Love’s Links – December 14th 2009

What a show.  Janet Fouts started out with an very interesting pick of the week.

Boxee.tv lists itself as the best way to enjoy entertainment from the internet and computer on your tv.

One of the coolest things about Boxee is the way that it lets you recommend items and to see what your friends are watching and recommending.  We also found out that Janet’s early favourites included a lecture from Stanford.  Jim ’s was the Lego Matrix.

Roger Martin was our guest and when you are done reading his book The Design of Business read what Business Week said about him.

Here’s my takeaway from tonight’s talk. Please add your own comments and even your questions.

We started with an understanding of the challenge that Roger’s book was trying to address.  If I got it right, that challenge is — many companies have developed an obsession with reliability.  New ideas have to be proven before they can be accepted. This proof inevitably requires some form of inductive or deductive logic and equally inevitably, calls on data from the past.  That only works if the future looks exactly like the past.

Roger described the Knowledge Funnel and how organizations can drive value by moving through the stages:

• Mystery
• Heuristic
• Algorithm

There’s a great presentation that Roger made to the AIGA Design Conference where he covers this.

Roger’s description of the new form of logic that underlies his theory of Design Thinking references the work of Charles Sanders Peirce .  The link on this page will show you who he is, but if you want to know why we’ve never heard of him or abductive logic, you have to read Roger’s book.

Companies we talked about included Google,  Research In Motion (RIM),  Herman Miller and in particular for Herman Miller, we talked about the Aeron chair. There’s a great video on the making of the Aeron on the Aeron page.

The Aeron discussion was fascinating to me.  If you read The Design of Business (and you should) you’ll find that the focus groups said terrible things about this chair, but Herman Miller persisted and released it anyway?  Why?  Roger Martin explained that near the end of our show.  Focus groups miss the point.  They aren’t there to tell designers how to solve the problem — they are there to tell designers what the problem is.   Herman Miller’s designers had spend hours talking to real people, observing real people and — if the video is any proof — really asking themselves about how they sat in chairs.  There’s a lesson in this.

If I don’t stop now, I’ll redo the whole interview.   You should listen to it if you can.  You can download the show at this BlogTalkRadio.com/GameChanging and remember that it’s also a podcast.  Go to iTunes and search podcasts for GameChanging.

Read the Design of Business in print or as Alan Hoving did – order it for your Kindle.

That’s my links and insights.  By all means add your own links, insights and comments.  And we’ll see you next week!

Love’s Links – December 7th Show

Great show tonight!   Our panel dealt with Jack Dorsey’s new venture www.squareup.com Janet did a great little piece on them.    I found a great write up on them at PC World’s Business Centre

Our guest tonight was Craig Tomarkin.  Craig works as a data analyst for Acxiom.  It’s their site where Allan got the opening line, “You don’t even know I’m one of your best customers.”   The site is worth checking out even if only for that.

My takeways from tonight’s show:

• You don’t negotiate with a computer. Craig talked about the way people will accept a price from a computer where they would try to negotiate with a person.
• Let Your Customers Tell You Easily - Thumbs Up/Down or Heart/X  are two things that Craig likes on sites that help you listen to your customers.
• Wish Lists – Great observation.  What is on a wish list and not purchased is too expensive for the customer.  Instead of offering a discount, find a cheaper alternative and suggest that.
• Anchoring – where you get someone to think of a number and then to make an offer.  How high that offer will be is related to the number that they imagined.  Try it.  It also explains why you won’t drive across town to get 5% off on a $100 dollar product and save $5 — but you might drive across town to get 50% off a ten dollar product – with a saving of (you guessed it) – $5
• Free - Craig maintained that free is so compelling that we will behave irrationally, especially when the offer is time based.  He cited the Halloween experiment where someone established a trading value of 3 candies for a large chocolate bar and 1 candy for a small bar.   Under these conditions, most chose the large bar as a bargain at a price of 3 candies.  When he changed the price and offered the same chocolate bars with the large one for 1 candy and the small one for free the dynamics changed and more chose the small bar that was free despite the bargain that the large bar was for only one candy.  The power of free.

