Better Business Through Changing Behavior How can a company do something remarkable that no one else is considering? The United States Postal Service -- and an elevator company -- provide examples of such success from shifting their customers' actions. We continue our Leadership Hall of Fame series, a year-long look at the top business books and authors, with an excerpt from "Purple Cow" (2003) by Seth Godin.
Updated Fri Nov 18, 2011
Are You Afraid of Good Ideas? In this excerpt from his new book "Poke the Box," author Seth Godin discusses people who, because of fear, save up ideas without acting on them.
Updated Tue Mar 8, 2011
Deliberately Uninformed, Relentlessly So [a Rant] Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year. Many of those people have seen every single episode of "American Idol." There is clearly a correlation here.
Wed Oct 20, 2010
What Does Being a "Pro-Business" Politician Really Mean? What makes a policy or a politician pro business? Lower minimum wage, weaken OSHA, cut corporate taxes. These are pro-factory policies, that make it easier for the factory to be more efficient, to have more power over workers, and to generate short-term profits. But "business" is no longer the same as "factory."
Thu Oct 14, 2010
Getting Smart About the Hierarchy of Smart Don't talk to all your employees, all your users, or all your prospects the same way, because they're not the same.
Tue Oct 12, 2010
Do You Actually Care About Privacy? If you cared about privacy you wouldn't have a credit card, because, after all, they know everything you spend money on. And you wouldn't use the phone, because somewhere, there's a computer scanning what you say.
Thu Sep 30, 2010
What Shape Is Your Funnel? Some funnels are more efficient than others. Expose your idea to ten of the right people and it catches on with three of them. Other ideas or offers need to be exposed to far more people (and go through more steps) before they're likely to convert someone.
Thu Sep 16, 2010
Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid A third of the world's population earns $2.50 or less a day. This disparity takes my breath away, but there's a flip side to it: That's a market of more than five billion dollars a day. Add the next segment ($5 a day), and you see that the poorest people in the world spend more than ten billion dollars to live their lives.
Thu Sep 9, 2010
The Corporate Conscience It's convenient and even comfortable to blame the anonymous actions of many working in concert on a evanescent brand or organization, but that starts you on an inevitable race to the bottom.
Thu Sep 2, 2010
