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Start with a shared value
You can't keep a customer who doesn't value you for what you do best. When you have a transaction, you should be checking for that shared value. Because it isn't permanent. But it's the most reliable way to know if you can plan for future transactions. Help Scout: The Art of Customer Loyalty Shared values…
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All Marketing is Experimentation
The reliance on "best practices" in marketing is a joke. The environment is constantly changing, and we can't predict the 'unknown unknowns.' The best we can do is prepare to deal with variance. Successful marketers will catch a trend because they are ready to experiment, to accept negative outcomes, and to deal with risk. Marketing…
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TFS: Entrepreneurial risk-taking in the context of bad options
Entrepreneurs are famous for taking crazy risks, but according to Kahneman, it's easy to understand their behavior in context. When the plane is falling out of the sky, how should you respond? The entrepreneurs who opted for the "Hail Mary" pass were piloting a crazy idea to avoid catastrophe. The more imminent failure becomes, the…
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When we reach the day where the product IS the platform
Doc Searls (of Cluetrain fame) has a wonderful blog post about how the products you buy should contain their own communication platform back to the people who produced them. So if the product has a problem, it can help you notify the maker. This sounds like consumer nirvana to me! Doc Searls: Products-as-Platforms is Not…
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TFS: A premortem to strengthen every project
We can improve our planning. We can fight back against competitor blindness and irrational optimism. Daniel Kahneman recommends an idea developed by Gary Klein called a premortem. A typical premortem begins after the team has been briefed on the plan. The leader starts the exercise by informing everyone that the project has failed spectacularly. Over…
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To help the economy, try making the unpopular choice
At the Economist, blogger "G.I." reviews evidence that our increasing income gaps are due to a 'winner take all' phenomenon driven by herd behavior that favors the popular. While I don't think it's the complete explanation, I'm sure it plays a role. Choosing is hard work, and better information doesn't necessarily make it easier. So…
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Recruiting users manually
Figuring out how to be useful to people is hard. Especially is you have to find congruity between what you like to do and what they need. Most of us look for a job "opening." I'd rather decide who I want to work for–then figure out what I can do to help them. PaulGraham.com: Do…
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TFS: Get lots of ideas from your competition
Chapter 24 of Thinking, Fast and Slow is called "The Engine of Capitalism." It is, of course, about irrational optimism. But that's not the only type of bias which afflects entrepreneurs. One of the others is "competition neglect." We become so focused on the originality of our ideas, we forget that we have competition, and…
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TFS: Do your want to be inside or outside? The view is different.
Insiders are biased into thinking they have more control than they actually have, or probably should have. That's one of the reason it can be so valuable to have a consultant come look at your business. But the article below also shows the dangers of the outside view. It's cold out there, and the perspective…
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Marketing is a Wicked Environment
According to Robin Hogarth, a 'wicked environment' is one where "feedback on decisions is infrequent, it can be distorted (e.g., biased by unexpected events), and [decision makers] cannot learn from the decisions they did not take." [Emphasis mine.] Hogarth wrote one of my favorite books, Educating Intuition, and is mentioned admiringly by Daniel Kahneman in…
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