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Monthly Blogs Archive

Information Osmosis and the Case against Chief Culture Officer

Seen from the point of view of information, a modern company is a fortess - a fortress that's very good at erecting barriers to the natural flow of information from outside in and vice versa.

While these impermeable walls of opacity were (and probably continue to be) essential to being in business, they also raise the cost of doing business - by making it expensive to haul information across the border, both ways.

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Comments (2) • Posted on on 31 May, 2010 - 18:52
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information Iqbal Mohammed management organisational behaviour social media

The Problem with Automated Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is a complex beast. Even for humans. Consider this statement: “The hotel room is on the ground floor right by the reception”. Is that neutral, or is it positive or negative? Well the answer is probably that it is different things to different people. If you want a high room with a view away from the noise or reception the review is negative. If have mobility issues and need a room with easy access it is positive.

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Comments (3) • Posted on on 31 May, 2010 - 18:38
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Matt Rhodes social media monitorization social media data analysis

Do You Curate Your Audience?

Earlier this week, in a hot New York City, I was having some tea and lemonade with a dear friend who is a  senior publishing executive. When our conversation turned to exploring the future of publishing she said, “our folks say our core value is to curate content”. I suggested that the real challenge for any publisher today is not just to curate content, but to manage audiences for the authors. She said, “in other words we need to curate audiences”.

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Comments (1) • Posted on on 30 May, 2010 - 22:29
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John Sviokla curated content audience customer centric policies customer service B2C interaction

Scent Increases Product Recal

Would you prefer a scented pencil? How about a tennis ball? Tires? You might not care, or even prefer to avoid the olfactory assault altogether, but research shows you’ll remember the product better if it has a scent.

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Comments (0) • Posted on on 30 May, 2010 - 21:57
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neuromarketing olfactory Roger Dooley scent sensory marketing

The Umbrella Problem: Time for Business Model Innovation?

In an article for the Wall Street Journal, Anjali Athavaley recently described why it is so hard to design an umbrella that won't collapse or flip inside out. It's not that companies aren't trying - they are experimenting with space-age materials, testing umbrellas in high-tech wind tunnels and even consulting experts in aerodynamics to find a "perfect" umbrella that doesn't flip inside out on a particularly gusty day. Any incremental improvements, of course, come with costs.

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Comments (2) • Posted on on 30 May, 2010 - 21:39
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Dominic Basulto product innovation business model innovation

The Ad That Went Bad

(If you're a regular dim bulber, you know that I love to riff on what's happening to brands, marketing, media consumption and the greater Known Universe. I had the honor of keynoting the Worldwide Partners' annual meeting in Miami earlier this week and for that occasion I wanted to explore a new way of looking at things...so I wrote a poem, which follows. My apologies to Dr. Seuss and anybody who gets headaches from bad rhythm or rhyme)

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Comments (2) • Posted on on 29 May, 2010 - 23:21
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ads advertising conversations Jonathan Salem Baskin marketing

“Transparency Is Not Enough”

At Gov2.0 this week, I gave a talk on the importance of information literacy when addressing transparency of government data:

“Transparency is Not Enough”

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Comments (0) • Posted on on 29 May, 2010 - 22:44
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danah boyd government information transparency

Cut Products, Boost Sales

I’ve written about some of the research that shows that shoppers don’t always respond positively to a bigger selection of products (see More Choices, Fewer Sales) and extreme product/brand proliferation (see Mega-Branding: The Purple Oreo Problem). Now, retailers are implementing the concept of reducing selection in their stores and finding that it can indeed increase sales.

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Comments (0) • Posted on on 29 May, 2010 - 21:27
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choices neuromarketing retail Roger Dooley selling

Five Attributes of Paradigm Breaking Innovations

Recently, a team consisting of MIT students, along with Pratt & Whitney and Aurora Flight Science Corporation announced a radical new design for a jetliner which would take about 1/4 the amount of fuel consumed by today’s planes.

 

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Comments (0) • Posted on on 28 May, 2010 - 23:14
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disruptive innovation innovators John Sviokla

Facebook, Privacy Settings and Taking Control of Your Personal Brand Online

Facebook today announced new features to address the criticism that is has faced recently for its privacy settings and processes. In December 2009 and then again in April this year, the site made a number of changes to its privacy options and settings. In essence they opened up more data to users beyond your friends and immediate networks and changed some of the default settings. This led to the situation where users had 50 different settings and 170 options to control the levels of access to and sharing of the data and information on their profiles.

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Comments (0) • Posted on on 28 May, 2010 - 16:14
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Matt Rhodes social networks Facebook personal brand privacy

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This blog reflects the personal opinions of individual contributors and does not represent the views of Futurelab, Futurelab's clients, or the contributors' respective employers or clients.

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