Life Isn’t About Finding Yourself…
“Life isn’t about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.”
George Bernard Shaw
Playwright and Critic
Author of “My Fair Lady”
1856-1950
FOR YOUR EDIFICATION, ENLIGHTENMENT AND ENTERTAINMENT
Word of Mouth 2.0
“Netflix is NOT a Tech Company”
Six Ways to Bad
Good Advice…even if Bill Gates didn’t say it.
Econ Recon: A Dual Speed Economy….A Long Shallow Slog?
Word of Mouth 2.0
Every business wants more referrals from satisfied customers. Many go so far as to provide some sort of incentive, usually financial , to encourage customers to advocate for the company.
Such tactics are clearly well intentioned, but according to new research summarized in the Knowledge at Wharton blog “a vast majority of referral programs deliver little or no incremental value. It turns out that using extrinsic (financial) incentives (referral rewards) to accelerate what is inherently an intrinsically motivated organic process (WoM) is akin to mixing oil and water.”
The good news is that some easy to implement changes can dramatically improve the performance of your referral incentive programs.
“Netflix is NOT a Tech Company…..”
“…(and) the same applies to Tesla, and indeed to many other companies using software to enter other industries” writes Benedict Evans, a venture capitalist at Andreesen Horowitz, in his blog. He offers valuable perspective on what he feels is the overrated role of technology in making an offering “unique and defensible.” Find out why he thinks “Netflix is not a tech company” and suggests that regarding the “questions that matter. Often they’re not tech questions at all.” Then ask yourself if your business is REALLY “unique and defensible.”
Six Ways to Bad
Research shows that we actually make 2,000 decisions each day. Most are unimportant, but we better get right the few that are. In a world of increasing turbulence and uncertainty, getting it right only gets more important, this short blog post by a three times deployed US Army Officer identifies Six Reasons We Make Bad Decisions. That’s the bad news; the good news is that he’ll give you six ways to make better ones. Share it with your team.
Good Advice…even if Bill Gates didn’t say it
A friend of mine sent me a link to some good advice that had been attributed to a Bill Gates commencement speech. As it turns out, Bill didn’t say what follows, but in my opinion it’s too good not to share. If you’re sending a young person off to college maybe you should send this with them.
Econ Recon
The Dual Speed Economy: Many business people talk about the “economy” as though it were a monolithic entity. In fact there are many moving parts such a government spending, exports and imports, consumer spending and business investment. The diverging paths of two of these sectors, the consumer and business investment, has Connor Lokar of ITR Economics a little worried. Check out his thoughts in his latest blog posting The Dual Speed Economy.
A Long Shallow Slog: The 2008-2009 recession was brutal and deep but relatively short lived. Will the next one be repeating history? David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff, Inc fears the next downturn may not be as hard and deep but wonders if A Long Shallow Recession is on the Way.