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August 16, 2006

FC Now BlogJam 2006

I'd like to thank all of the people who participated in this year's FC Now BlogJam. It was a rollicking two days, and our special guests -- the people behind the blogs in FC Now's blogroll -- posted almost 70 entries. That's pretty lively!

You can access all of the posts made during the event in this handy category page. Feel free to leave a comment (or two).

Posted by Heath Row at 5:34 PM | Add Comment

August 15, 2006

Passionate Customers Find Their Voice Online

How passionate are your customers? Are they talking about you online? You might want to check Google. But don't stop there. YouTube, Flickr and MySpace should also be on your list of sites to search.

Target and IKEA have looked for customers online and listened to them to each retailer's advantage.

Slave to Target is written by a wild-mannered consumer that considers a visit to Target retail therapy. Her blog states: "Seriously- Slaves To Target hide Target bags from their husbands, we make up excuses to go to Target, we simply feel orgasmic by the thought."

Target's response? They bought advertising on the blog. Slave to Target might not like everything Target does or sells, but rather than trying to quiet her down, they wisely "enable her addiction."

Continue reading "Passionate Customers Find Their Voice Online"

Posted by Kevin Dugan at 11:39 PM | 16 Comments

“Do You Have Any Coupons?”

A pile of coupon news came out today as Google announced yet another free service. This one allows businesses to offer coupons to consumers via Google Maps.

Bath & Body Works also announced it is offering coupons to its customers via mobile phone. Mobile phone coupons present an interesting opportunity to tap into the coveted third screen by providing these instant discounts.

The consumer appeal is obvious. Seth Godin tells marketers that coupons are also “trivially easy to test, track and practically free to distribute.” They give retailers a lot more flexibility than the printed coupons in the Sunday circulars.

But mobile phone coupons feel like an old approach bolted onto a new media. You have to show the cashier your coupon code in Bath & Body’s current model. Hopefully as mobile phone utility increases, it will become a bit more intuitive to the device.

Continue reading "“Do You Have Any Coupons?”"

Posted by Kevin Dugan at 11:31 PM | 3 Comments

The Fear of Getting Acquired!

This weekend, I was at a few engineering schools from India for our campus recruitment trip. Being a startup, one of the things that we covered in our presentation was general awareness and education about startups - explaining the pros and cons of somebody starting a career by joining a startup in general. As expected, we were one of the few startups who made campus trips. There is a need for a lot of education regarding startups and it has to happen at times other than the recruitment.

We focused a lot on the fact that innovation in the world of Web 2.0 and web-applications is particularly happening in the nooks and corners and the big companies are playing catch-up by mostly acquiring the same startups. What startled me was the fact that amongst the people who had the startup bent of mind and wanted to join startups had a fear - fear of the company getting acquired! The fact that everybody makes tons of money whenever such thing happened didn't seem to satisfy them - they were more concerned on what happens to the same innovation that was happeneing when the company was small.

Continue reading "The Fear of Getting Acquired!"

Posted by Ashish Kumar at 10:57 PM | 3 Comments

Do you Have a Coach Yet?

The business and life coaching industry has skyrocketed in size over the past seven years. Places like Coach U and the ICF are cranking out coaches faster than business schools used to produce MBA's. According to Coach U, companies like IBM and Ernst & Young are even creating corporate coaches.

Is it snake oil or real? I'm sure, like most 'growth industries' there are legitimate players, but many more under-qualified wanna-be's that can't function, so they 'coach'. I'll never forget the time one of my employers brought in a coach for a senior executive, then later hired that coach (who knew the deepest fears and secrets of the coached exec). The coach turned VP then proceeded to alienate everyone he came in contact with -- he was abrasive, condescending and generally not nice to work with. He was let go a few months into the mistake.

I've always been curious what went on behind those closed doors in my prior corporate life when 'at risk' executives were paired with an executive coach. More often than once, I would be interviewed by these coaches regarding my boss' or my co-workers management style. And more often than once, I saw executives depart soon after these coaching assignments were completed.

So it was with great apprehension that I've just undertaken my personal search for a 'business coach' to help me regain focus and take my own business to a higher level....

Continue reading "Do you Have a Coach Yet?"

Posted by Michael Docherty at 10:55 PM | 2 Comments

Everyone an Economic Hitman

Craig's post from yesterday - the one calling out nonprofits that front corporate interests - suggests a prickly challenge for nonprofits. How does a nonprofit articulate a corporate relationship?

