Last week we witnessed SIGG, maker of aluminum water bottles, lose the admiration and trust of its core customers in a single day when it admitted that for years, its products contained Bisphenol A (BPA) — despite giving the impression that they did not.
Update (8/26/2009): Via The Consumerist, it appears that SIGG has created a voluntary exchange program (i.e., […]
Last week the New Yorker had an excellent article on the topic of innovation from author Malcom Gladwell, titled In the Air?. Gladwell argues that the conventional wisdom of the brilliant inventor and the flash of inspiration isn’t necessarily true. Instead, he demonstrates are actually very common:
The original expectation was that I.V. [Intellectual Ventures] would […]
Until last Friday, it had been almost a full decade since I last launched a copy of Microsoft Access. I spent a fair amount of my undergraduate career getting familiar with it and the concepts of relational databases, and SQL, but once I started working with full-featured database servers like Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, […]
We do the occasional email campaign to our current customers at my day job, and in interest of doing things right, I went with the absolutely awesome MailChimp service after looking at it and a number of alternatives. I’ve been very happy with their web app and their customer service, and highly recommend them if […]
Earlier today, the O’reilly Radar blog had an interesting post about an innovative new auto insurance company, of all things. They’re called MileMeter, and the thing that makes them different is that you buy your car insurance from them by the mile, not by the quarter, year, etc. This is obviously going to be a […]
It seems that oil industry juggernaut BP launched a new advertising campaign for its gas stations early this month, called “Helios Power”. The goal is “to make things ‘a little better’” for customers of its BP Stations. In their own words:
The theory behind ‘gas stations, a little better’ came from the insight that consumers have […]
My new issue of Fast Company magazine arrived in the mail yesterday, with a cover story about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s already up on their website for you to read for free.
I’m a big fan of Facebook, but have to admit I didn’t know whole lot about 22 year old (!) Zuckerberg and the […]
Last night I was flipping through channels on the TiVo, and happened to come across a show on CNBC called The Business of Innovation. It turns out we caught the third episode in a series of five, each of which will also be available to watch online.
Watching this program, I was actually pretty impressed at […]
He survived a helicopter crash back in 2003 and laughs about it now. Instead of ignoring Tim O’Reilly and other critics during the Amazon 1-Click patent controversy in 2000, he joined the conversation and spearheaded the movement for patent reform. He’s a big fan of science fiction. He can talk to you about web services and other technologies like […]
Earlier tonight I read that our local Menards home improvement store will soon be selling groceries. I’m struggling to find the tie-in between frozen pizza and roofing supplies — I just don’t see why they think this will be a good idea.
This type of business strategy (if you can call it one) completely baffles me. Focus […]