Craig also is the founder of baseballguru.com where you can find everything you wanted to know about baseball.

His book pick was Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariel.   Dan made mention of Allan Hoving as a resource that you want to know about if you are interested in what happens on Linked In.  Allan’s modesty keeps him from bragging, but he built one of the top groups on Linked In.

What were your links?  What were your takeaways?  Leave us a comment and let us — and others know.

As always, if you have comments or suggestions for a future show this is the place to let us know.

Enjoy — and see you next Monday night at 8 pm ET with another great pick from the web by Janet and another special game changing guest!

There’s Nothing Square about the Square

What if you could swipe a credit card on your mobile phone to accept payments anywhere anytime? Accept signatures on your iPhone and have the receipt emailed to you? Toss your expensive and clunky credit card processors onto the junk heap and get digital. Accept payments from your friends, at trade shows or events, even donations to your cause. All with a digital paper trail and instant transactions. Buyers can even register with Square and have a photo display on the vendor’s screen to stave off fraud.

Is it safe?
According to Jack Dorsey, founder and creator of Square (he also founded Twitter) transactional data is is safely encrypted and even the phone number and mailing address in your profile will be safely stored remotely. Your card or personal info is never stored on the phone or the device itself.

Do you have to have an iPhone?
Nope, any device with an audio jack will work. Your mobile phone can process the transaction too.

What else?
When you create a square account some information will be recorded and can be passed on to the vendor. For example you could join a virtual frequent shoppers club. Square can track the sales for you. No more pesky punch cards.

Give a penny back
Square will donate a penny from each sale to a cause of your choice.

What does it cost?
So far it’s looking like it’s free. No monthly fees, no contracts, no hidden costs (says the web site). Even the device itself is free. Just like Twitter. How cool is that? Learn more and sign up for your own Square on their web site.

What do you think about the Square? We’re going to talk about it Monday Dec 14, 5 PM PST. on the Gamechanging show. Join us.

Love’s Links – Nov 30th Show

Nov 30th – www.BlogTalkRadio.com/GameChanging

Great show with Shelle Rose Charvet, author of Words That Change Minds and her new book, The Customer Is Bothering Me.

Just a reminder that if you missed this show you’ll kick yourself.  Well, you will until you realize that you can see replays at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/GameChanging OR you can go to iTunes and subscribe to us as a podcast.  Just go the the iTunes store, check on podcasts and search for Game Changing!

BTW – not to be outdone, our own Janet Fouts has a book out as well called Social Media Success

Christmas shopping anyone?

The panel discussion had Janet’s item of the week.  She mentioned two sites:

• Nutshell Mail -  nutshellmail.com is Jim’s fave.  It instantly integrated my Twitter, Linked In and Facebook accounts and consolidated them.  I could specify the timing and it sends me an email 3 times a day with a summary of events.  Play around.  There’s even more there.
• Brizzly.com – Brizzly.com – I didn’t get as much time to play with this one.  It only seems to amalgamate Twitter and Facebook.  I can’t live without my linked in.

Here’s the question.  Which of these two do you like better and why?  Add a comment to this post and let us know.

Onto Shelle – who is the sultan of “give it away and bring them in”.  Yes, you should buy her books and go to her workshops.  But she gives you an amazing amount of content in her websites.  Here’s some that she mentioned tonight:

• Words That Change Minds – is at www.wordsthatchangeminds.com and it’s got a lot of information on the LAB profiles and how to use them.
• Shelle talked about an some articles that you can find at her Articles Archive at www.successtrategies.com/news-and-media/articles-interviews She mentioned the Macho Test and The Psychology of Mac versus PC
• For those who love to read it on the small screen, remember www.wtcm.mobi and get the LAB profile questions and the Macho Test on your smartphone.  Apparently it’s not just for Blackberry’s.  That other smart phone can get it as well.

