I'm speaking at the Motivation Show in Chicago on Wednesday, September 30. Tuesday's opening keynote will feature Jennifer Rosensweig, a former colleague of mine at Carlson Marketing (although neither of us is there any more). Jennifer coined the term "positive engagement," based on the principles of the modern "positive psychology" movement, to describe employees who are not just happy as employees but happy generally - people with a positive outlook, balance, and fulfillment in their lives. She says the elements of positive engagement include wellness and good health, connections with others, and appreciation and gratitude for what they have. Such employees are also open to new ideas and innovative, they are curious and seek to improve their skills constantly, and they are self-directed. In a nutshell, they are not just happy employees. They are happy people.

Continue reading "Positivity Makes the World Go Round" »

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New academic research explodes the myth that green technology is economically stimulative.

It's no doubt true that if we introduce legislation to encourage green technology, we will not only improve our environment, but we will stimulate some economic activity. But it doesn't logically follow that this activity will amount to NET new activity for the economy as a whole. In fact, green technology, encouraged by regulatory or tax policy, will impose an economic cost on our society. If a cleaner environment or less global warming is the goal, then we should be willing to pay for this, but green technology does not create net new jobs, so that's not a reason to embrace it.

Continue reading "Green Jobs Do Not Stimulate the Economy" »

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Should you or shouldn't you let your own customers review your products and services on your own website? Only about 50% of online retailers currently do. This is the question we'll explore in this post.

In Part One of this story, we pointed out how deceitful Nero Software is in the way it cons money out of unsuspecting customers. My feeling is that making money off of customer mistakes or customer naivete is never a very good business strategy, in terms of creating long-term shareholder value, and I predict that as long as Nero follows this strategy, we'll never see it amount to much more than a non-US-based peripheral player in this category.

Continue reading "Trustability and its Opposite - Part Two" »

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I'm a very frequent Amazon customer, buying five to ten books in a typical month, almost all for business. Martha and I write business books for a living, and we each have to keep up with what's out there.

So when I see a news or journal article that references an interesting book, I simply log on to Amazon, click on the book and with that one click it comes directly to my home (or more often gets downloaded onto my Kindle). Presto!

One time, however, a few months ago, I saw a book I thought would be interesting, and when I ordered this book I got a warning: "WARNING: You already bought this book from Amazon. Do you want to buy it again?"

Continue reading "Trustability and its Opposite - Part One" »

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A psychological study of American football players once revealed an interesting difference between defensive and offensive players:

Offensive players' lockers were neater and more orderly than defensive players' lockers. The most obvious inference is probably right: Offensive players get ahead by following well-crafted plans, executed flawlessly. Timing, position, and order are everything to them. But defensive players succeed by wreaking havoc with others' plans. They are more at home with disorder, chaos, and unpredictability.

Continue reading "The Conflict Between Innovation and Efficiency" »

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I was interviewed the other day on an Australian television business show, Lateline Business, and I made a brash prediction. You can see the six-minute clip or read a transcript of it here. The question I was asked was: "What about the industry [direct marketing] generally: how important today is going digital, the whole online space to direct marketing?"

And my unequivocal answer was as follows: "It's indispensible. There's going to be no non-electronic direct marketing within 10 years - none."

Continue reading "Will There Be Any "Non-Electronic Direct Mail" In Ten Years?" »

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It's no secret that the pace of change is accelerating. The more innovations we create, the faster the next ones will come. And we're now even innovating the process of innovation itself, with companies doing "experiments" with small subsets of customers to test new ideas and bring things to market so much faster. Cycle times are accelerating, inventions get to market faster, and life continues to speed up.

Observing this from my own perspective as a man in his 50's, it occurs to me that as the pace of innovation has picked up, the distance between the generations has also increased. That is, our own children are much more different from their parents than we were from our parents. And I suspect, as the pace of change continues to increase, our children's children will be even more different from their parents.

Continue reading "Privacy Dies as Distance Between Generations Grows" »

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