up by several agencies who use internal blogs to discuss issues like this. This means that they are having conversations in private vs. publicly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But wouldn't you like to be fly on that agency's wall? I would.
by: Alain Thys
If you've ever wondered what would happen if CGM pessimist Andrew Keen (Cult of the amateur) would encounter a collaborative creativity evangelist like Charles Leadbeater, you can find out for yourself on November 28 at Marketing3 in the Netherlands.
Continue reading "Conference Highlight: Marketing3 in the Netherlands" »
by: Nancy Baym
Last May I wrote about a UK fansite trying to organize football (that’d be soccer to my American brethren) fans to go beyond armchair coaching and webboard kvetching to collectively purchase a team. Today’s big news is that they did it!
Continue reading "Enterprise 2.0 and the Concept of Virtuality" »
by: C. Sven Johnson
This past summer I’d mentioned a summit on virtual goods and linked to a TechCrunch article related to the panel, “Are Virtual Goods the Next Big Business Model?” (reLink). A video of that discussion, chaired by Susan Wu of Charles River Ventures, was posted shortly after the panel, and while I managed to watch the first few introductory minutes of it, I neither finished watching it nor returned to it. Until now, that is, after a reminder from a post on The Meshverse Journal (Link).
by: David Wigder
An Interview with Michel Gelobter, Founder and EVP of Cooler
Long-time environmental activist Paul Hawkins once described “green consumerism” as an oxymoron. Indeed, “green consumption” makes Wikipedia’s “List of Genuine Oxymora”. The reason: consumption by its very nature has an impact on the environment – to some degree or another – and therefore, is hard to call truly green.
by: Idris Mootee
Continue reading "How Will Enterprise 2.0 Transform the Workplace" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
A web based virtual shopping mall launched in New Zealand, allows users to navigate a three dimensional space to browse and buy products, bringing what the company says is the same shopping experience as in the real world. http://www.themallplus.com/ is not a portal that redirects consumers to third party websites, instead creating an online virtual shopping mall.
Continue reading "Serious Games Bring the Mall to Web Browsers" »
by: Roger Dooley
I’ve been waiting for the first news of neuromarketing in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, and it has arrived a full year before the election itself. The first few conclusions seem so obvious as to not require firing up a multi-millon dollar fMRI machine:by: danah boyd
It gives me unquantifiable amounts of joy to announce that the JCMC special theme issue on "Social Network Sites" is now completely birthed. It was a long and intense labor, but all eight newborn articles are doing just fine and the new mommies are as proud as could be. So please, join us in our celebration by heading on over to the Journal for Computer-Mediated Communication and snuggling up to an article or two. The more you love them, the more they'll prosper!
Continue reading "It's Live! New JCMC on Social Network Sites" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Bill Gerba at Retail Media News blogged recently about a Datamonitor report that said "the next step in the battle to retain customers' is to streamline the buying experience, bringing it more in line with internet shopping in terms of ease and speed of transaction."
Continue reading "Offline Retailers and Online Expectations " »
by: Michael Hoexter
Urbanites and suburbanites tend to forget that our civilization is based on agriculture, an agriculture that is heavily mechanized and dependent on fossil fuel.
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part VIII.1: The Electric Farm" »
by: David Armano
Everyone's talking about Social Graphs and Jeremiah Owyang recently penned a wonderful and brief synapsis of what a Social Graph is and what it means to your business.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
IBM researchers talked to a bunch of consumers and executives to come up with their "The End of Advertising as We Know It" report (full report, PR summary). Key findings:
by: David Wigder
“I have never seen anything equal to sustainability as far as attracting, motivating, and bring people together.” — Ray C. Anderson, Founder and Chairman of Interface in AmericanWay Magazine, October 1, 2007
Continue reading "Going Green to Recruit and Retain Employees" »
by: David Armano
"When you think “social media” a few names and images come to mind. You might think of Robert Scoble who is essentially a “Weblebrity” or Jeff Jarvis who leveraged his blog to amplify his gripes with Dell’s customer service creating “Dell Hell”. But there’s a new reality that’s much less dramatic and becoming more pervasive if not mainstream in the modern day office. Some of your employees may be leading double lives which often blurs the lines between personal and career—they are “super-connecters” who leverage social media tools to amplify their communications and conversations with hundreds and possibly thousands of people across the globe…
by: John Caddell
For as long as there have been luxury brands, they have been trying to expand from their original niche to related - or unrelated - product areas. Remember Pierre Cardin cologne? It was a mainstay of TJ Maxx, a US discount store, back in the 1980's.
Continue reading "Luxury Brand Names - Extensible Everywhere?" »
Continue reading "Better Giving Through Chemistry: Oxytocin Drives Generosity" »
by: Dominic Basulto
One minute you're the CEO of one of the most powerful Internet companies in the world, the next you're a "moral pygmy" being disgraced by media publications all over the world. Reputation on the Internet can be difficult to measure, and even more difficult to protect.