"Fronting", has been a reliable practice for governments and corporations. For reference see John Perkins' Confessions of An Economic Hitman and The Cultural Cold War.

From the nonprofit side, the worry is "co-option".

It seems this is a place for "transparency", but I don't know what that word means anymore.

That aside, I am interested in nonprofits that use different means to tell their story. Better yet in the first person voice of a beneficiary. The sharing can get muddied by weasel words like "engagement", but like good pizza ... you know when you taste it.

So when I read that TechSoup is helping nonprofits explore Second Life - where a representation of a Darfuri refugee camp added a new layer of concerned and activated citizens, I see a whole new world where nonprofits embrace having their story told by everyone in their area of concern.

How would you like to tell the story of the nonprofits you support?

Posted by Peter Rees at 10:29 PM | Add Comment

Are Our Expectations of Social Software Too High?

Are our expectations of social software too high? And as a corollary, are our expectations of ourselves and software users too low?

Even some of the seemingly simplest applications - 43 Things, LinkedIn, WordPress, et al., still present challenges for the less-than-tech-savvy. But perhaps even more importantly, making effective business use of these tools seems to present a challenge for even some of the most tech-savvy.

Why is this? And what can we do about it?

Continue reading "Are Our Expectations of Social Software Too High?"

Posted by at 10:06 PM | 2 Comments

When Customers Create Your Assets

If someone, in 1850, had told PT Barnum that they had a system in which customers worked long hours in their spare time to create the substance of a product which they then gave freely to a business which packaged it and sold it back to them, he might have said "Poppycock!". Surely, even the greatest huckster of all time would see this for the impossibility that it is. And yet, this is the world that we live in, and the economic climate that we are doing business in. Understanding how to harness this grassroots power of value creation is key to survival in the new marketplace created by the information ubiquity of the Internet.

Continue reading "When Customers Create Your Assets"

Posted by Dominic Muren at 9:27 PM | Add Comment

What We Know and Don't Know About the Workplace and Workforce of the Future

Whipping up a last-minute Blog Jam contribution, I quickly note the guidelines: my post must "relate to Fast Company's core themes of innovation, leadership, change, and business."

Fair enough. I normally blog about a wide variety work-related issues. My original focus on employment law has grown to include watching signs and predictions of change in the workplace, workforce, and nature and conditions of work -- trend-watching closely related to the three FC themes of innovation, change, and business.

And the fourth FC theme -- leadership? That's what happens when we chart a course that accommodates -- and capitalizes on -- the work trends, whether for a new or existing business, employees we manage, or our own careers.

As always, the nature and direction of change is terribly hard to grasp. Like economic indicators, work trends are often contradictory and confusing. So, to loosely quote Donald Rumsfeld, what are the "known knowns," and what are the "known unknowns" about major cross-industry trends in work-related change and innovation, and their impact on business?

Continue reading "What We Know and Don't Know About the Workplace and Workforce of the Future"

Posted by George Lenard at 8:29 PM | Add Comment

Missing TPS Reports Become International Incident

Given that the workplace is full of humans, there is then automatically an almost infinite number of ways in which a good intention can be misunderstood, causing reactions that can escalate, and triggering government agencies to be using international media to call for one's head within hours. One small radio station's management team is learning this the hard way.

BBC News recently reported that South African pop diva Unathi Nkayi, one of South Africa's best-known radio personalities, and colleague Cleo Meshoro were suspended from their jobs over a dispute about whether they should work on August 9, National Women's Day. The date has been observed as a public holiday in South Africa since 1994 and commemorates the 1956 national march of 20,000 women protesting apartheid.

The hubbub started when station management decreed - without consulting the staff - that on August 9, the day's programming would be all women DJs, giving the male DJs and staff the day off. According the station manager Bondo Ntuli, "We wanted to show that women are marginalised in this industry. We are the only station in South Africa that could put on a 24-hour line-up of women DJs." Not talking to staff before the announcement: mistake number one. The sentiment is admirable...but there was another perspective not considered: that of the women who had wanted to go to Pretoria for the celebrations.

