QVIews

Today I discovered an important new source of strength from a regular source of strength, Sharon Brogan, whose blog, Watermark, I visit several times a week. Sharon quotes Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create. Link: Watermark: Create. . . . the creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with and against…

I’m only about 25% through reading Innovate America, the report from the Council on Competitiveness, but InfoWorld has a report from Grant Gross, who also interviewed some of the contributors, including IBM chief Sam Palmisano. In this excerpt from the InfoWorld article, Palmisano emphasizes innovation leadership may come more from cooperation rather than competition. Link:…

Houston is one of the most networking-mad cities in the world. When I talk to out-of-town coordinators from the Company of Friends (Fast Company magazine’s readers’ network), they often say how professionals in their city need someplace to network. In Houston, professional groups fiercely compete for your networking investment (usually more time than money, but…

I work with many different groups to help them with the email announcements to members. They have varying resources but all have vibrant communities who want to stay up-to-date on what the organization has to offer. Unfortunately, the clutter in today’s email boxes works against them. In order to keep your community members informed you…

Link: Unnatural Selection by Sam Williams in MIT Technology Review The program had little trouble generating simple designs that matched those patented in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, Koza began referring to the program as an “invention machine” and created a Web page that tracks the latest discoveries by “human competitive” software. By the time…

Remember during the Watergate hearings when Barbara Jordan shared her observations and the headlines said, "Barbara Jordan explains the Constitution"? Now Evelyn Rodriguez has explained what marketing is all about. Link: Crossroads Dispatches: A Dose of Humility: Adopting a Personal Tone, Being a Conduit in Blogs, Business and Life. the best marketing, the best products,…

Marketing and privacy guru Alan Chapell has a good article in iMedia Connection this week about a study from Ponemon (sponsored by Dotomi and downloadable here). Research indicates that consumers want a say over how their contacted–they want to choose their communications channel as a way of cutting down the volume of messages with which…

Brooks Tutor, MindOh! Director of Customer Support, member of FastHouston, and devoted reader of Fast Company magazine, has his own innovation manifesto (pdf) now. Here’s an excerpt: People and organizations are now expected to do more, achieve more, and accomplish things at newly defined levels with virtually the same resources or less. Think of innovation…

In Cool News of the Day, Tim Manners covers a Business Week story about how Larry Johnston, recruited from General Electric, is remaking Albertson’s, the nation’s second largest grocery chain. What’s really interesting about this story is how real innovation has to keep reframing the challenge. The modern American grocery store completely reframed the idea…

Don Peppers of the Pepper&Rogers Group (and 1 to 1 Marketing fame) has a brief eye-opening article about Jaguar in a recent newsletter. They added a request for information to the advertising they would have normally run and to tell the truth, they didn’t expect much. But they’ve been stunned by the response. Click to…