Brands Should Learn to Give Up Some Control - Grant McCracken. By Grant McCracken | 10:00 AM January 25, 2013 Portlandia (Fridays, 10:00, IFC) has started its third season. Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live) and Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney) continue to search the city for satiric targets. And because satiric targets are one of Portland’s chief exports, the comedic opportunities are many: Bed and Breakfasts, knitting, pickling — and organic deodorant: And feminist bookstores: Since the satirical targets on Portlandia are many, it’s inevitable that Fred and Carrie will write a piece on Subaru.
After all, Subaru is the standard automobile choice for Portland. Portlandians bought nearly 2% of Subarus in the United States in 2008, even though they represent less that 1% of the US population. The Subaru is just so very Portland. This connection is not lost on Subaru. How awkward. “But of course they must bite the hand that feeds them,” the new marketing handbook says. After all, we’re in the throes of a revolution in branding. Don't Make Assumptions About the Next Generation; Invest in It - Col. Eric G. Kail. Treat Everything as a Case Study - Robert Plant.
By Robert Plant | 10:00 AM January 30, 2013 I was driving past a Volkswagen dealer during a 15-hour drive from Miami to New Orleans when my 9- and 10-year-old kids excitedly pointed out the old Beetle that was parked alongside a row of brand-new models. Ah, yes, I said, a clear case of brand reinforcement through product differentiation: The odd thing stands out. At another point in the trip, their $8 headsets broke at the plug. We analyzed this as a case of defective design, probably the result of poor cost analysis.
The sight of gas pumps whose nozzles were covered with bags was a case of poor demand forecasting within the supply chain. Then we got talking about the odometer on my Nissan Pathfinder: Is a car that can go 300,000 miles a case of over-engineering or TQM excellence? It might be obvious by now that I had been playing HBR podcasts practically nonstop on that journey. A colleague was setting up a PowerPoint presentation at work. Often, the questions lead to debates. Maybe. The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies 2013 | Most Innovative Companies 2013. The People Who Practice Everyday, Everywhere Innovation - Polly LaBarre. By Polly LaBarre | 1:00 PM January 28, 2013 As human beings, we are born with a creative impulse, with an innate desire to use our imagination to better the world around us.
Yet, all too often, our organizations end up being less innovative than the people within them. The dozens of in-the-trenches innovators who responded to our Innovating Innovation Challenge embody the first assertion and are working relentlessly and fearlessly to overturn the second. We asked for real-world case studies and bold new ideas that will help us make innovation a deep-rooted, systematic competence in every kind of organization. In other words, how do we make innovation more of a natural act and less of a happy accident? Of course, that's easier said than done. We received more than 140 entries from a diverse group of thinkers, practitioners and experimenters from around the world in pursuit of that goal. Keeping the Start-Up Spirit Alive at Red Gate Story by Alice Chapman, Red Gate Software.
Are Socially Savvy Employees Underutilized? Two papers this week got me thinking about the revolutionary power of technology in the workplace. One paper, “Capitalism Goes Social, or How Technology Will Enable the 99% to Change Your Business Forever” published by analyst house Gartner predicts that social media will cause the top-down hierarchical model of management to be replaced by a “social capitalist” model within the next decade.
Another paper from Info-Tech describes the competitive advantages for businesses to encourage employees to champion tools from outside of the IT infrastructure. Despite the unrealistic notion that social media will change the workplace into a egalitarian body, as I thought about the Gartner paper I couldn’t help feeling that there is a sliver of truth in their conclusion. And the Info-Tech paper articulates how a social-media enabled corporate culture could happen. (Disclosure: I am speaking of the abstract and press release for the Gartner paper as the actual report costs $2000 to buy). Photo Credit. The best digital campaigns of 2012.
Get Ahead With a Mentor Who Scares You - Jodi Glickman. By Jodi Glickman | 9:18 AM March 19, 2012 “You’re the best!” The four American Idol contestants cried to their voice coach Patty after narrowly escaping elimination, “We couldn’t have done it without you!” As they celebrated, I couldn’t help but notice that their hero was the same irascible, no-holds-barred woman who had been shown yelling and screaming at the same contestants just minutes earlier, leaving her devastated charges in tears.
With the group’s success, Patty’s tough-love approach was validated (much more clearly, perhaps, than that of the show’s previous tough-love artist Simon Cowell). Though her tactics were questionable, they certainly brought out the best in her team; she truly helped them to become better singers and performers. I’m not saying that you should go out and be like Patty, but if you’re young, ambitious and motivated, you should take a page from that foursome.
As a rookie, you’re not necessarily supposed to know anything, anyway. Who is your Will? Stop working for free. One of the biggest issues that many entrepreneurs who are in the creative field face today is the fact that they simply do not receive the pay that they deserve for their services. In some cases, people are even working free, simply trying to get their name and their product onto the market. Although this can be effective in some cases, for quick promotion, it is not something that’s going to work well all the time, and it is certainly not a practice that’s going to be able to sustain you. Respect Your Work The first thing you have to do if you want to start making decent money is respect your work. Whether you are a graphic designer, a writer, an artist, a stonemason, a massage specialist, or anything else, you have to believe in your work, and you have to believe that it is worth money.
Develop a healthy ego when it comes to your work. This doesn’t mean that you are perfect, or that others might not be just as good as you are, or better. Price Accordingly Make the Deal. How social technologies are extending the organization - McKinsey Quarterly - High Tech - Strategy & Analysis. Companies are improving their mastery of social technologies, using them to enhance operations and exploit new market opportunities—key findings of our fifth annual survey on these tools and technologies, in which we asked more than 4,200 global executives how organizations deploy them and the benefits they confer. When adopted at scale across an emerging type of networked enterprise and integrated into the work processes of employees, social technologies can boost a company’s financial performance and market share, respondents say, confirming last year’s survey results. But this is a very dynamic environment, where the gains from using social technologies sometimes do not persist, perhaps because it takes so much effort to achieve them at scale.
Some companies, respondents indicate, reaped fewer benefits and thus became less networked, while a smaller percentage learned how to deploy these technologies to become even more networked. Usage at scale and continued benefits Looking ahead. 9 TED Talks That Will Stretch Your Business Mind.