Continue reading "Missing TPS Reports Become International Incident"

Posted by Jennifer Warwick at 8:21 PM | Add Comment

The Glass Ceiling vs. the Gray Ceiling

At a women's leadership conference last week, Sherry Lansing, former chair of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group, shared a story meant to encourage the women in attendance to keep on keepin' on.

Thirty years ago, she said, while she was president of 20th Century-Fox, the fledgling organization Women in Film gave her her first major award. In those days, a WIF meeting was lucky to get thirty attendees. Now, Lansing laughs, given the numbers of women working in the motion picture industry, "we can't find a stadium that can handle all of us!" Since those lonely early days, Lansing became so successful that there's now an award named after her.

Continue reading "The Glass Ceiling vs. the Gray Ceiling"

Posted by Jennifer Warwick at 7:24 PM | 2 Comments

Social Enterprise: A Journey to Emancipated Nonprofits

Living in Vancouver, a favourite pastime is counting the number of cargo ships in the harbour. It's a symbol of regional prosperity, global connection and a touchstone to a rich nautical heritage. All of which get reappraised when a story breaks about Vancouver being a portal for human trafficking.

My earlier post got me thinking about the limits of social enterprise and the lessons I've learned from an emerging social entrepreneur, John Berger.

Continue reading "Social Enterprise: A Journey to Emancipated Nonprofits"

Posted by Peter Rees at 7:15 PM | Add Comment

Geographic Arbitrage

So there I was, sitting in what seemed like my hundredth hotel room in six months, eating Olive Garden leftovers and staring glumly at my laptop. I had been sleeping in my own bed only about one week a month – non-consecutive nights, mind you – consulting my brains out to help pay the mortgage on our cute little house near the beach in Southern California.

My husband, who has a successful home-based business, was keeping himself busy in my absence by remodeling the kitchen – by himself. And about the time it hit me that we did not need to live near the beach because we never actually WENT to the beach (we burn), it hit him that we could sell our newly-kitchenated home for, well, way more than what we bought it for four years ago. We could become equity refugees.

At first, we weren’t sure if we were ready to jump on the trend, which I learned from Rich Karlgaard, author of Life 2.0, , was called geographic arbitrage (GeoArb, for those in the know). But we soon realized that all we needed for our work was high-speed internet access, cell phone service, and a reasonable commute to the airport. We’d make the same income, and cost of living would be much lower. We could, in fact, buy a home outright somewhere far from the over-priced coasts.

So where to go?

Continue reading "Geographic Arbitrage"

Posted by Jennifer Warwick at 6:56 PM | 5 Comments

Where There's a Will, There's a Social Enterprise.

One of the hallmarks of Fast Company is a "business not-as-usual" ethic.

I don't think anything captures that more than the exploration of social enterprise and the Social Capitalist awards - two examples that set Fast Company apart.

The range of expressions of social enterprise prompt debate/discussion locally and internationally. So it’s interesting to read a social enterprise reference coming out of the 16th International AIDS Conference.

According to the Globe and Mail, in the article Tiny grants, big hope in AIDS fight,

In the Mashuru area of Kenya, a single woman with HIV who had no source of income now runs a small general store, is self-sufficient and, most importantly, is eating properly, thanks to a $140 grant from World Vision.In the same region, a group of 15 women have used a $1,400 grant from the humanitarian organization to expand a small business of rearing goats for sale at market, using the added profit to care for HIV orphans and vulnerable children in their village.

...

Continue reading "Where There's a Will, There's a Social Enterprise."

Posted by Peter Rees at 6:18 PM | 1 Comment

Shopsin's: Authentic to the Core

"In his feature debut, noted artist, illustrator and video-director Mahurin celebrates one of his favorite restaurants -- Shopin's, a Greenwich Village institution. What emerges is a hilarious and heartfelt hymn to individuality, independence and idiosyncrasy -- not just in the kitchen, but in life."

Has anyone caught the documentary on Shopsin's by Matt Mahurin? It's called I Like Killing Flies.

The bug of Shopsin's was unrelenting. In the early '90s, a photographer directed me to the fly-filled restaurant where you could basically order whatever you wanted as long as they had the ingredients on the shelf. Shopsin's was definitely a business built on the love of others. It was not a place to go to feel loved as New Yorker magazine reported in 2002 , but it was addictive, confident. Certainly, inspiring. And filled with lots of lessons to take away.

Posted by Marie Tupot at 5:57 PM | Add Comment

Following the Green

One of the most obvious ways to shed light on how social networks function and how brands move along networks is to look at the Green Movement. It demonstrates the slow adaptation of “all brands green” as fostered by information moving through networks of individuals.

Too often, we forget that social networks are comprised of living human beings that function and morph across time and channels. The tools that bind these people are only tools that facilitate their existence. Thereby, a club is not a social network. MySpace is not a social network, nor is Facebook. Take away the structure of the tool and a network ever more real still exists.

An article in the July 31, 2006 issue of The Nation features a talk with Jerome Ringo, Chairman of the Board of the National Wildlife Federation. Until very recently, the green movement remained the realm of the well-to-do, started by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and company. Ringo wants to bring varying constituencies together across class and racial lines to build a broader and more powerful green movement. His chosen vehicle, besides the NWF, is the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor unions, environmental groups, business leaders and elected officials that advocates a massive green jobs and development program for the United States.

Continue reading "Following the Green"

Posted by Marie Tupot at 5:08 PM | Add Comment

Want a Better Staff? Try Following This Lead.

McKinney is an ad agency in Raleigh, NC that can't be ignored when it comes to retention and culture building. They live by their mantras and their dedication to living (figuratively) in the world of possibilty - nothing is impossible and when you truly believe in that concept, great things (ideas, products, innovations) grow.

I had the honor of being invited to a special Possibilities Day at McKinney recently where a speaker - Dr Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and co-author ofThe Art of Possibility - spoke for 2 hours. It was a life-altering session (check it out), and I am positive it carried a hefy price tag. But when your dedication to insuring all your 300 employees get exposed to something so dynamic and inspiring is true and real, you can't afford to not invest in your people. Ad agencies sell ideas and concepts; the product is subjective and needs to top the last order, every time, no matter what. Keeping the already amazing staff engaged and enthusiastic and consistently raising the bar is priceless. Get this man in front of your group, if it's at all possible.

Posted by Amy Hoover at 4:54 PM | Add Comment

Project Killer Phrases

I was working with a client recently, and one of the project managers explained, "Our project team is committed to trying to meet this schedule."

How can a team be committed to trying? When the schedule is nuts, or they know they can't meet it, or they don't know what to do, or any number of other causes that would prevent the team from meeting the schedule. In this case, the project team knew they could not complete the features in the requested schedule.

There are several project killer phrases. Here are some of my favorites:

Continue reading "Project Killer Phrases"

Posted by Johanna Rothman at 4:40 PM | Add Comment

Blogging for Business?

Nicolas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University wrote in the last issue of the new Yorker that blogs, useful and often times fun as they may be, have not yet risen "to the level of a journalistic culture rich enough to compete in a serious way with the old media--to function as a replacement rather than as an addendum."

Whether blogs are merely personal journals or real journalism is perhaps best left for a different board, one aspect of blogs is definitely of interest to Fast Company readers: business. To what extent do blogs and business mix?

In my own corner of the blogosphere, wine and food, the line has been blurring. Wineries are in many cases ensnarled by laws that prevent them from selling directly to consumers (although this is changing after a Supreme Court ruling last year) and have been either confused or reluctant to embrace the internet.

Continue reading "Blogging for Business?"

Posted by Tyler Colman at 4:16 PM | 7 Comments

Grassroots Innovation

Microsoft is the latest company to capitalize on the "customer-made"
trend. According to the Mercury News, any game enthusiast can now create video games for the Xbox 360 video console. 

 "(Microsoft) will make available a stripped-down version of its game development tools for $99. The XNA Game Studio Express software will have everything someone needs to make a working video game.... The strategy is part of a plan to make the Xbox 360 more attractive by putting consumers in control of the content, much the way that consumers are taking to grass-roots entertainment on YouTube or on their iPods..."

There's a lot being written about this trend that Trendwatching.com calls "Customer-Made," but larger companies have been slow to embrace the idea. According to Trendwatching, "tapping into the collective experiences, skills and ingenuity of hundreds of millions of consumers around the world is a complete departure from the inward looking, producer- versus-consumer innovation model so common to corporations around the world."

Continue reading "Grassroots Innovation"

Posted by Jennifer Rice at 3:44 PM | Add Comment

How You Can Investigate Congressional Malpractice

The folks at the Sunlight Foundation are pioneering new ways for ordinary people to figure out bad politics, first Congresspedia, like Wikipedia for Congress.