Continue reading "Yahoo, the "Moral Pygmy" problem and reputation on the Internet" »
by: Marina Natanova
What could a 33 year old Moscow businessman with 3 languages, a Nissan Almera, and a holiday in Spain have in common with a 47 year old Chelyabinsk housewife with 3 kids, a Lada 9 and a dacha?. Except for living in the same country they were, like all of us (say, 30+ Russians*) born and brought-up in the Soviet Union.
Continue reading "The Vessel Drowned, the Passengers Survived." »
by: David Jennings
The third in my series of future scenarios from the first draft of my book imagines a situation where pocket music players with better-than-Zune sharing features have become so cheap as to be almost disposable (like cameras).
Continue reading "Sonic Youth: Ambassador Fans of the Future" »
by: Idris Mootee
Finally back home from Chicago after a busy week sitting in cafe reading the Journal. I was meeting with some MaRS people today and I was really excited be able to talk to people who really understand innovation and the art-of-start-up. I think they are offering is highly valuable for start-ups as they provide market intelligence and counseling from a team of experienced, multidisciplinary professionals. They primarily provide services to technology companies at early stages of business development.
Continue reading "Innovation and the Art of Managing Customer Adoption" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
In a Wall Street Journal article entitled Web Scammer Targets Senior U.S. Executives is an amazing account of a Mr Stewart’s chase for the uncovering of a Romanian scammer, complete with Mr Stewart’s extraordinary biography (a guy who 15 years ago was mopping the floor is in McDonald’s restaurants and had barely a dime and couldn’t even buy a computer, and has now become a world leading expert in computer security).
Continue reading "Social Networks Used as Back-doors by Scammers for Online Fraud" »
by: Alain Thys
It took us a while, yet we finally found an angle from which Business & Games: The Blog could add some value to your daily RSS-fix. From now on, Alex Eperjessy (aka. our guy in Romania) will provide daily updates on the ways businesses like your own include games and virtual worlds in their marketing, HR and operations. This while our contributing bloggers Ilya, Eliane and C.Sven will continue to give deeper insights on what's really going on in advergaming, serious games and the various virtual realities.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
Ninety years ago today, the Russian Revolution began. Among other things, it gave birth to one of the most formidable mass persuasion machines in the world.
Continue reading "Soviet Propaganda: The Art of Mass Persuasion" »
by: John Caddell
Among the many accolades that Toyota receives, little mention is made of their supplier management. It's strange, given how frequently the press mentions supplier issues at other auto companies--usually in the context of extracting price concessions.
Continue reading "Toyota Manages Suppliers for the Long Run" »
by: Dick Stroud
My chums at Millennium have researched the attitudes of the over-50s towards “green issues”.
Here is an extract of the results.
by: Dominic Basulto
The marketing and innovation experts at Kolbrener have developed this interactive Table of Brand Evolution Terms to highlight their proprietary Brand Evolution methodology.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
"ComScore released a study of online sales of "In Rainbows," a new record album from the band Radiohead. During the first 29 days of October, 1.2 million people worldwide visited the "In Rainbows" site, with a significant percentage of visitors ultimately downloading the album. The study showed that 38 percent of global downloaders of the album willingly paid to do so, with the remaining 62 percent choosing to pay nothing."
Continue reading " Study: Radiohead Promotes Music with Free Music" »
by: Scott Goodson
This article is printed in the fall issue of The Hub Magazine:
The same old CRM is not good enough.
by: Alain Thys
In America, brands experiment in Second Life and There, hang out on Laguna Beach or even set up their own not-so-little universe. Korea has Cyworld and China is building one of the most ambitious virtual worlds on the planet (or should I call it an e-commerce enabled mass-customisation system with virtual world storefront ?)
And meanwhile, Europe sleeps.
Continue reading "Call for Interest: It's Time European Brands Got Serious about Virtual Worlds" »
I wanted to post the second part of slides
today but I am in Chicago this week and have no access to my other Thinkpad. So
I will just write about it and follow up with the slides next week.
There are no doubts many barriers to innovation. Or you can say there is a glass ceiling and you hit that ceiling pretty easily.
Continue reading "Innovation Playbook - Is There an Innovation Glass Ceiling?" »
by: John Winsor
A couple of days ago I was pondering the word Bespoke and what it might mean beyond fashion or furniture. Well, this month's Wallpaper magazine heralded the Fiat 500 with an article entitled, Small Wonder: With a multitude of design options, Fiat's new 500 brings bespoke to the masses. I guess with 549,936 possible options it could be bespoke. But isn't that a stretch?
by: C. Sven Johnson
Generally, I don’t follow the news of every company entering the virtual space. I just don’t care if Levi’s creates their own branded virtual world and, other than the advertising and marketing community, I don’t know who does (though I don’t doubt there are consumers out there who do care). Instead, I pay attention to those companies which might do something interesting on the product development side of things.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I had the great pleasure to speak at the same conference as Professor Henry Chesbrough. The event took place in Dublin and was organized by Enterprise Ireland. It was great to follow Henry's talk on Open Innovation and Open Business Models, two terms he coined in two different books.
