Several years ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Ray Kurzweil in which he described his process for new product development; “First, I write the brochure.” The inventor of the first text-to-voice computer technology shared how he had conceived of what he felt was another useful concept to aid the blind. His […]

Bhaskar Chakravorti has also now jumped on the “this is not the time for gloom and doom” bandwagon. In his recent interview by the Harvard Business School Press people, he cites a bunch of reasons why the old adage “when the going gets tough the tough get going” holds strong, even in this time of […]

I was in Washington on February 19 attending the inaugural meeting of a non-partisan, non-profit organization that could best be described as a “Project” or “Think Team.” Unlike “Think Tanks” with resident scholars who apply their thinking to pressing political and economic issues as they evolve, the “Financial Regulation Reform Collaborative” or simply, “The Collaborative” […]

“Friend” our third MPD Live Reality Webinar on Tuesday, February 24th at 11:00 AM EST
Misiek Piskorski, Harvard Business School Professor and one of the leading thinkers in social networking along with Karen Webster, President, Market Platform Dynamics will talk about what activities you should stop, start and stay with as you develop social strategies that […]

Only a few months ago there was an outcry over the XM Sirius merger. It would lead to a dreaded “monopoly” in satellite radio and result in consumers paying higher prices. But the merger squeaked through the FCC having survived an onslaught on lobbying of the Justice Department trustbusters. The satellite behemoth is now on […]

The latest brouhaha between Facebook and its users illustrates how far away many social networking sites are from having viable business models. The Facebook execs must be seething over the latest outcry from ungrateful users who haven’t figured out that you can’t get something for nothing. The ingrates get a vast amount of services for […]

A week ago, I watched 60 minutes followed by The Grammy’s. What a great night of TV! Steve Croft’s rare interview of Cold Play and Paltrow’s main-man, Chris Martin, shared a beautiful metaphor for our times. And, then, the Grammy’s stunningly fantastic line-up of collaborations delivered another metaphor for winning in this era.
Martin […]

A recent article on “who owns the customer relationship” suggests that there are turf wars going on in a number of big companies over who is tracking, measuring and reacting to the conversations that customers are having on social networks about their brands. Marketers want the mantle, but execs in PR, R&D, consumer affairs all […]

The latest comScore data shows that the time people are spending on social networking sites is increasing – to nearly 3 hours a month on Facebook and roughly 4.5 hours a month for MySpace. This information reveals several interesting insights. First, for those non believers, it should be abundantly clear that social networks are getting […]

So, who among you has had this situation confront you: your parents send you a Friend request on Facebook. I have to admit that when my 73 year old parents told me they had a Facebook profile several months ago, I couldn’t believe it – since they are not really computer savvy and I never […]