Today, they announce a project where bloggers and good governemnt types can work together to expose corruption in the earmarks process. They providing a means where you can help figure out suspicious spending... and then confront politicians regarding that spending.

They're also doing so using a great mashup of Google maps with a database of spending.

This has significance beyond exposing a little corruption, it's a next step in a process where professional and citizen journalists work together to expose bad guys.

Please check it out here

Posted by Craig Newmark at 3:10 PM | Add Comment

How Good Is the Idea of Bootstrapping a Business?

Last week, I was having a telephonic conversation with somebody from one of India's most popular business magazine. The talk was about startups in general and drifted to lack of seed capital for India based startups. One question he asked me was "Would you have taken investment if it was easily available?"

(I am a co-founder of a startup based out of India and have bootstrapped the business using personal funding and by servicing the clients. We, deliberately, haven't tried raising any money so far.)

I said "No" - "I think it's best to bootstrap a business and not go for seed funding if it can be avoided". Of course, there are businesses which cannot be bootstrapped at all but it should be avoided as much as possible.

Let me present my case with the points below:

Continue reading "How Good Is the Idea of Bootstrapping a Business?"

Posted by Ashish Kumar at 2:36 PM | 5 Comments

Blogs: The Other Job Board

Job sites are continually trying to find ways to get in front of passive candidates. Ya' know, the most desirable prospects who already have a job. Doing so helps job boards become more desirable to employers (their clients).

Partnering with sites whose primary reason for existence isn't job content is typically a pretty effective way to achieve this objective. Historically, the most popular way to do this would be to 'power' a career center for an association site, for example. Other targets for job sites to partner with include portal sites, local sites, community sites, etc.

One of the most notable partnerships recently created includes vertical job search engine Simply Hired adding their job content to MySpace. If you're looking to get your jobs in front of the 16-to-22-year-old demographic, this is probably a great thing.

Now, blogs are "what's cool" in the quest for the passive job seeker.

Continue reading "Blogs: The Other Job Board"

Posted by Joel Cheesman at 2:10 PM | 5 Comments

Security Changes Leading to Increase in Telecommuting?

Some Recommendations for Making it Work

I’m not an advocate of changing your lifestyle due to the fear of attack. So now I can’t bring my lip gloss and big bottle of water on flights. I’m already feeling a little chapped, but I will get over it. Fashion and hydration be damned.

Having said that, anything that makes air travel less convenient, less comfortable, less expedient…well, it will cause people to seek out alternatives. Some may try travel by train but having done that once, I can attest to the fact that convenient, comfy and speedy, it is not (frankly, it was downright depressing and I’ll never do it again).

I’m not one for frivolous work trips (there don’t even have to be snakes on the plane for me to want to take a pass). Each time, I assess the need to actually travel. If I don’t need to be there then I don’t need to be there. Some people in other occupations, though, live the life of the road warrior. They rack up the frequent flyer miles and know the exact spot to relax in all the major airports. But given the security changes and the technology available today, I am wondering if all that travel is really necessary and if some companies might be evaluating some remote work arrangements.

As someone who works quite a bit from home (because I can, not because I need to), I can offer some pointers to people that are exploring telecommuting. I was hesitant at first, partly because I live close to the office (is it justified?), it blended at-home Heather with working Heather (would I be productive?), and it was different (how would I do it?). Having gotten over all that, I’ll share what I learned:

Continue reading "Security Changes Leading to Increase in Telecommuting?"

Posted by Heather Hamilton at 1:25 PM | Add Comment

Lame Language

From the Department of Someone Should Have Caught This:

Have you noticed what the "puffer" machine many airports are now using says to you right before the test runs? Firing Jets. Seems like the wrong choice of words for an airport security device.

We've long known that known that language is important, most recently due to the attention paid to George Lakoff's take on politicians framing issues.

When was the last time you did an audit of language use in your organization's efforts? How are you using language to differentiate your goods and services? What verbiage might more clearly communicate your intended meaning and avoid using obscure jargon.

