As a marketing strategist, I often get a bird’s eye view of how high tech companies approach competitive strategy. It can be surprising to see how little “quality time” is allocated to a thoughtful analysis of the underlying drivers of the competitive environment, or assessing which moves are likely to lead to the [...]
Entries from October 2007
Competitive Strategy: How to Step Up Your Game
October 31st, 2007 · No Comments
Learning to Blog
October 30th, 2007 · 1 Comment
It’s been only a couple of weeks since I decided to start this blog, and I’m amazed at all the things I’ve learned since then. And the decisions to be made. Blogging is not for the faint of heart.
Tags: Tools & Technology
Leopard: Living Dangerously?
October 29th, 2007 · No Comments
Our Leopard 5-pack arrived today, ready for installation on our Macs. The Mac geek discussion boards have been full of cautionary tales, so I’ve backed up my MacBook Pro and will test compatibility there before installing on any other Macs.
It will be interesting to learn how Leopard compares to Tiger (Mac OS X 10.5 versus [...]
Tags: Tools & Technology
Demise of the Fax, End of An Era
October 29th, 2007 · No Comments
I just paid the last phone bill for my fax machine. Sidelining the fax… It feels like the end of an era — yet another unintended consequence of email and web-based services on a small business like mine.
Tags: Tools & Technology
A Great Tool for Virtual Project Teams
October 24th, 2007 · No Comments
I often work with an extended team of experienced designers, writers, web producers, developers and so on. Collaborating with other team members — or our mutual client — used to be a challenge before we discovered Basecamp from 37Signals. Basecamp offers a safe, secure, inexpensive hosted service to coordinate our activities. It’s lightweight, easy to [...]
Tags: Tools & Technology
Navigating Your City in 3D
October 23rd, 2007 · No Comments
When you live near Microsoft and Amazon.com’s corporate campuses, you can run into some amazing people while grocery shopping, enjoying a latte, or exercising. Today I had one of those serendipitous encounters.
While power walking in the late afternoon sunshine, I heard about a cool new company that a colleague launched a few weeks ago at [...]
Tags: Tools & Technology
Search My Professional Library
October 23rd, 2007 · No Comments
Here’s a widget that will let you search my library for books on:
business strategy, competitive advantage
innovation and innovation management
brand strategy and brand management
market research
customer management
how customers shop, how they buy
consulting practice management
The widget links to Amazon, in case any of the search results belong on your bookshelf too.
Tags: Bookshelf
Why I Love My iPhone
October 22nd, 2007 · No Comments
I love my iPhone not just because it’s an object of beauty in its own right, but because the experience of using it is so pleasurable, so much of the time.
Tags: Brand Matters · Marketing · Tools & Technology
Book Lovers, Unite!
October 22nd, 2007 · No Comments
I’ve just stumbled across a wonderful resource for book lovers — social networking for bibliophiles.
LibraryThing provides a handy way to organize your bookshelf online, and share what you’re reading with others, or discover people whose reading interests overlap a lot with yours.
Tags: Bookshelf
Diluting the Brand
October 22nd, 2007 · No Comments
The brands I admire most have a long-standing commitment to their core principles, the things the brand stands for in the mind of consumers. Whether you like the brand or not, you know what it stands for.
I suspect that one of the reasons brands tend to zig and zag so much is the impact of [...]
Tags: Brand Matters · Marketing