Simple Truths. Good Decisions. Beautiful!

Shell Oil, a bendy straw and Eureka!

This ad-umentary from Shell is a good example of nonlinear innovation

Define Marketing

How do you define "marketing"?

The description below comes from Harvard Business School's website and is one of the best I've seen. A lot better than the 4 Ps.

Marketers concern themselves with acquiring and retaining customers, who are the lifeblood of an organization. They attract customers by learning about potential needs, helping to develop products that customers want, creating awareness, and communicating benefits; they retain them by ensuring that they get good value, appropriate service, and a stream of future products. The marketing function not only communicates to the customer, but also communicates the needs of the customer to the company. In addition, it arranges and monitors the distribution of products and/or services from company to customer.

Typographers like other artists

Robert Bringhurst writes, "Typographers, like other artists and craftsmen-musicians, composers and authors as well-must as a rule do their work and disappear."

Ferran Adria: the art of giving pleasure through food

Beyond ego, beyond those layers - artist, scientist, stage
director, designer, philosopher, anarchist, revolutionary,
comedian and accidental businessman - that make up
Adrià's component parts there burns a passionate
curiosity, a childlike enthusiasm. That is his fuel, as it is
with all true geniuses. But unlike many geniuses (such as
two fellow Spaniards to whom he is often compared,
Picasso and Dalí) he is a nice guy, surprisingly unassuming
and as generous towards others as he is towards his life's
work. His big challenge, he says, has been to 'keep myself
honest'. He has risen to it. He has beaten the twin
impostors wealth and fame, as he has continued
relentlessly to pursue his mission, which he himself with
deconstructed simplicity defines as 'the art of giving
pleasure through food'.

To read the entire article, go to http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/futureoffood/story/0,,1969713,00.html#article_continue

Nancy Duarte on Presentation Environment

The future is as real as the past

The past is inevitably a construct

I'm an old man now and have had a great many problems. Most of them never happened. Mark Twain

Only WHO lasts forever

Who? What? How much?

Great significance follows prioritizing your work decisions in the following order:

1. Who am I going to work with? Do I respect this person? Will this person let me play my best game? Will this person enhance my game?
2. What is the nature of the project? Does it inspire me? Is it worth giving a portion of my life to? Perhaps the very last minutes of my life? Do I expect to learn something worthwhile?
3. How much can I expect to make from taking on this engagement?

Other good people organize their life differently. In fact, for many years, I asked "What?" first. But asking "Who" first is the way to significance because only WHOs last forever.

Live a Focal lifestyle

Albert Borgmann was on a retreat with Hans urs Von Balthasar when he discovered four affirmations that determine whether or not we are living what he calls a "focal" life:

1. There is no place I would rather be.
2. There is nothing I would rather do.
3. There is no one I would rather be with.
4. This I will remember well.

When were you last able to affirm all four?

Insist on playing your game

The second best innovators love users

The best innovators are users

Innovation prompts spiritual warfare

Can a follower have a strategy beyond following?

You can't teach what you haven't learned

Lose track of time

Lead like Jesus

Be definitely different