Posted by Jeffrey Cufaude at 12:25 PM | 1 Comment

Innovation: Frozen Spam, Nothing Is Worthless

Want to see what frozen spam looks like? Visit Alex Dragulescu's Spam Architecture project. He's built a program that uses junk email as input and generates three-dimensional architectural models based on keywords and patterns in the spam. They're quite beautiful. High-quality innovation comes from solving people's problems. Really fabulous innovation comes from solving problems no-one knew they had and using materials no-one knew were useful. (via City of Sound and Bldg Blog)

Posted by Russell Davies at 12:12 PM | Add Comment

Social Networking: A Status Report

It's been a few years now since two business magazines named Social Networking Applications the Technology of the Year. I thought it might be worthwhile recapping how far we've come since then, and trying to understand why we haven't come further.

Continue reading "Social Networking: A Status Report"

Posted by Dave Pollard at 11:53 AM | 3 Comments

The Shop Around the Corner (and in Your Mailbox, on Your iTunes...)

Lately I've been fascinated by the way design stores (online and brick and mortar) have been capitalizing on the blog, podcast and friendly video interview. Most design bloggers I know find these new techonologies helpful in connecting with their audience, while creating a sense of rapport and community with their readers. The podcast in particular was a big step for design blogs as we stepped away from the safety of our laptop anonymity and introduced our readers to our voices and, in the case of video interviews or segments, our faces. Most blog editors I spoke with who've introduced these features find it increases readers' trust of the author and connection with their writing. However, lately bloggers aren't the only one picking up on how showing your face, voice and even your hip choice in clothing can be valuable in strengthening one's sense of brand.

Continue reading "The Shop Around the Corner (and in Your Mailbox, on Your iTunes...)"

Posted by Grace Bonney at 11:47 AM | Add Comment

Reading, Writing & Tampax?

Over at Ypulse, I'm a fairly vocal critic of marketing to kids or teens in schools. Call me a radical, but I believe that the Chinese wall that exists between editorial and advertising in media should also exist between marketing and education in schools. I've posted about how I think Channel One should become a non-profit and about advertising on schoolbuses and in high school newspapers. This generation of youth has been marketed to more than any other -- they are "branded" as is almost all of the media and entertainment they consume.

At the same time, I believe that companies can and should play a role in supporting our terribly under-funded public education system. So when I read this article in Brand Week about P&G's promotional program for Tampax where they send reps into schools to talk to girls about puberty and hygiene to girls, I thought, "Wow. Important topic. One P&G should support, just not in this way." What way do I mean?

From the article:

"In June, a P&G representative was invited by a parent coordinator to the public school as part of a Tampax-sponsored national program for middle school girls called “Feeling Good: More about you.”

A group of about 120 seventh grade girls sat in the auditorium at Sunset Park Prep and listened to a P&G rep talk about puberty and periods. At the end of it, the girls were given gift bags that included samples of Tampax tampons and Always sanitary pads, according to the company and teachers who were present.

For P&G, the visit was just one part of a nationwide brand-promotion strategy for seventh graders that the company has been running since buying the Tampax brand in the late 1990s. The program reached 400,000 girls last year, the company said."

Here's how I think P&G could do this the right way:

Continue reading "Reading, Writing & Tampax?"

Posted by Anastasia Goodstein at 10:55 AM | 2 Comments

In Today's Papers

Pieces and articles worth reading:

• Apple Challenges Products That Include the Word "Pod"
• Crazy Morning Rites Help Some Get Primed for a Day in the Office
• Dell Will Recall Batteries in PC's
• Google to Host Small Business Coupons
• New York Finds out Why Parking Fines Were Ignored
• On Pit Row, It's First and Tire Change
• Sari-Wearing Chief Is No Publicity Stunt for PepsiCo
• This Muslim Rocker Preaches Tolerance to a Strong Drumbeat
• Video Games: A Force for Good?

Posted by Heath Row at 10:34 AM | Add Comment

Piggyback on Saddleback | part three

*** This is Post #3 in the series (links to Post #1 and Post #2) ***

We are concluding the series on the “Eight Myths About Growing Businesses” by mashing-up Rick Warren’s THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN CHURCH with my TRIBAL KNOWLEDGE.

Eight Myths About Growing Businesses

Myth 5 | If you are dedicated enough, your business will grow.
Skill, not just dedication, will bring forth business growth. It is a case of working smarter, not harder. The reason Steve Jobs of Apple is so effective in creating and marketing new products is because he is skilled at it.

