18th August, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 1 Comment
A recent paper in the Journal of Product Innovation Management states that, in the ideation phase of new product development, it was found to be better to be technology-focused as the two other approaches (customer centric, competitor focused) generally brought about compromise or smaller product evolutions. At first brush, per the study, being innovative and customer centric seems potentially to be anachronistic. While I can intuitively understand that initial ideation is best driven by a technologically focused team, as the study intimates, the notion of being customer centric remains absolutely vital in ALL other elements of development and execution. How to reconcile being customer centric and innovative?
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12th August, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - No Comments
I bookmarked this article from the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Wash Away Bad Hair Days,” about P&G’s efforts to recapture consumers who, over the most recent hard times, have cut back on ‘premium’ shampoos, such as Pantene, in favor of lower priced or generic products. In recent years, the article describes how P&G have been doing elaborate testing to evaluate the emotional impact of a shampoo, in an effort to rinse out bad hair days (and the lack of confidence that comes with them). So, then, where is the emotional content in the shampoo marketing campaigns?
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16th July, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 3 Comments
Steve Jobs has shown himself and the company to have flaws. Every first model seems to come with some flaws and usually Apple manages to turn the situation around, aided by the Apple afficionados. This time, with the iPhone 4, Jobs has not done his customary good job… The imperfections are looking more imperfect. Will these be a turning point?
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4th July, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 7 Comments
The calamity of the Gulf of Mexico does not need one more person (me) to harangue BP. They are surely paying the BIG price as it is. But, in terms of crisis management, I do not believe the history books or case studies will be particularly kind to BP. In several respects, BP is a »
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3rd July, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 3 Comments
Facebook’s sweeping success is, in very large part, because it is a hybrid social media, brokering the gap of personal and professional. The rules of the social media game privilege ‘personal’ communications; and companies that manage to insert personal-ity into their Facebook presence will certainly garner a more favourable following. Yet, »
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24th June, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 5 Comments
At first brush, you would be excused into wondering if the title of this blog post referred to a basketball match between two lesser well known colleges. Or you might even think it was a court case that occurred in the 1990s? However, I am referring to the result of the first round match at »
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6th May, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - No Comments
Over the last few days, I have read a number of reports of the horrors of PowerPoint. It seemed to start with the New York Times article about the illusionary trap of Powerpoint presentations used by US Army ‘intelligence’ which stimulated a post by Jonathan Salem Baskin and another by Seth Godin “PowerPoint makes »
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31st March, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 5 Comments
Breaking Glass Ceilings and Bringing Transparency Inside the Company. Part IV of a 4-post series on Transparency
In the realm of communications, transparency is at the opposite end of politics, the supreme usurper of energy. If there is one thing that any size organisation needs, it is the optimal utilisation of ever reduced resources and, specifically, »
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9th March, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - No Comments
In Paris, yesterday, I attended a conference hosted by the MEDEF (the union of employers in France), where the ORSE (Observatory of Societal Responsibility in Enterprises) was promoting among other things the arrival of a new book, « Patrons Papas: paroles de dirigeants sur l’équilibre travail et vie privée » (Editions du Cherche Midi) or “Papa Bosses: »
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1st March, 2010 - Posted by Minter Dial - 7 Comments
Transparency is one of the important buzzwords that has surged into new management and leadership vocabulary and, surely, rightly so. It has, in fact, become such a buzzword that the University of Michigan has put it tops of its 2010 list of 15 words that should be banished. This post is the first of a »
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14th June, 2009 - Posted by Minter Dial - 4 Comments
I love to laugh!
Don’t we all? Trouble is, as we grow older, the opportunities to belly ache, hoot and laugh out loud seem to diminish. It is said that kids on average will laugh 80 – 100 times in a day. Little children can laugh up to 400 times in a »
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20th April, 2009 - Posted by Minter Dial - 3 Comments
Google launched a year ago (March 2008) a new service, Google Health. According to its corporate mission, Google seeks ways to consolidate information and make that information available anytime, anywhere. This time, Google is innovating in an area as sensitive as it gets, your health data. Will Google Health be considered an innovation »
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