I managed to get my hands on a couple of classic “management reading” books a few days ago. These are: Who moved My Cheese: A timeless allegory reveals profound truths to individuals and organizations dealing with change. We each live in a “Maze”, a metaphor for the companies or organizations we work with, the communities we live in, the families we love places where we look for the things we want in life, “Cheese”. It may be an enjoyable career,…
Here’s an interesting blend of technologies. OnStar, the GM in-vehicle technology for car-person integration is supporting integration to Twitter, allowing car drivers to Tweet from the comfort of their cars using voice recognition. I personally have a Garmin GPS unit in my car, but it doesn’t even do voice recognition. It’s a great geeky use of technology, but to me it also represents a car manufacturer using technology to try and differentiate it’s offering from that of it’s competitors. This…
I’ve just got a promotional email from one of the internet banks I bank with and it interestingly had a table showing the drop in Bank of England interest rates over the last year: Bank of England Base Rates Effective from Base rate 10 April 2008 5.00% 8 October 2008 4.50% 6 November 2008 3.00% 4 December 2008 2.00% 8 January 2009 1.50% 5 February 2009 1.00% 5 March 2009 0.50% It must be pretty distressing for people living off…
Technology has come forward leaps and bounds in the last few years and as more retailers make the leap to the online world, there’s more and more choice online. The reason behind the thought is that my wife recently bought a vacuum cleaner online. She didn’t give more than a cursory glance the the local retailers and popped straight online. Price was one reason, but the main driver was the sheer choice of vacuums that she could choose online. She…
I came across an interesting post the other day that puts together an action plan of how one should tackle a new social media engagement, specifically around a marketing engagement. Here are the steps it defines: Understand what social media is: First of all you need to learn about social media and the different channels that make it up. Remember that these change over time. Twitter wasn’t important a year ago and who know what will be next year. Understand…
One thing that is starting to annoy me recently is the new policy that some UK retailers are adopted whereby they charge for plastic bags. It’s not that I have a problem paying for the minimal charge for the plastic bag, but the fact that they are using an environmental concern to boost their profits. The money they charge for the bags might really go towards an environmental cause; but the reality is that they’re passing on one of their…