Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Conversations with Entrepreneurs: Tara Hunt, Buyosphere

I'm delighted to have featured so many conversations with makers dating back to when I started this site. I am especially delighted that Tara Hunt, someone whose business stamina and persistence I've admired for years, agreed to make the time to answer a few questions about entrepreneurship and Buyosphere, her company and product. Enjoy. +++ Congratulations on the recent financing and making all kinds of news. I followed with interest the evolution of Buyosphere and your conversation about life in a startup, which you captured brilliantly here. In my experience, what you say about learning to understand what to ignore... Read more →

Digital ROI: Immediacy and Accessibility to Exclusive Content

Every classic story about disruption follows a similar pattern -- well-oiled industry built around a "usual suspects" cast of characters building wealth on top of products created by others in a context of scarcity is disintermediated when someone develops the tools for producers to go direct. That someone for the publishing industry is Amazon. Ever since the company rolled out the first Kindle reader, it's been moving into the fertile terrain of book publishing by helping connect authors with their audience -- part of its secret to online dominance is knowing what we read and comment on, literally sitting on... Read more →

Building Things for "Ordinary" People

"You know how you survive? You make people need you. You survive because you make them need what you have. And then they have nowhere else to go." [Bill Gates] Over the weekend, I watched Pirates of Silicon Valley, on the history of Apple and Microsoft (1999). At around minute 40 in the movie, Wyle/Jobs says, "for the first time in my life, people are coming to me, instead of me going to them." That's a great feeling every entrepreneur and business owner who has felt it treasures -- knowing you have something people want. How you survive, is by... Read more →

How to Start a Company by Replacing Your Own Job

[Robert J. Moore, CEO, RJMetrics. YouTube, 2:53'] This is the first of a series of conversations with Moore about business intelligence and data analysis. In this short post, I wanted to introduce you briefly and share the video of his TEDTalk, which I'm sure will inspire you to learn more about his work. Moore got his start at a VC firm in NYC and got to analyze lots of data from successful technology companies. He got to see how the data was stored, and how they were processing information. And he got to solve problems by identifying where there were... Read more →

Why Science Fails us, the Truth on Innovation, and Forward-Thinking Design

We're documenting everything we're doing it seems. We measure, quantify, and rely on best practices -- sometimes even in the face of clear evidence that things are not getting better, they're actually getting worse by using "proven" methods and failure to consider changing contexts. Lists are not the only way to defy death. Together with new found enthusiasm for data-driven decision-making, the faith we place in science alone lulls us into a false sense of security -- that we can find all the answers without formulating better questions. Why Science Fails us, the Truth on Innovation, and Forward-Thinking Design Perception... Read more →

How What We Learned in the Sandbox Applies to Search

[Wil Reynolds, CEO, SEER Interactive. YouTube, 4:22'] I had the opportunity to sit down with Wil Reynolds and talk about his philosophy of leadership In the very fast growing, high tech organization he founded and leads -- SEER Interactive. His Golden Rule for running the company is the same thing we learned in the Sandbox, as children: "Always take the other person's interest into account." He always wants to feel comfortable about the decisions he makes. Whether those decisions affect his team or his clients, he always wants to be able to put his head on the pillow at the... Read more →

Digital Pulse: Ad Budgets Evaporate as Earned and Owned Media Grow

Many marketers have been shifting their ad budgets to digital media. The move usually comes as a way to also reduce spending by building efficiencies into the overall program. According to a new survey of about 600 marketers, agencies, technologists and digital industry insiders, that ratio is $1-to-0.20. The survey was conducted by the Society of Digital Agencies in partnership with Econsultancy. [hat tip Greg Sterling] Content development + measurement top list of needs Some of the key findings, which SoDA included in their 2012 Report: digital marketing spending continues to grow steadily budgets are shifting from traditional to earned... Read more →

Are You a Spare Part?

The current view of the world of work is still organized around a “spare parts” mindset. We treat people as spare parts, constantly looking for a new one when things don't go the way we hope and forecast. We have the models and we have the people. The focus on having the right people on the bus is distracting us from seeing the whole picture we want to build. We're solving the wrong problem. To succeed in the 21st Century, we are called to face and solve problems of increasing complexity. New competitive pressure we had not anticipated, easier solutions... Read more →

Book Review: The Power of Habit

Late last November, I received a box containing a book and a small can of Febreze. The book didn't stink, no. Quite the opposite actually, it stood out for its clarity of purpose -- demonstrating how human intelligence is connected to habits and what we can do to make changes in the way we work, and live. Febreze was there because of a landmark case study about how P&G figured out how to promote their new compound and product that would spread and sell. It involved understanding how to insert a new habit into people's existing routines. According to Duhigg,... Read more →

How Marketers Selective Learning has Become Consumers Selective Hearing

Is now a good time to have a Jerry Maguire moment? To refresh your memory, the story goes when a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent with the only athlete who stays with him. We say people matter, do we mean it? A middle-aged brand consultant confesses that speaking as a consumer, I don’t believe the current “cultural model” driven by ubiquitous marketing is sustainable. Like many consumers I avoid marketing at all cost. From wasteful packaging to drowing in consumer... Read more →