One interesting dilemma about strategy and innovation is how far we move away from our core and more importantly how do you define the core? What are the core competencies of Gap? Netflix? LVMH? BMW? Hermes? Canon? Nike? Marc Jacob? Blackberry? Samsung? HP? Target? Starbucks? Do they even have anything in common?
Poke the Box by Seth Godin is a very short book focused on one key idea: “Get off your butt and start something!” More specifically, Godin tells his readers to not wait for permission from others, to not worry about failure, and in general to buck both corporate and personal inertia by trying something new.
There was a huge furore recently when an ad agency employee twittered about people’s bad driving habits in Detroit to over 8,000 followers. Why? It wasn’t necessarily because he dropped the F-bomb. It was because he tweeted accidentally on behalf of Chrysler, one of his clients, rather than from his own personal account.
I don't follow everyone back on Twitter. This is an intentional act. I don't follow everyone back because there are too many spammers to deal with and frankly, If I do follow you back, it's a very intentional act—I follow you for a reason. Tomorrow, somebody can send me an e-mail and say—"we've solved your problem by inventing a service which only follows back real people, no spammers".
The NY Times recently reported what regular users of Twitter already know. Follower counts are an indicator of influence but not a very good one. And yes, followers can be and are gamed frequently with the assistance of shady web services. Here are a few more critical Twitter influence indicators:
Whoever said there’s not much new on the Web should have been around last week for the much-ballyhooed launch of Color – celebrated as one of the most exciting Web concepts to appear this year. If it lives up to its initial promise, Color represents a fundamentally new type of mobile social network that, in many ways, is almost the polar opposite of Facebook.
It’s become a rite of spring: a bumper crop of data, surveys, polls, and analyses about the green market space. Each year, as Earth Day comes into view, a picture emerges about U.S. consumer attitudes toward green business and green shopping. It’s a murky picture at best.
Coke reportedly took more than 6% of its UK ad budget last year and put it into social media campaigns. Sales across Europe declined 1%, though its take-home sales in the UK were up 8.3% (Britain's best-selling brand, according to The Grocer magazine).
The video game industry might have a market that spans the globe, but that’s not to say that the same game will sell in the same form in, say, Germany and Malaysia. There’s a lot that goes into localizing a game for foreign audiences – from translation and rewiring hotkeys, to cultural preferences and visual understanding.
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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