Strategic Branding

Rainer Rilke as Brand Poet

Thanks to Maria Popova over at Brain Pickings for turning me onto Bohemian-Austrian Rainer Maria Rilke and his Letters to a Young Poet.

Strategic Branding

Branding Lessons from LivingSocial

LivingSocial, one of DC’s locally grown startups, posted a $650 million dollar loss on on $536 million in revenue for 2012.

Relationships & Revenue

The Age of Serendipity Accelerators

The smallest, unexpected and unplanned for things can make the biggest difference.

Relationships & Revenue

The Three Must-Ask Customer Experience Questions

Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, 2013 lists those companies that provide the highest levels of experience for their customers.

Strategic Branding

Best Creative Advice: Don't Think!

Watching an interesting documentary on Ray Bradbury, I noticed a small note that was posted on the wall directly across from where he sat and typed (gives you an idea of when the documentary was shot).

Organizational Transformation

10 Lies That Hold Back Organizations

The problem with the tiny little individual lies that make their way around in organizations is that collectively over time they have the potential to create a culture that actually reinforces them.

Organizational Transformation

Elevator Courtesy and Decision Making

I was riding the elevator this morning ready to get out on my floor when the doors opened. But when I got there, I couldn’t.

Strategic Branding

What Societal Collapse Can Teach Us About Organizational Fitness

Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed focuses on understanding why certain civilizations collapse.

Technology

The "Joe" Turing Test

I just finished up Ray Kurzweil’s How to Create a Mind (interesting talk at Google here), which is a fascinating journey into a future that is in many ways already here.

Innovation

How Wide is Your View?

It’s amazing the difference a bit of context makes when it comes to understanding where you really are and which way you want to go.

Organizational Transformation

Who's Your Explanation For?

At some point we have all thought this during the process of explaining something that we think is crystal clear

Organizational Transformation

Building From a Culture of One

In talking with a number of people as we start the new year, it’s been interesting to hear them talk about the challenges they face at their organizations.

Are You Worth Stealing?

I heard a story on NPR the other day about major thefts of laundry detergent.

Strategic Branding

The Art of Selling Buy-in

Regardless of whether you’re a VP with a new idea for improving your organization or a CEO with a new vision of how to take your company to the next level,

Organizational Transformation

Building Your Organization’s Roadmap

At the end of every year people talk about all the things they really wanted to do (but didn’t get done) and at the beginning of every year they talk about all the things they’re really going to do. Why the gap?

Strategic Branding

Framing Projects Within Indisputable Vision

With the new year here, you probably have a whole hatful of ideas and projects that you think will help take your organization to the next level.

Branding

Invisible Taglines

I was walking through my neighborhood the other day and came across a sign for a local construction company

Strategic Branding

How Brands Decline

I’ve been thinking a lot about Apple lately. Unfortunately, it’s not in the way I’m

Organizational Transformation

Seeing is Not Vision

Very few organizations get started because the founders wanted to do something like the next guy.

Strategic Branding

Policing Design

came across this website for the Milwaukee Police Department and thought it was a refreshing to see a design that so adequately reflected the value of a city service.

The Point of Retail

I was in a surf shop the other day to rent a board down in Virginia Beach. There were a number of shops, so I stopped in to the first one that I came across.

Strategic Branding

Branding Honesty

National Honesty Index from National Honesty Index on Vimeo.

Relationships & Revenue

Art, Architecture & Landscape

I visited the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland this past weekend and was treated to stimulating blend of what the museum calls its mix of art, architecture and landscape.

Organizational Transformation

How to Know What You Don't Know

When you look at the things that didn’t go how you had hoped, it’s usually not because of the reason that you’d been planning for all along.

Innovation

Ideas Out of Thin Air

Riffing off yesterday’s post, I came across this article via Design Boom about a car that runs on compressed air instead of alternative fuels like compressed hydrogen or natural gas.

Innovation

Lessons from the Cardboard Bicycle

Having bought and sold a number of bicycles over the last couple of years, I always wondered why there wasn’t a $100 bicycle.

Strategic Branding

Understanding Brand Equity

B rand equity or “brand value” is the additional value ascribed to a company based on its ability to charge more based on positive brand perception by consumers.

Strategic Branding

Creating Brand Reach

The instructions say to use about 18 inches of floss each time. I was using about using about four feet.

Technology

Productivity-101

Amit Agarwal, the personal technology columnist at WSJ India, and author and founder of the how-to blog Digital Inspiration, put together a great list of of the 101 most useful websites.

Organizational Transformation

An Awesome Tip

Would you leave a $500 tip for a pizza? Aaron would. And while I don’t know Aaron, I’m glad that NPR took a minute to tell me about him the other day.

Relationships & Revenue

Pixar on Lamps That Tell Stories

In 1986, John Lasseter wrote, directed, and produced (with Bill Reeves) Luxo Jr., a two-minute short film about two lamps and a ball...

Organizational Transformation

Three Startup Lessons from Curiosity

Aside from all that Curiosity will be able to teach us about the Red Planet during its two-year mission (and the fact that this gets us one step closer to a future of space travel!)

Strategic Branding

When Small is Big

Steve Heller put up a nice post on a beautiful little book by Dominik Imseng called Think Small...

Relationships & Revenue

Should Great Service Include Nice?

I’ve been noticing an interesting trend recently. Service that appears to be better actually isn’t.