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Fast Company has this helpful YouTube playlist by the authors of Made to Stick.
Consumers purchase goods with the expectation of deriving satisfaction from them.
Effective marketers are well aware that they cannot sell satisfaction, but they can influence perceptions of it.
Customers who think that particular products make them happy will remain loyal.
I completed an initial reading of The Little Big Things by Tom Peters today.
The book is written in an easy-to-read style and includes many useful insights.
Most of the material should be fairly obvious, but it is helpful to be reminded of important concepts.
The book is a list of "163 ways to achieve excellence." While many of the items are rather redundant, I highly recommend reading the book. The typography of the book is interesting in that it features an unusual amount of visual variety for a business book (including surprising font styles and sizes).
The Little BIG Things is a personal development book. It emphasizes the concept that entrepreneurs must develop themselves if they are to develop viable businesses and be effective leaders. It is not perfect, but it contains much of value.
More information about the book is available at tompeters.com.
Efficiency is a wonderful thing. It permits more to be accomplished in less time than would otherwise be possible. It increases outputs for unchanged inputs.
The trouble with efficiency is that it does not necessarily improve the results of a process; it focuses on the speed of a process. Increasing the efficiency of an unnecessary or ineffective process will only compound the problems caused by that process. When faced with the opportunity to be more efficient or more effective, it is better to select effectiveness over efficiency.
Efficiency increases the number of units produced per factory worker; effectiveness recognizes new technology and frees factory workers to take on creative work.
Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, gave this speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in 2008: