My Reading List - Spring 08 April 28, 2008

Here is a look at my current reading list over the next few months. Not quite all the books, but most.

One of the best aspects of reading business, design, and communication books is all the advanced material so well explained and enlightening, that one just cannot meaningfully retain from magazines (as opposed to Journals). To learn the subjects even better, take notes and write yourself summaries that add personal relevance, related topics, and other contextual detail. The last thing you can do, is try to teach others what you learned - the passion will flow because at this point, you’ll understand the material so well and the story will be yours.

. . .

What’s on your Reading List?

The Age of Conversation - Bum Rush March 29, 2008

The Age of Conversation had a great debut last year. Through our writers’ and friends’ collective efforts, our proceeds-from-sales to the children’s charity Variety amounted to more than $11,000.

Now we’ve been able to bring this fine book to Amazon, and if you buy this book today, your effort will radically help drive the book’s attention up through Amazon’s charts -> leading to greater potential proceeds.

So if you don’t have a copy of last year’s classic, or know someone who might enjoy reading it (while helping out a great cause in the process), visit or forward on this special affiliate link:
http://tinyurl.com/2drj2x

The Change Function March 16, 2008

I came across this interesting qualitative assessment model for predicting whether change is possible, and to what degree it will arise, from my reading of Pip Coburn’s “The Change Function“. Pip’s context was finding how out people’s inclination to adopt new technologies, based on a user-centered model that functions like a cost/benefit analysis. While the large reliance on qualitative data can make this change propensity difficult to assess, it serves as an excellent guide for developing and testing new product concepts in design research, and evaluating their implementation value and market potential.

Degree of Actual Crisis or Need
How bad is the dilemma we’re facing? Is it causing difficulties for us to function in our work or personal lives? Is it costing us time, money, health, growth rate? This analysis asks us to be critical, because marketing and bright, shiny, objects/processes can fascinate us into believing our current situation may be lacking somehow; that if it could be improved, we’d be that much better off. Remember, desires can be turned into needs (rational or not), by changes in perspectives (through influence and/or analysis). This goes for things small like new running shoes to massive ERP software packages. The incentive to change (purchase, sell, adapt behavior) is a result of performing this preliminary assessment.

Total Perceived Pain of Adoption
If I/we decide to change or act upon an opportunity, what is it going to cost us? Common factors include:

• Relative Affordability
• Learning Curve (difficulty, time)
• Time to Benefits Realization
• Readiness/Will for Change (based on Myers-Briggs)
• Risk of Failure

Change
While solving this formula may seem difficult or confusing because of the division involved, a simpler way to look at the problem is as follows: To what degree is the actual crisis or need, larger than the total perceived pain of adoption.

• If Positive, change will be increasingly beneficial.
• If Equal, the decision to change is practically indifferent since neither benefits nor pain will be incurred.
• If Negative, change will be increasingly detrimental.

Time is the all pervasive dynamic factor that affects prices, product & technology life cycles, and other socio-economic and political forces. Benefits may slowly accrue, hit a peak, then gradually decline. The initial pain of adoption may be high or low, then gradually adjust along its own path over time. A simple positive net result in a proposal for change may be quite obvious; what isn’t known is the best time to take the first step to maximize future benefits (or minimize losses). Hence, the need for building and comparing different scenarios using forecasts and multivariate data.

While using qualitative data in a mathematical context may be quite difficult through the summation of assigned numeric values and their weighted coefficients, this model can be very helpful in performing critical opportunity assessments.

Special thanks to my pal Luis Carlos Pelaez, for contributing his thoughts and insight into this subject.

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Have you seen or applied unique models for evaluating the potential for positive change? How about alternate ways of doing cost/benefit analyses? Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Book Review: Shopping, by Pamela Danziger December 20, 2007

Pam is one devoted marketer; passionate about the art of retailing and understanding the consumer.

Shopping gives pleasure. We live now in an age of abundance, affordability, and availability of product categories across various types of retail establishments. While price and a wide selection of merchandise are important to shoppers, the total shopping experience influences people to buy, makes people want to enthusiastically return, and tell their friends.

A shopper’s Propensity to Buy = (Needs + Features + Affordability) x Emotion^2

Needs

Are true necessities within one’s cultural framework (real or perceived). Then, there are Wants and Desires (satisfied or aspired). What then becomes ‘necessary’ is really variable given one’s financial status, value system, and place/stage in life.