Other references from the show.  Jim talked about  Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore.  This is a must read for anyone trying to understand the adoption curve.  Remember to think about what the LAB profile is of the purchasers at each point in the adoption curve.  This is going to help you tailor your language to attract and motivate them.

Okay, that’s what I remember from tonight’s show.  Got a link that I missed?  Got a question that didn’t get answered? Just comment and we’ll get to it.

Or maybe you would like to suggest a topic or a person we should have on the show?  Just comment away.  We read them all.

Ah, come on.  Just leave some comments.  We love to hear from you and for those who read the LAB profile, we’re external in the context of our public writing.  We need the feedback.

Til next week.  Monday night at 8 pm/5 pm ET.  We’re already working on a great show for you!   Meetcha on the radio!

So I lied. I’m going to catch “Lie to …

So I lied. I’m going to catch “Lie to me” and then I’ll come up and put the links on the site. See you in an hour. Fabulous show, Shelle! Thanks!

Monday Nov 30th – We interview Shelle Ro…

Monday Nov 30th – We interview Shelle Rose Charvet – author of the best seller Words That Change Minds. Janet Fouts brings us a way that we can get control of our social networks. And of course there’s you — the audience. Don’t miss it. 8 pm ET/5 pm Pacific at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/GameChanging

Missed an episode? Catch it here. Or check us out on iTunes

Hey, you can get this plug in for your website and link others up to our show.

Or you can subscribe to the show as a pod cast on iTunes.  Go to the iTunes store and search for Game Changing

Love’s Links – November 23rd

Janet’s pick this week focused on how we can use social media for giving with the whole idea of tweetsgiving. Check out these links:

http://tweetsgiving.epicchange.org/ Check this out to find out about tweetsgiving and the whole idea of gratitude

http://epicchange.org/groups/silicon-valley-california-us There is a video on this site that can only be described as uplifting.

Andrew Ballenthin’s blog is at http://www.communitymarketing.typepad.com/

Catch us next week! 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific. http://BlogTalkRadio.com/gamechanging

Monday Nov 23rd at 8:00 pm ET/ 5:00 pm P…

Monday Nov 23rd at 8:00 pm ET/ 5:00 pm Pacific – Join us for guest Andrew Ballenthin, creator of the Community Marketing Blog http://www.communitymarketingblog.com and the leading force behind Blog Off – a competition for bloggers.

And keep your Monday night free for November 30th as we interview author Shelle Rose Charvet http://www.successtrategies.com/ Shelle is the author of the best seller, Words That Change Minds and she has a new book called The Customer Is Bothering Me.

Love’s links from the November 16th show

I hope I caught them all.  If there’s something I missed, please let me know.

Janet Fouts mentioned three links in her Crowdsourcing segment.  Please check them out and give us your comments!

www.vark.com is the Ask/Answer site that calls itself Aardvark
www.ask500people.com is the site that allows you to ask very quick survey type questions
www.ideascale.com is a more complex site, very interesting

I gave a shameless plug for my friend Andrew Ballenthin’s fabulous Community Marketing Blog at www.communitymarketingblog.com

Andrew is running his Blog Off II where you can compete to see if you are a Top Social Media Blogger.  Part of the prize package which they’ve had valued at $40,000  is an interview on GameChanging!

Our guest George Bradt can be found at the site www.primegenesis.com – where you can also find his books “The New Leader’s 100 Day Action Plan” and “Onboarding”.   There’s a free summary available on his site.
George also mentioned the CEO Boot Camp that his firm runs for CEO Connection.  You can see that site at www.CEOConnection.com

Again, let me know if I missed any of the links that you heard during the show.  Don’t be afraid to leave your own links, questions and even comments.  We love hearing from you.
Till next week!