Independent Thinking Blog
Independent Thinking Blog
Don’t Discount Your “Duh” Moments
I listened to the TED talk. I sat through a Webinar on the topic. And, last week, I finally read Drive, a book that's been sitting on my shelf for a while. In Drive, author Daniel Pink examines the research and concludes that business has it all wrong when it comes to...
It’s Not Just for Apple and Amazon: An Interview with Author Phil Simon on How Small Companies Can Adopt Platforms
I had the pleasure of talking with author Phil Simon this morning. His latest book, The Age of the Platform, looks at four 21st-century powerhouse companies (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google) which have managed to grow big while keeping their competitive edges and...
On Kevin Bacon, Connections, and Community
@dariasteigmanIt's an amazingly small world sometimes, isn't it? — Lawrence Fox (@TheWizardGuy) March 1, 2012 It is a small world. But maybe not in the random way that Lawrence Fox was thinking. I met Fox via LinkedIn when he answered a...
Why “The Price of a Trip to Paris” Is Not a Pricing Strategy
Pricing is one of the trickiest elements in consulting. Whenever I talk to newly minted independents and small business owners, the biggest challenge they face is understanding how much to charge for different services. One colleague told me that the response she...
Lip Service Is Not Customer Service
I wrote recently about the gap between empowered customers and many sales and customer service teams. That post dealt specifically with the disconnect between what a company is offering online and what they're telling you when you call them. And that doesn't even...