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Today's Best Companies are Horizontally Integrated - Sohrab Vossoughi

by Sohrab Vossoughi | 11:00 AM December 14, 2012 In big companies, management teams focus on achieving the right level of vertical integration. The pendulum has swung from Henry Ford's buying ships and railroads—and even a rubber plantation in Brazil to ensure his supply of tires—to Boeing's radical outsourcing of Dreamliner components, and more recently, back to greater ownership of upstream and downstream assets by companies as different as Pepsi and Oracle . http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/12/todays_best_companies_are_hori.html
http://biznik.com/articles/sales-101-features-vs-benefits I think that everyone who is a part of Biznik is either involved in business, or runs their own business. Either way everyone is looking to build relationships so we can fulfill the bottom line and make sales. One major component of successful sales process boils down to your product or service’s Features and Benefits. When you are looking to sell your product or service… you need to talk about the features but you need to sell the benefits.

Sales 101: Features VS Benefits - Marketing & Sales

http://www.rue89.com/rue69/2012/03/30/dis-moi-comment-tu-fais-lamour-je-te-dirai-ce-que-tu-votes-230695

Dis-moi comment tu fais l’amour, je te dirai pour qui tu votes | Rue69

Capture d’écran du site Droite rencontre A paraître ce vendredi dans le magazine Hot Vidéo , une enquête Ifop sonde les slips et les culottes des électeurs. Comment fait-on l’amour selon que l’on est de gauche ou de droite, vert ou rouge, bleu ou rose ? L’échantillon des sondés est représentatif de la population française âgée de 18 ans et plus, 1 411 personnes ont été sollicitées pour sortir du mystère. Les résultats sont plutôt drôles et pas si loin des clichés. A droite, on a moins de partenaires dans une vie

How to measure mental availability | How Brands Grow

http://marketinglawsofgrowth.com/blog_files/how_to_measure_mental_availability.html Dr Jenni Romaniuk and I developed the concept we originally called Brand Salience as "the propensity of the brand to be noticed or come to mind in buying situations". So how do we think this construct should be measured ? Mental availability is cue dependent, it is based on the memories associated with the brand, and so different cues have different tendency to elicit the brand. To measure salience we need to get a handle on these cues.
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2007/Romergrowth.html

Paul Romer, An Interview with Paul Romer on Economic Growth

R uss Roberts: Paul, let's start by talking about the importance of growth as you do in your article for the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics . You have an article there, "Economic Growth." Why do small changes in growth rates matter? What's important about that? Paul Romer: This is a classic application of the power of compounding, that if you have a slightly higher growth rate, as growth rates compound over many years, it leads to dramatically higher levels of income. Paul Romer: For example, at 2.1 percent rate of growth per year, income per capita in a nation can increase by a factor of about 8 over 100 years.
http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/customer_experience_index%2C_2007/q/id/43877/t/2

The Customer Experience Index, 2007

Forrester asked nearly 5,000 consumers about their interactions with a variety of companies, gauging the usefulness, usability, and enjoyability of those experiences. Based on these consumer responses, we calculated the Customer Experience Index for 112 firms in nine different industries. Led by Costco, Borders, and Barnes & Noble, retailers dominated the top of the rankings.
http://admablog.com/2011/10/18/how-can-brand-advocates-guide-businesses-through-the-new-media-maze/ by MIKE HICKINBOTHAM, Head of New Media, TELSTRA New media is providing corporations the opportunity to reassess commonly accepted marketing practices. At the top of my list is the marketing/purchase funnel. According to Wikipedia, the marketing/purchase funnel was developed in 1898 . The marketing/purchase funnel suggests to marketers that a customer gets pushed along a purchase path that starts at ‘awareness’ and ends at ‘purchase’.

How can brand advocates guide businesses through the new media maze? | ADMA Blog

Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin was not as haphazard as it may have appeared. Innovation comes from deliberate processes I recently met a bright young policymaker on the local government graduate development programme. I was in full flow explaining the important role that design will play in creating the public services of the future when he interrupted, politely but firmly, and asked: "So what do you mean by design?" It's a good question.

What does it mean to design public services? | Public Leaders Network | Guardian Professional

http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-leaders-network/blog/2011/sep/01/design-public-services

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Return On Customer Experience Investments

In some business circles, getting people to believe in a return on customer experience investments is a lot like getting them to acknowledge the existence of Santa Claus. Admittedly, it can be difficult to quantify a specific profit or revenue impact from some types of experience enhancers—more robust "voice of the customer" programs, more polished customer statements, better trained front-line personnel, streamlined customer touchpoints, a more user-friendly website, etc. The financials surrounding such initiatives are much less precise than those of hard-dollar initiatives, like the renegotiation of real estate leases or the consolidation of corporate functions. Of course, that doesn't mean customer experience investments have any less of a compelling return than these other endeavors. http://www.customerthink.com/article/return_on_customer_experience_investments
I recently walked into a packed hall of 200 Parsons students for an event called “Start Something--Why Creatives Need to Become Entrepreneurs,” organized by the NYCreative Interns group. Four women entrepreneurs, including Laurel Touby, the founder of Mediabistro, were up front, talking about their experiences of launching their respective businesses. The incredible energy in the room highlighted an emerging trend--the headlong crash of creativity into capitalism to forge a startup model for the future. In this new model, designers drive the force of American entrepreneurialism. This business model is a cause for true optimism. http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665120/designers-are-the-new-drivers-of-american-entrepreneurialism

Designers Are The New Drivers Of American Entrepreneurialism | Co. Design

Fast Company's FU to User Centered Design - this is the flooz

First lemme say that I really enjoyed Don Norman's talk on the Research Practice Gulf that is out there. I totally get it and understand it, and for the most part agree with it. Fast Company seems to have jumped on the general "user centered design is crap" bandwagon and cranked out its own spin on it via this article I read today .

Forrester’s 2007 Customer Experience Rankings

Let me start by saying congratulations to the company that received the #1 ranking in Forrester’s 2007 Customer Experience Index ( CxPi )… Forrester’s 2007 Customer Experience Index The 2007 CxPi ranks 112 firms across 9 industries: Banks, Credit Card Providers, Health Plans, Insurance Firms, Internet Service Providers, Investment Firms, Retailers, TV Service Providers, Wireless Phone Carriers.