Myth 6 | There is one secret key to growing a business.
There is more than one way to grow a business. Some businesses grow by appealing to a mass audience; others grow by appealing to niche audiences. Some businesses grow by using low prices; others grow by using high prices. Some growing businesses spend millions on advertising campaigns; others have never used advertising campaigns. It takes all kinds of businesses to appeal to all kinds of customers. If every business was just like every other business, they’d only reach a small group of customers.

Myth 7 | The only expectation a growing business can have its customers is their patronage.
Not only do growing businesses expect customers’ patronage, they also expect customers to tell their friends and family about the businesses they patronize. The fruit of a customer is another customer.

Myth 8 | Small businesses can’t learn from big businesses
Any business can learn principles from another like-minded business. One cannot grow a business trying to mimic another business. However, one can grow a business by using principles that another business discovered and then filtering those principles through the personality and cultural context of your business.

[NOTE: portions of this posting were lifted and mashed-up from Rick Warren’s THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN CHURCH.]

Posted by John Moore at 10:12 AM | Add Comment

Should Inventing the Web Net You a Nobel?

In the UK, we’re rightly been celebrating the 15th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web, by one of our more modest geniuses, Tim Berners-Lee. As the Observer’s excellent net correspondent John McNaughton notes, “these are early days. We can no more envisage the long-term implications of what has happened than dear old Gutenberg could.” Right from the start, Fast Company has been alive to how far the Net unsettles, accelerates and transforms organisations. (see this article from Issue 1, ‘Do You Live in Netscape Time?’, October 1995)

Yet what always fascinates me about the web is the deep and enduring truth about human nature that its developments keep revealing. As Lawrence Lessig so crisply put it, the web is an ‘innovation commons’ – an accessible and robust collective infrastructure, which nevertheless allows extraordinary ingenuity and diverse energy to be expressed within it. In that sense, it’s always been more like a constitution, or a playground, than a piece of software. Much of the challenge to conventional business models that the Net brings is about coping with those collective energies.

The best story on that recently is the way that veteran radical UK rocker Billy Bragg compelled MySpace to change its copyright rules on material played on its websites. Even the great Rupert Murdoch, the arch-commoditizer, had to recognise the non-proprietorial reality of the ‘commons’ that allows musical communities to develop on the internet.

What’s so exciting about this moment is that great and grand theorists are rising up – just like they did in my own country, Scotland, as the eighteenth century Enlightement faced the industrial revolution – to provide frameworks for all this often bewildering activity. Yochai Benkler’s extraordinary The Wealth of Networks – a clear reference to Adam Smiths’ The Wealth of Nations – helpfully identifies ‘social production’ (the digital gamut from open source to Web 2.0), to sit along side market and state, as a new way of producing and allocating resources.

These are shifts in economic and social structure as momentous as any there have been over the last three hundred years. And there’s no way they could have emerged without that open-minded scholar devising his ‘play space’ in 1993. How long before Berners-Lee gets his Nobel?

Pat Kane @ The Play Ethic

Posted by Pat Kane at 9:30 AM | 1 Comment

Your Most Valuable Asset

Recruiting, hiring, and retaining the best people in your company's field is often only lip service in my experience. I run a specialized niche recruiting firm and witness the good, the bad, and the ugly of hiring practices on a daily basis - and have for 10 years. (They're mostly ugly)

So when 2 clients show exceptional fortitude and commitment in the War for Talent, it's noticed.

Crispin, Porter + Bogusky is arguably the hottest ad agency in the country at the moment. With their HQ in Miami, FL they must relocate a majority of their hires. About a year ago they announced the opening of a 2nd office in Boulder, CO. The brilliance in this move was unmistakable - life on Miami Beach is certainly not for all, and their standards require them to hire only talented, clever, dedicated professionals - nothing less. A 2nd location in a different region was pure genius. That office is now operating and candidates often have a choice as to which location they'll work from during the recruitment process. These guys have figured out a lot about marketing, and even more about recruitment. (For a snapshot, check this out: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/special_packages/business_monday/13844261.htm)

Our 2nd client with a truly innovative practice is McKinney in Raleigh, NC. Stay tuned for their approach to culture building and retention.

Posted by Amy Hoover at 9:19 AM | 2 Comments

Lodestars of Breakthrough Success

Nothing of much significance has ever been achieved, and nothing of much value has ever been created, that wasn't, at some time the point of someone's single-minded focus, the object of someone's intense curiosity, the subject of someone's deep passion, and the product of someone's enduring courage.