Justifiers though, turn desires into Needs, and give shoppers the reason, rationale, excuses, and thus permission & motivation to buy. The following are some common justifiers:

1. Special Occasion - Perhaps related to a holiday, season, trip, wedding, religious, or cultural event.
2. Beautify the Self or Home - Gives an emotional boost.
3. Pleasure - Derived from having, owning, using, and perhaps even purchasing.
4. Education - Becoming better educated, learned, and gaining new understanding and skills.
5. Relaxation & Stress Relief - Finding solace & gaining inner peace/harmony are the preferred motivators for buying experiential goods.
6. Entertainment - To stimulate the mind & imagination, relieve boredom, and a way to bring people together to share fun and good times.
7. Replacement - Practical reasoning. This motivator can be powerful because it allows people to consider purchasing a model that may be more upscale, green, affordable, updated, or another attribute.
8. Emotional Satisfaction - From the browsing and shopping experience itself, regardless what, if anything, is purchased.
9. Enriching One’s Life - The strongest motivator of all; related to Maslow’s self-actualization stage and the sensation of progression through life’s stages and their perceptual aspects based on one’s values & aspirations. These include:
   * Intellectual (education, understanding)
   * Physical (robust health, stamina, comfort, pain- and disease-free)
   * Spiritual (sense of purpose, way to understand the unknown, meta-physical connection to others)
   * Emotion (love, happiness, freedom from fear & worry)
   * Social (sense of connectedness to others, friendship, belonging, participation)

Features

Product functionality and performance are taken for granted nowadays. Features though, most often represent the extra bonuses conferred and thus are important insofar as they play off our emotions. Shoppers are really evaluating the promises of how an item will perform emotionally & experientially for them.

Affordability

A major hot button of course. There’s an absolute level, which gives us clear boundaries based on our current disposable income. Then there’s a relative level, that makes us consider sustainability & replacement cost, the price of complementary goods & services, and simply what’s within our budget if we have other items still on our shopping list.

Emotion

First Power: Combined with justifiers, they will magnify a Need; positive association will make Features attractive; and our emotional reaction to a price will make a desired item more, or less, affordable.

Squared: Retailers’ design of the total shopping experience creates the mood to buy, tell-a-friend, and become loyal customers.

How Retailers can Create Stores that “Pop”:

1. Involvement - Encourage and promote high-levels of interaction that induce people to touch, feel, taste, try-on and participate.
2. Curiosity - Evoke shopper’s curiosity to explore and experience through the design of shop windows, store layout, the entrance, and story-based displays.
3. Contagious - The store has to have some undercurrent of electric quality, exuding energy & excitement.
4. Convergence between atmosphere, store design, and merchandise that is consistent and reflects a comprehensive vision that captures all the tangible and intangible elements.
5. Authenticity in the store concept and the way it’s driven, exhibiting the founder’s values and not just being a place where merchandise is sold.
6. Price/Value - Offer shoppers a superior value at a reasonable cost; try to enhance/support value rather than simply apply markdowns.
7. Accessibility - The store has to be inviting to most anyone; there should be no pretensions of exclusivity, being snobby, or catering only to a certain class of people.

Additional Recommendations (from the book, personal opinion, and other sources):

1. Hire the right kind of employees appropriate to your culture and their position; pay them a reasonable wage; naturally, encourage friendliness and personability; ensure they’re knowledgeable about the products; and be like Nordstrom and have them ‘Follow their best judgement’.
2. Establish fair return/exchange policies; encourage special ordering.
3. Maintain a clean store and bathrooms.
4. Be cutting-edge and continually try something new in your merchandise assortment, hold special events and promotions, and find new ways to interact with your customers. Innovate with surprise.
5. Pursue private-label programs to offer unique merchandise. It’s becoming ever more feasible and affordable even to small retailers, and it’s proving to be a good branding strategy that can be quite profitable too.

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I found the book interesting, though subjective at times. What really flows is the Pamela’s passion and the way she describes the retailers across the country including unique boutiques, Anthropologie, and Barnes & Noble among others. For more information, here’s the book’s Amazon page.

