I’m LinkedIn. I’ve got friends on Facebook. I tweet. Yo, I got stooopid Klout! Look at me! I’m connected!
And so are you and lots of other things, like ecosystems, molecules, our bodies’ metabolisms, the list goes on. Quantum physicists believe that all matter and energy is linked in strange ways and create mind-numbing field equations to explain how.
We in the marketing world often fall into the trap of thinking about social networks purely in terms of social media and miss the big picture. Network science is explaining large swaths of mysterious phenomena that have eluded us for decades, even centuries. That’s good news for marketers. These new insights are about to revolutionize our field.
read more…
The barbarians are at the gate! We are on an burning platform in the ocean! This is no time for incrementalism, we need radical change!
We hear this stuff a lot. It’s become the Henny Youngman one-liner for the digital age. A rousing call for sound and fury… signifying nothing.
The truth is that radical change rarely works. It is neither strategy nor action, but rather cry of desperation. It’s a sign that someone who hasn’t been thinking seriously now yearns to be taken seriously. Most of all, it’s an indication that the worst is still yet to come. Here’s why and what you can do about it.
read more…
The world is full of ideas, but very few good ones. As an old saying goes, “ideas are like assholes, everybody’s got one and they’re usually full of shit.” They are, however, important.
Great ones can change the world. Ideas, if we nurture them, can become dreams, transform the mundane into the sublime and poverty into prosperity. Life would be exceedingly boring without ideas.
Yet it’s not enough to have a a flash of insight or a brainstorm. A worthy idea needs to be nurtured and developed, rethought and reworked, often thrown away and picked back up again. There’s a substantive difference between a passing fancy and groundbreaking concept. It is our approach to ideas that makes that difference.
read more…
When I was a kid, my parents chided me for not knowing the value of a dollar. To them, that was a sign that I was spoiled and unable to understand or accept responsibility. This, they told me, was very, very bad.
Okay guys, I’ll cop to all the other misbehavior, but not this one. I still don’t know the true value of a dollar and don’t think anyone else does either.
In fact, the more I’ve look into it, the more elusive value is as a concept. Certainly, we can see prices fluctuate by the minute on Wall Street, but it goes much deeper than that. We’ve evolved for survival, not optimization and that has left our emotional circuitry with some funny glitches when it comes to dealing with modern society.
read more…
Entrepreneurs are a special breed. They’re fearless, full of ideas and energy, fun and inspiring to work with.
Unfortunately, they often self destruct and most have trouble making the transition from start-up to serious enterprise. Investors and employees are alienated, companies falter and nobody ends up happy.
Some people think that it’s just the nature of the beast, that at some point a company founder should step down and let “adult supervision” take over. I disagree. Entrepreneurs represent the heart and soul of the companies that they create and when they leave, something important is forever lost. There are, however, some things they need to know.
read more…
“Science” is a word that gets thrown around a lot. We hear that “scientists say” so and so and then hear later that other scientists say something totally different.
We often ask for “scientific proof” and hucksters are always happy to provide “studies” to support their claims. Unfortunately, much of what is passed of as science is really pseudoscience.
Just because someone in a white lab coat or with an alphabet soup of letters behind his name says something doesn’t make it true and it certainly doesn’t make it science. It gets worse when the term is invoked in relation to a business function, especially marketing. So how can we tell the difference between science and pseudoscience? Here’s a guide:
read more…
There’s probably nothing that’s more likely to make ordinarily sober faced businesspeople wax poetic than the word “brand.” Even finance guys have been known to break out in sonnet.
That’s because brands are conceptual. They allow us to dream, to think of things other than logistics and pricing and firing people. Reflecting on brands help us escape from the drudgery of work.
However, it’s important to remember that brands are quantifiable financial assets, just like buildings, machinery and oil wells. Moreover, they are incredibly valuable assets, often accounting for more than half the value of a business, so we need to take them very seriously. Here’s four things you should know about brand value and how to increase it.
read more…
Everybody knows the Mona Lisa. She’s iconic; as much of a symbol of art as art itself. Housed in Paris but reproduced everywhere, there is probably nothing else on earth that so thoroughly fuses the ridiculous and the sublime as the Mona Lisa.
We usually view her in simulated form, but, when seen at the Louvre, up close and in person, she takes on a completely new significance. It seems as if every brushstroke is infused with essence and meaning.
The centuries old masterpiece and the digitized (and often satirized) versions stand side by side in our minds eye. The digital Mona Lisa, of course, is not made up of brushstrokes, but code and, as we shall see, that makes all the difference.
read more…
I hate numbers! They’re confusing, hard to keep track of and make my eyes water if I look at them too long. Ugh!
Nevertheless, people insist on throwing them around. They like to talk about them, crunch them, live and die by them, put lots of them in PowerPoint slides and generally find ways to torture me with them.
But I’ve found a way to fight back! I beat them at their own game. How do I do it? I cheat. Hah! There’s really no reason to be oppressed by numbers if you can find simple ways to work around them. In fact, you can win the numbers game if you simply refuse to play it fairly. With that in mind, here’s a few of my favorite math hacks.
read more…
Some time ago, I wrote a post about the bureaucracy myth. My point was that whenever a company starts to have problems, the blame tends to be laid unfairly on “bureaucrats” rather than on management.
I got passionate responses, some in the comments section, but especially on social media.
Some were supportive, others derisive, but I still stand by the original point that blaming bureaucrats for systemic problems is a cop-out. One comment by a former government bureaucrat, however, helped me to see the problem in a new light. The reason that “bureaucrats” tend to be nameless and faceless is because they are, in reality, ourselves.
read more…
