Every week I share five to seven links to stories that provide data points to business and technology trends. This week, we take a look at making sense of audiences, figuring out a way to build better products, and making media people want to consume.
Making Sense: Understanding Audiences
- Jean Tirole and Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motiviation. Marginal Revolution [via]: Thus reward has two effects a pure incentive effect (holding information constant) and an inference effect. Notice that the inference effect depends on the context.
- Generation Flux's Secret Weapon. Fast Company: "There has always been a psychological contract between workers and corporations, often unconscious," says motivation expert Marcelo Cardoso of Brazilian health care company Grupo Fleury, who has studied employee engagement across cultures. He notes that the demise of loyalty-based contracts (job security in exchange for commitment to the organization) has resulted in a more transactional relationship between worker and company: bonuses, stock options, and other compensation bind the two together. "But as the level of complexity [in business] is increasing, these types of contracts are no longer satisfying and effective for individuals,"
Making Do: Developing Products
- Are Credit Union CEOs On The Mark With Marketing? Ron Shevlin: I find it interesting (disturbing is probably the better word) that none of the CEOs quoted in Mark’s post said “I want Marketing to identify and size the market potential for our products and services” or “I want Marketing to identify consumer trends relating to financial services before our competitors do” or… a hundred other things that would reflect Marketing’s strategic contribution.
- How to Bypass Carriers Apple-Style. GigaOm: An alternative Apple could look for is to get its own IMSI-numbers and crypto-keys to effectively make every iPhone/iPad user a roaming user on any network. This is the solution I researched for the government of The Netherlands in the context of M2M communication. Using this solution, a consumer would choose a network from the iTunes store and would have a contract for a day, a week, a month or a year. The device would know what network to log onto because of the mobile network codes transmitted by antennas.
Making it: Popular Media
- BuzzFeed now has editorial and product people in place for its forthcoming news app. Nieman Lab: “She sort of embodies what we hope is the strength that we’ll bring to this space,” says BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith. “She’s a real journalist who’s been in the fulcrum of some of the biggest stories in the world at a great news organization. She’s also a person who comes from the Internet and has thought deeply about and worked on product. Along with that sort of experience and intelligence, she has the leadership ability that this job requires.”
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Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here.