The Ghost Map November 19, 2007

Sometimes a true story comes along that is suspenseful and gripping. Not for the facts, but for the manner in which the author has laid out the narrative combining the historical background, situation, characters, and long-term implications.

While business, sociology, and design books have been the staple of my reading diet over the last year, it was a historical nonfiction book that captured my attention last weekend: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson.

While the story is about 2 gentlemen whose efforts helped cease a Cholera outbreak in a London district in 1854 and subsequently advanced the nascent field of epidemiology, there is an important underlying lesson. Theories are vastly abundant and can be made by anyone. Evidence or proof is often demonstrated by the presence of correlating phenomena. But correlation does not prove causation. Thus in the lack of strong evidence that is supported by multivariate data sources, we must be a bit careful in what we hear/read/see and choose to establish an opinion or belief about.

Skepticism can be a virtue. It can prevent you from following the wrong path, leading down many popular, yet false and dead-ending roads…which in the end may just leave you holding a confirmation bias, a shield for the ego.

In this day and age, we marketers must be wary of fads and marketplace happenstance, versus viable long-term trends. We know that technology and a culture of participation have been radically transforming certain aspects of our lives. See my post on Wikinomics for a glimpse.

My point is that in this day of hyperactivity and innovation, let us not forget to gather facts from multiple angles; let us not limit our field of view in popular paradigms and models as absolute platforms for the future; let us remember that substantial change is only possible when its total perceived cost is much lower than the total perceived benefit.

Be skeptical - Build a case - Communicate it well

Book Review: Wikinomics November 6, 2007

After hearing so much about Innovation these days, it’s nice to be able to gain some fresh perspective on how it’s influenced in this day and age with the Internet and open-collaboration models we’ve come to know and see grow over the last 10 years. Besides the obvious reference to Wikipedia and our knowledge of social media, it feels now that innovation-ability has increased because greater opportunities for collaboration have never existed like today, and companies/orgs have realized that being more open can have significant advantages in product & process innovation.

In the authors’ own words, p.18:

The new promise of collaboration is that with peer production we will harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than anything we have witnessed previously…the collective knowledge, capability, and resources embodied within broad horizontal networks can be mobilized to accomplish much more than one firm acting alone. Whether designing an airplane, assembling a motorcycle, or analyzing the human genome, the ability to integrate the talents of dispersed individuals and organizations is becoming the defining competency for managers and firms.

The authors describe the principles of Wikinomics as: Being Open, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally.

While these principles speak for themselves in our imagination and real-life examples, the authors share with us seven new models of mass collaboration:

Peer Production - Think of all the individuals contributing to open source software, Wikipedia, the Age of Conversation, and volunteers in grass roots orgs who collectively show that together they can create and execute quality projects faster than large and well-financed enterprises can.

“Ideagoras” - These are eBay-like marketplaces for innovation. Organizations can solicit proposals for unique solutions they’re seeking OR offer their intellectual property for license/sale. Bright individuals can review proposals and submit their ideas if they believe the reward (monetary, recognition) worth it. Examples include: InnoCentive, Yet2.com, NineSigma, InnovationXchange Network, Eureka Medical, YourEncore, Innovation Relay Centers, TopCoder, and Fellowforce. Additional examples with a nonprofit social-design aspect include Design21, and Open Architecture Network.

“Prosumers” - Product customization has existed for a long time, whether pursued by individuals’ own creative efforts, or offered as an option by manufacturers/providers. But lead users are a force to be reckoned with. They can take matters into their own hands by hacking iPods and PSPs; or creating mashups of creative works, dispersed data, and web applications. Alternatively, organizations can allow such open-innovation by offering up software APIs, design kits, and other tools; in doing so they can vastly extend their user base and grow their brand goodwill. Examples include: Lego Mindstorms, Facebook applications, Creative Commons, and embeddable media.

Science 2.0 - Dubbed “The New Alexandrians” by the authors because it represents distributed and shared R&D among scientists for specific fields and purposes across geographic boundaries and organizational types. The best example was that of the SNP Consortium which in 1999 began tracking gene sequences for addition to the Human Genome Project. The nice twist was that this movement originally began with Merck in 1995 as a counterstrategy to entrepreneurial biotech companies looking to find and patent gene information; Merck created immediate commons of all its findings in its ‘Gene Index’. Examples of this in action include: arXiv, Earth System Grid, OpenWetWare, and various digital library projects whether by governments, universities, or the private sector.