Think of any significant achievement, discovery, invention or development in modern history: setting foot on the Moon, ending apartheid, transplanting a human heart, cleaning the environment.

Think of composing a symphony or staring down a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square or translating the Bible or climbing Mount Everest or beating cancer and then winning the Tour de France seven years straight.

In business, think of Lee Iacocca as he saved Chrysler, or Sam Walton as he built a chain of discount stores, or a couple of obscure college dropouts as they set up Microsoft and took it public. Think of Google. Think of eBay.

Could any of these things, or anything else that rises to their level, have happened without this laser-like focus, this bold curiosity, this all-consuming passion, and this persevering courage?

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Posted by Thomas Lee at 7:26 AM | Add Comment

And Now, "Wellness" Malls in India

They're already buying groceries, household goods, electronics and clothes from his stores. So what does Kishore Biyani - one of India's largest and most successful retail chain owners wish to do next? Sell them health and beauty services under the same roof.

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Posted by Rashmi Bansai at 12:57 AM | 5 Comments

Data: Why Google is a Genius and a Fool

Over and over, we are told that we live in an information age. Gone are the days of brutish and greasy labor amid piles of steel. Instead, we are now masters of the bit and byte, moving mountains of data every nanosecond (just the fact that you know what a nanosecond is says quite a bit about our situation). But while our top executives imagine that they are delicately operating surgeons, slicing these data piles with infinite grace to create new value as if from thin air, the reality is often that we are still laborers staggering under the weight and awkwardness of our information. There is little grace. Our industrialist yearnings for bigger, louder, smellier factories have lead us to crave and build bigger, more all encompassing data mining systems. This is folly. Like surgery, it is the quality, rather than the quantity of the cut, which makes a successful operation. For contrast, witness a subtle swede and a brute-force big G.

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Posted by Dominic Muren at 12:13 AM | Add Comment

August 14, 2006

Honesty and Astroturf in a Meritocracy

Craig Newmark's post on astroturfing and Nick Aster's follow-up post remind me of the famous New Yorker cartoon stating "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."

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Posted by Kevin Dugan at 11:39 PM | 1 Comment

Consumer Expectations For Offline and Online Retail

It's interesting how many e-shops have been emulating physical store layout by using familiar naming and organizational metaphors -- aisles, shelves, departments, shopping carts. This, of course, is done to match expectations of customers who are used to shop in the brick-and-mortar world.

The flip side is also worth exploring: while doing something online users must be developing new expectations for the activity's offline equivalent.

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Posted by Ilya Vedrashko at 11:17 PM | 4 Comments

Innovation or Customer Need: Chicken or Egg

In response to an earlier post today, "Innovation: Start with the Customer?"... I'm a fan of Dave Pollard and his thoughts on innovation. I felt compelled to respond though to his post on "where innovation must start". I often get asked this same question, and I don't think it's even the right question. I'd like to paraphrase from one of my own blog posts at innovation.net in reponding to Dave's point that innovation must always start with the customer...

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Posted by Michael Docherty at 10:55 PM | Add Comment

Is Misleading the Public Really Profitable?

There shouldn’t be a choice between honest public relations and outright skewing of the truth for short-term gain, but as we know from never ending battles with tobacco companies, the latter is all too often common practice.

Enter the issue of global warming. Or, as I prefer to call it, global weirding, since we’re not really sure whether we’re heading for a tinderbox or an ice age. Despite that uncertainty, there’s simply no question that our rampant greenhouse gas emissions (among other things) are causing havoc on Earth’s fragile ecosystems – to our peril. There’s also no debate that, even if Armageddon is not nigh, the majority of proactive steps a company can take to reduce their emissions are (surprise!) ultimately profitable.

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Posted by Nick Aster at 10:53 PM | Add Comment

What's Eating the Food Industry?

Ad Age reports that the restaurant business is in its "worst slump since '91.” Casual dining chains and independent restaurants are taking the biggest hit and analysts are wondering if this is a long- or short-term trend for the $331 billion industry.

One possible reason behind the decline is that U.S. consumers need new choices in how they get their meals. Census data shows 60 percent of U.S. households have no children. Yet restaurants still cater primarily to two-parent households with children. Even grocery sales are declining steadily as the family