Topic

new products

A collection of 261 issues

Harvard MBA B-Plan Judge Tips

I occasionally blog on the murky world of business plans for two main reasons. I often get paid to help write them so have live exposure to their vagaries and I think many a pitch or proposal (especially a brand new product one) can benefit from lessons learned in this

Media Elevator Pitches

London’s Liberal-leaning Guardian newspaper has an entertaining microsite where web startups promote their wares. Since the start of 2008 they’ve broadcast wannabe dotcom stars at the rate of around half-a-dozen a month, although this rate tailed off into 2011, with only three in the first Quarter. [http://www.

Marty Neumeier The Good And Different Chart

This marketing author has been promoting his latest book on the speaker circuit. Here’s its 3-min youtube teaser slideshow. One aspect I came across was his good & different chart. It’s got terrific ramifications for anyone selling a new product. You can find a fairly full description here [http:

Mean Median Mode

[http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/] Catching Hans Rosling [http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html]‘s delightfully enthusiastic The Joy Of Stats [http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/] reminds me that it’s time to brush up on a simple bit of maths. I appreciate his distraction that

Distributed Sales Leadership

Here’s a concept I’d love to get my teeth into. Top business grad factory MIT Sloan’s Deborah Ancona heads their Leadership Centre. [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=1&co_list=F] She’s coined Distributed Leadership [http://blogs.hbr.org/imagining-the-future-of-leadership/2010/04/

Couldn't Care Less Whimper

A cheeky ‘weekend’ type post. I learned today that I was once an early adopter. I had the world’s “first portable digital music player“. I bought mine in 1999. It was snappily called the MPMan. Even with the biggest extra memory card I could buy for it, it could

The Bootstrappers Bible (Seth Godin)

This is a book written by marketing author Seth Godin. I’ve recently read the updated November 2004 manifesto [changethis.com/8.bootstrappersbible]. He implores that having no cash is not a valid barrier to prevent a great idea you have being turned into a new business. A noble cause

Ponzi Madoff Plausibility

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madoff] Billion dollar fraudster Bernie Madoff is of course the face of all that’s wrong with the Finance industry in the aftermath of the recent recession. Documentaries have progressed since the crime was uncovered from merely explaining the extraordinary scale of robbery to trying

Buyer Makes Their Point

Here’s a delightful insight into how buyers think. They too have to ‘sell’. Ideas, new ways of doing things, and sometimes they even have to pitch our proposals in our absence. How do they fare? [http://www.supplymanagement.com/resources/knowledge-zone/2011/get-to-the-point/] Well, it seems there’s a

Coffee Dynamos Entrance

In Cape Town, I learn that in the multitude of cafés, the brands of coffee most prevalent are Illy and Lavazza. One group of young friends, headed by an Italian devotee, sought to gain a foothold for Bristot beans. They position themselves as a young, dynamic new entrant. Their first