5 Things That Create Ridiculous Customer Experiences: Can't we avoid Catch 22?
The other day I was on the phone with my insurance company because they had rejected, for a second time, a procedure for my son which was performed by a...
Brand Management and the 10:45 Per Day Generation
The Kaiser Foundation recently released a study documenting the astounding fact that 8-18 year olds in the United States have increased their media use from...
Can the USA Regain its Love of Speed?
We used to love being the nation of the leading edge: the fastest and tallest of everything: fastest computers, tallest buildings, fastest cars, and so on....
Convenience is No Longer a Differentiator
Blame Robert Wodruff. In 1923 he became president of the Coca Cola company at the age of 33, four years after his father Ernest bought the company from Asa...
Customer Service 2.0: Transparency, Tribes, and Talent
I confess that I have a warm spot in my heart for customer service operations. It is probably because I met my wife of 29.5 years Eileen Marie when she and...
Designing Your Customer’s Decisions
There is a vital lesson buried in the August 19, 2009 Jet Blue announcement that they were suspending sales of the $599.00 "All You Can Jet" promotion...
Designing Your Customer’s Decisions
There is a vital lesson buried in the August 19, 2009 Jet Blue announcement that they were suspending sales of the $599.00 "All You Can Jet" promotion...
Disney Buys Marvel: How to Design 3D Brands
Many comic fans around the world, my eldest son John included, will bemoan today's announcement that the Disney entertainment zaibatsu will swallow up...
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...
Five Ways Augmented Reality Will Change your Business
My colleague Anand Rao and I think that augmented reality is going to be a big deal for businesses. What is it? It is the idea that locations, devices, even...
Google v. Facebook: The battle for the world's attention
If you are the type of person who likes to think about where things might be going I'd suggest you start watching the evolving competitive battle between...
Google's FastFlip: Good for us! Good for media?
Google's new fastflip technology which has launched with three dozen publishers -- including Slate, Cosmopolitan and the New York Times -- implements an...
How Behavioral Economics Can Help Cure the Health Care Crisis
This post was co-authored with Bret Schroeder and Tom Weakland and is also posted at HBR at http://tinyurl.com/yel2j3y Noncompliance with medical advice is...
Innovations in Listening to the Market: eBay could do better...
eBay recently guided Wall Street to lower numbers. I'm always amazed that eBay can't grow faster because they have lots of information on millions and...
Innovations in Use: Is the iPad to computers as transistors were to radios?
A few days ago the iPad just passed 2,000,000 units in sales in under 60 days. Why is that? I think its because the device allows people to take their...
People or Machines & Transparency: Twin innovations in service
Esurance.com 's current advertising campaign emphasizes the fact that their customers can interact with technology when they don't want to talk with people...
Policing Google and Other Fun Topics: Ben Edelman
I met a very bright young man today by the name of Ben Edelman , an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, who is involved in a number of...
Radical Continuity: What any retailer can learn from Nordstrom
I'm coming to believe every good is a convenience good. A recent New York Times article reported that Nordstrom has integrated their in-store inventory with...
Real Time Brand Management
On March 13, a Virgin America flight from Los Angeles to New York was diverted from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Stewart airport in Newburgh,...
Simplicity is Really Complicated with Paul D'Alessandro (Also posted at HBR)
Intuit just bought Mint.com for $170,000,000. Mint is a simple, web and phone based tool with a great design interface that helps people manage their...
Social Killer Apps and the Humanization of the Marketspace
Today's New York Times article joins new stories about Zynga (formally Zynga Game Network ), the maker of FarmVille, MafiaWars and other popular games on...
Ten Propositions for the Virtual Age...
Back in 1993, Jeffrey Rayport and I were trying to understand the implications of the exploding information world. It was about a year before the first...
The Best Companies Use the Best Ideas
As someone who has been around organizations for a long time and working with them to create and implement new ideas, I observe that many firms have a...
The Web is Dead? or Just in the Modularity Cycle?
Wired magazine recently announced on its cover that the Web is Dead . I confess I really like the magazine despite some of the hyperbolic rants that Chris...
Thought Experiment: What if Facebook, Skype and PayPal Merged?
Many people don't know that Bostonian William Crapo (Billy) Durant founded General Motors, and if you ever go to the old General Motors Building in Detroit,...