Participation Platforms - Here we’re talking about taking your product/service platform, and opening it up for others to play/mix/re-purpose aspects of it, for their own personal and creative use. The benefits for both originator and participants can be vast. The primary environment is software and digital data/media. Mashups from open web APIs, XML, RSS and embeddable media, are great examples. Specific applications from a variety of uses include: PeopleFinder, for displaced families of hurricane Katrina; HousingMaps (Google Maps and Craigslist housing info), BBC’s Creative Archive License Group, Amazon Web Services (Commerce, Search [Alexa], computing, storage, work outsourcing), Scorecard (environmental data on US communities), Neighborhood Knowledge California (Los Angeles community data tool for identifying areas of urban decay & in need of improvement), and Force.com (open application platform for use within the Salesforce.com environment).

Globally Distributed Product Development & Manufacturing - Yes, this is a common trend many of us know and understand. But this isn’t just about outsourcing, it’s about collaboration. The Boeing’s 787 was built faster and more efficiently by opening up technical/architectural info to its many suppliers. Chonqing in western China is home to a vibrant collaborative community of motorcycles parts and unit manufacturers, of which Lifan is the largest brand (all vehicle types). It’s approximated that around 60-70% of ALL vehicle parts are manufactured by third parties; Magna International is one example. BMW now spends R&D only on designing engines, interiors, and software (btw, their DesignWorksUSA division outsources industrial design). From these examples, the authors give us 7 lessons for manufacturers to learn from:

1. Identify and focus your efforts on critical value drivers. The authors give a new golden rule: “Always strive to be the best at what your customers value most and partner for everything else.”
   
2. Use orchestration to add value. Think excellent execution through project management and open collaboration.
3. Foster collaborative design processes that are rapid and iterative.
4. Employ modular architectures. The authors describe this as “Rather than mandating how to produce products, firms can work to create standards and modular architectures that specify product interfaces and leave it up to suppliers to the the job done.”
5. Build a supply chain ecosystem that’s transparent and egalitarian.
6. “Share the Costs and Risks” of product development among all parties. This includes shared decision making, where the implications of certain programs/efforts will affect the operations of various partners.
7. Observe market and industry developments and use predictive scenario planning techniques to identify strategic arenas of opportunity.

The “Wiki Workplace” - Spontaneous and collaborative workspaces resembling networks, increase innovation and boost employee participation & morale. The visibility of the traditional hierarchy and its function, begins to fade. The authors point out 5 typical workplace functions that will be affected: teams, time allocation, decision making, resource allocation, and communication.

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So those are the 7 models of mass collaboration. Before I bore you (and burn myself out) any more on this subject, I would like to close with the authors’ final design principles that are common to all these models:

• Follow, listen, and take cues for action from Lead Users.
• Build a critical mass of participants that’ll attract more people to the ecosystem.
• Provide an infrastructure for collaboration.
• “Take your time to get the structures and governance right”.
• Ensure benefits can be gained from the participation of all parties.
• “Abide by community norms” regarding issues like communication, appropriation, and contribution processes.
• Allow for the entire ecosystem to grow and evolve without strict adherence to a personally intended “best-case-for-us” blueprint.
• Develop and utilize a mind toward collaboration.

For more information on Wikinomics, check out the book itself and a special section of BusinessWeek devoted to the subject.

Book Review: Chasing Cool September 5, 2007

Not your conventional review here FYI. It’s about a personal journey that I took while reading the book “Chasing Cool“. Props to Paul Herring at ChaosScenario for doing some nice writeups and inspiring my purchase. Karen Hegmann also did a review. The authors’ blog can be found here.

Unique positioning is what creates space in the mind for ‘new’ and ‘different’. By attempting to think differently, we’ll better avoid Me-Too and the inevitable position of second-best. Thus we should be wary of using trend reports as a directional field guide for a brand. They could provide us with some insight, but ultimately a few important facts are clear: it’s secondary data whose value is aging fast while also being read by numerous others as well. Does purely following others make any sense? In the name of adopting best practices for operational efficiency, perhaps so. But unless innovation and design are strongly influenced by creativity within our walls and through conversation with our customers and partners, we’re doomed to mediocrity.