Continue reading "Professor Henry Chesbrough on Open Innovation and Open Business Models" »
by: Roger Dooley
Neuromarketing readers are by now familiar with the idea of “buying pain” or “pain of paying” - when we buy something, the pain center in our brain can be activated. Work by Carnegie Mellon’s George Loewenstein and others shows that this effect is greatest when the price is perceived to be high or unfair.Continue reading "Penalty Pain: How to Make Your Customers Hate You" »
by: Rich Julius (guest blogger)
For years I’ve cautioned against using web statistics as a web marketing measurement tool. The truth is, most web statistics aren’t actionable, and what isn’t actionable is fairly useless.
by: Joel Makower
This is "Green Week" at NBC Universal, a seven-day revelry of environment-themed content spread across the company's various TV channels and other properties. The 150 hours of programming — integrated into everything from news and sports to soaps and entertainment — is certainly a first for a major media company.
Continue reading "NBC's "Green Week": Not Media Business as Usual" »
Continue reading "Innovation Playbook - Why Is Innovation So Hard?" »
by: Lynette Webb
I really like this analogy. It touches on an interesting debate too… although I personally agree 100% open always trumps 100% closed in the end, nowadays it’s not always so black and white. Services can be open in some aspects and not others; there are different degrees of open-ness…
Continue reading "Proprietary Platforms are Like Ice Cubes" »
by: Danah Boyd
In June, I wrote a controversial blog essay about how U.S. teens appeared to be self-dividing by class on MySpace and Facebook during the 2006-2007 school year. This piece got me into loads of trouble for all sorts of reasons, forcing me to respond to some of the most intense critiques.
by: Karl Long
And myspace might be saying “Thanks for the add” to google as well.
I had initially thought this story from Tech Crunch was like a formation of a “coalition of the willing” with the other social networks, but I’m begining to think it might have much bigger implications.
Continue reading "Open Social - the Social Network For Companies Scared Of Facebook" »
by: David Armano
I recently had a chance to catch up with BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum who was a good enough sport to go ahead and share a his "innovation gym" story with us on video.
by: Joel Makower
My travels over the past month have included speeches to two very different audiences on the same topic: The future of travel and tourism, as seen through an environmental lens. Based on these and other calls I'm getting, it seems that this industry is starting to pay attention . . . but only starting.
Continue reading "The Greening of Travel and Tourism, from Asia to Alabama" »
I’m floored. This is not a trick, nor is it a story out of Star Trek, and best of all its not even a concept. Yesterday, November 01, 2007, Bug Labs launched for the first time to the public, pictures of what to me would be one of the biggest break through in platform product design I have seen to date. I have to say the potential of this product will be endless. Bug Labs, run by some very clever people, has an interesting vision where Peter Semmelhack the CEO explains:
Continue reading "Build Your Own Product with Bug Lab's Open Source Hardware" »
by: Idris Mootee
The idea of "customer orientation" comes up almost all the time during my meetings with clients. It is generally define as an organization culture in which all executives and employees are committed to the continuous creation of customer value of delivering on their needs.
Continue reading "Marketing - Is Its Job to "Serve" or to "Create"?" »
by: Dominic Basulto
The other day, the Wall Street Journal featured one of the most inspiring stories about innovation that I've read in quite some time. Shai Agassi, once a fast-rising senior executive at software giant SAP, left the company in March under mysterious circumstances and dropped off the grid, only to re-surface this week, flush with $200 million in VC funding and a radical idea for disrupting the automotive industry.
Continue reading "Radically Re-thinking the Automotive Business Model" »
by: danah boyd
For over a year now, Nicole Ellison and I have been working on putting together a special issue of JCMC on "Social Network Sites." Not all of the pieces are live yet, so I'm going to wait until they are before highlighting them and encouraging you to go there. (But! If you want to get a taste, their abstracts are all up on the site as temporary holders.)
Continue reading "Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship" »
Continue reading " Screenshots: Kinset 3D Shopping Browser" »
by: Roger Dooley
One of the keys to the phenomenal success of Starbucks has been that its stores offer a consistent and appealing sensory experience. The music, colors, and lighting are all important, but clearly the wonderful coffee aroma is what dominates one’s senses on entering a Starbucks outlet.
Continue reading "Sensory Marketing to Jolt Espresso Sales" »
by: danah boyd
For quite some time now, TV channels have bemoaned services like TiVo for allowing viewers to skip over ads. I think that the TV stations are barking up the wrong tree. More importantly, I think that they're out of touch with viewers.
One of the fascinating things about teens and advertising is that they don't mind it. In fact, ads have come to signal "free" and so when teens see ads on websites, they assume that the service will continue to be free and that creates a sense of relief. Their complaint is not that ads are there, but that they are rarely relevant let alone interesting.
by: John Caddell
"We need to document our processes!"
I heard this again and again at various companies I worked at over the years. And that's a fine goal, to document processes. But the thinking--that if processes are documented then we will be able to perform high-quality work and be successful--is flat-out wrong in many circumstances.
Continue reading "HBR Article Demonstrates that Leaders Need to Manage Complexity" »
