QVIews

How observant are you? Do you notice who’s got the coolest new threads? Then cruise over to the Houston edition of Craigslist, http://houston.craigslist.org, where there have been a couple of job postings for "Trendsetter Scout."

One of the reasons I prefer the term innovation over invention is that inventors are usually seen as technical experts who rely on raw materials and focus on a specific discipline. That’s not necessarily true, but a common perception. Innovators, on the other hand, are scroungers, restlessly seeking ways around a problem by any available…

Yesterday’s conversations around the water cooler have been replaced by internet-based commenting and connecting after a major broadcast media event like the Super Bowl. The ephemeral becomes digital, and marketers have yet another opportunity to interact with the audience, if they can figure it out. Link: iMediaConnection: Generate Post-Bowl Buzz by Pete Snyder of New…

Thanks to Tim Manners for a heads up on this wonderful article by John Ritter in USA Today on small towns trying new ways to attract families and small business owners. Link: USATODAY.com – Towns offer free land to newcomers. The web site www.kansasfreeland.com is one wrinkle in a new economic development strategy sweeping across…

Amazon has announced a new membership program and one of the WSJ columnists is tempted. Link: WSJ.com – Real Time (paid subscription required). When I discovered Amazon Prime wouldn’t have made sense for me given how I used Amazon in 2004, my first reaction was disappointment. (To be sure, this isn’t necessarily a fair test:…

I strongly recommend you click to AdAge.com and read their entire story by Marc Graser about how Nike-owned Converse has used their customers’ creativity and loyalty to build a successful web site that sells shoes. Note that they spent quite a bit of energy worrying and filtering the ads that were submitted. The advertisers and…

It was a hard call to decide whether this post should be categorized as ‘marketing’ or ‘innovation.’ I’ve decided to categorize it as ‘marketing’ because it includes so many technical issues that only a marketer will understand. Online publishing is one of the fast-evolving areas on the internet. Deciding how to publish and how to…

Flemming Funch expands on an idea recently covered in The Economist and traced back to Yochai Benkler of Yale Law School. Link: Ming the Mechanic: The Economics of Sharing. It is an interesting, even if obvious, key point that sharing is most likely to emerge when something is available that has inherent and abundant unused capacity.…

When the Republicans lost a past election (what year?), the Democrats’ refrain was "It’s the economy, stupid." Well, after this election, the Democrats are still trying to figure it out, and I often want to grab them and say "It’s the mental model, stupid." While the Republicans grasp the mental model of their constituency with…

Stuart Elliott of the NY Times has an excellent article about a new campaign from Conde Nast, the owner of Vogue, The New Yorker, and Gourmet magazines, among others. Link: The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > Advertising: Conde Nast Makes the Case for Old-School Advertising. (free registration required, and article…