One of the best courses I took in graduate school was an economics requirement that everyone else had dreaded – and then proceeded to hate. I loved it. The topic was fascinating. So what enthralled my liberal-arts-educated brain? A primer on social security, pensions,...
Consumers want personalization. It's the 21st century equivalent of the place where everybody knows your name. It's why we love Amazon. It's why we use mobile wallets and let our browsers auto-save form data. It's why Facebook is so insistent on wishing me "good...
Cybersecurity is a very big deal. Just ask the health systems that have had their data hacked. The retail chains that have had customer credit card information stolen. Or even the hotel that paid to remove ransomware after all its guests were locked out of their...
It's time to talk about chatbots again. Last year I asked if chatbots would solve customer service. As companies, we want automation to take over simple tasks. But, as consumers, we want something else. We want seamless transactions and brand consistency. We can...
I wasn't planning to write a post about being wacky. Actually, I started to write a post about my favorite content curation tool. (That post is in the queue.) But then, because it's Martin Luther King Day (aka, a holiday) and my mind is in 10 places at...
Is management theory dead? Happy New Year! It's 2017, and the calendar kindly gave us a 1-day reprieve from the real world. Jobs, and schools, and thinking about everything on our to-do lists. There will be time soon enough to recap the old and think about what's...
I was updating an old article recently that had a wonderful line about Rolodex(es). I used to have two large ones filled with mostly business cards stapled onto index cards that contained the contact history of my business life. Now we call that Google Contacts. And...
I keep hearing people say they want to do business with companies that put people over profits. I don't. If a company isn't profitable, then it isn't sustainable. Show me a company that doesn't prioritize profitability -- or a nonprofit that isn't dialing for dollars...
Blab was shut down the other day. You may be forgiven for having no idea what I'm talking about. (Though I did touch on Blab in an earlier post.) While a few large brands (e.g., ESPN, Adobe) jumped on board the Blab livestreaming train, it never become a go-to...
Look no further to understand the future of business. Wired has released its 2nd annual list of the people creating the future of business. The magazine calls them "the unsung creative, technical, and social visionaries working to bring the incredible world of...