Chasing Cool is a bad idea. But becoming inspired by Cool is okay. At that point, you have to create your own Cool and truly rally behind it because it is yours. That will require carving your own path and taking on substantial risk including that of failure. Preparing a strong business case will help define the opportunity and how to get there. That sort of behavior earns respect in my eyes.

There’s much more to be taken away from this title, so I suggest you pick it up sometime should chance & time permit. It taught me something important about authenticity and marketing that I haven’t been exposed to since reading Small Giants.

Who Should get a Convo Cone? July 23, 2007

In the spirit of community giving, I’d like to send 3 copies of the book to CMOs on our behalf. But who should I pick? I can’t deny any requests since this is from us…so make it good.

I’ll be the first…so I pick:

Colgate-Palmolive

I think this company can definitely use some help in making some better products that reflect consumer needs. But as from my page in the book, conversation can bring new ideas for improvement across a wide variety of company activities. Ultimately, I’d like to see this company step up to P&G’s level of product innovation. It will probably take a while, but that’s fine…they just need a little encouragement. (*Gentle shove* into the playground).

Who else would you like to see get a book?

Sticky Ideas May 12, 2007

After this delightful reading of “Made to Stick“, I’ve come away with a lot of great insight on how to improve my communication across ALL channels. There’s no way to summarize the main points of this book without reading it yourself. So I’ll just refer you to the authors’ official blog and Cam Beck’s posts about it (one, two, three, four). But I will impart some recommendations on why this book is important.

Beginning with my enlightenment into the humanities as a teen and always having a passion for the intellectual (perhaps it’s the German in me), I’ve appreciated the abstract and Subjective. However, after being introduced to Ayn Rand and Objectivity (especially applied to leadership) in my twenties, I saw the distinct values in being direct and focused.

Well-rounded individuals will appreciate both schools of thought and apply them appropriately to various aspects of their lives. This book explains how to integrate both philosophies into our communication with others, so that our messages will strike a subliminal creative harmony that well…sticks. But most importantly, the techniques and methods Chip & Dan describe can be applied by ANYONE. Good and Poor communicators exist across all levels of our society. We all have the potential to more effectively deliver our messages in an effort to elicit the responses/actions we desire.

The State of Being Genuine April 14, 2007

In my relations with other people, sometimes I perceive it unconsciously - like intuition in Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink“. And sometimes it just gradually develops through repeated interaction. Merriam-Webster defines it partially as “sincerely and honestly felt or experienced”, “free from hypocrisy or pretense”. CK makes an interesting post about authenticity, from a different context though, and highlights the points: raw, no sugar-coating, and giving the self through storytelling

In my own personal development over the last couple years, I’ve meditated on the precept of loving kindness, as best taught to me by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. It can be easy to apply to friends and family members, but what about the rest of the world? (let’s exclude children, the poor, and sick for whom feeling empathy comes naturally). Note: In the last 3 years I’ve made good friends online and offline…and the distinction between inner and outer circle is rapidly fading away.

This is where there’s much need for growth in our society. The ideals of individualism and return on personal investment still cloud a lot of thinking in our society. In our day and age, it seems people bent on treading the path alone while using others for temporary gain and access will have even greater trouble ahead and turn into even bigger jerks down the road.

According to Keith Ferrazzi, being generous and sincere in all our relations with others not only makes for a more fulfilling and joyful life but also a more successful career as an unexpected benefit. I am a third through his book: “Never Eat Alone” and I must recommend it for anyone starting their career. It has taught me a lot more about interpersonal communication in addition to Dale Carnegie’s classic. Keith even has a section on blogger culture, which I’m about to start. If you’re interested in learning what he has to say, he gave a presentation to Microsoft 13 mo. ago available Here (Note: IE browser only).

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Now to open up to readers:

How do you recognize authenticity?

Where is the line between general friendliness and superficiality? Should businesses teach their employees that difference?

Should all undergrads have a mandatory course in interpersonal communication and ethics? Like English 101?

Book Gift from Cam Beck April 3, 2007

Upon being the 2nd commentator to Cam Beck’s blog, ChaosScenario, he sent me Made to Stick via Amazon.

I love the packaging and treatment, so I drew it up.

I will definitely go through this book and glean as much insight to share with others. Cam’s doing this now and has a series of posts relating the book to everyday branding and communication. Check it out if you haven’t yet.