Family, a revelation hit me this week about this blog series. The base premise has been that I would highlight the five most interesting post that I read during the week. I have always focused on posts that were delivered during the past seven days, but what if I read for the first time an interest post that was crafted outside of that week period? Better yet, why am I artificially limiting myself to blog posts? 

The purpose of this vehicle is to present relevant insights that help propel our business knowledge and understanding forward. Want an example of what I mean? Checkout this week’s first of five.

That’s why I’m changing out ‘Posts’ in the title name to ‘Insights’. It better fits how we need to think in this cross-platform environment. As always, I’ll never going into depth about the finds, so I encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. 

Looking for the Change

This week’s first item of interest is episode 2: ‘Looking for the Change’ of the WHAT THE FUTURE (WTF) Television series that comes to us courteously of CNBC World. It focuses on MPESA (Mobile PESA), the African mobile payments system that is leading the world. With 11,000 new cell phone signups a day it is definitely a trend to watch.

This week’s other interests are:

• 21 principles for innovating in the real world from IDEO’s Diego Rodriguez
• Am I Allowed? Nilofer Merchant on Innovation
• Social Media. Listen. Learn. Respond. Repeat.
• Making Networking Effective – Your Timing is Everything

To read comments on the other article go to my main blog at DonaldMcMichael.com

While I never going into depth about the finds, I do encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. 

Nielsen: PCs, ereaders are taking the backseat to tablets
It should come as no surprise that a recent Neilson study showed that tablets are pulling consumers away from desktop PCs, but did you know that it is also taking a big bite out of laptops, e-readers and portable media players as well? Amazingly the device categories that showed the largest usage gains after tablet ownership, connected internet tv (21%) and portable gaming console (26%), had respectively only a 1% and 3% attrition rate (stopped using because of tablet ownership).

Here are the other four. If you want my take on them visit my main blog at DonaldMcMicheal.com

• 10 Brilliant Startups That Failed Because They Were Ahead Of Their Time
• As Curators Proliferate, Media Brands Face Loyalty Crisis
• Why Social Isn’t Helping Online Retailers Find Customers
• 10 Ways to Find Customers with Mobile Marketing

Do you know where you’re at? Are you cool with that? If not continue reading to understand an 8-point checklist that focuses you onto the right coordinates.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, employee, or retiree you can benefit from periodically stepping back and taking stock. After all, we do liken ourselves to a visionary who enjoys building their business, career, and/or life. You do don’t you?

But, are you also a seeker of truth?

Seekers of truth are honest with themselves about their current state. Highlighted below what I believe are the three most critical elements of the self-evaluation checklist. I cannot promise that this examination will keep you from hiccupping, but it can help you head-off some serious aliments.

Check your customer value proposition. 

[read more at my main blog -->]

While I never going into depth about the finds, I do encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. 

The Struggle for the Right “Business Model”: Distraction or Imperative for Creating and Sustaining the Business?

The essence of a business model is that it defines the manner by which a business delivers value, entices payment for the value, and ultimately converts those payments to profit. It all starts with a hypothesis about what a particular market needs/wants but is quickly converted to an actuality, not necessarily the one originally envisioned, when it hits the light of reality. The question put forth in this post is:

• Is real-world verified information best incorporated into going concerns via strategy adjustments or business model innovation? 
• Or, better yet are business model innovation and strategy development/application one in the same at the operating level?

The Television of Tomorrow

Have you ever noticed that “TV is the only medium touched by the Web that isn’t crushed by it – it rolls it in” says Kevin Roberts in this Blogging Innovation post. I attribute this to the fact that lean-back and lean-forward are after all not mutually exclusive. This started coming to light in the late 1990s while I was at Showtime. Showtime, and other televised entertainment research, showed that the early adopters utilized both during their leisure time. At that time no one envisioned the blurring of the boundaries that are pointed in this post. I guess we best get back to reworking the business models… or is it strategy?

To see the other three visit the full post on my offical blog DonaldMcMichael.com

photo via Donald McMichael 

While I never going into depth about the finds, I do encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. 

NYT Paywall, Huffpo Lawsuit – Symptoms of the same misconception

In this post about survivability of the New York Time’s (NYT) paywall Chris Saad comes at it from a unique angle. In almost all of the cases laid out, both pro and con, the core premise was that people – that’s you and I – are interested in and derive value from the content. We Chris’ position is that people have historically paid for the medium not the content. This was so because people perceived the medium to be scarce, a limited resource. The point is that we live in a world of abundance where digital space is virtually infinite. 

Scarcity now is on the consumption side – content providers have to fight for attention. A total flip in the prevailing paradigm on the last 100 years.

If true, it’s kind of a King has no clothes moment for many media and entertainment concerns.

I’m still of the school that content does matter. The question that I’m currently pondering is: ‘What’s the right balance of interesting content and delivery vehicle (experience) that drives the highest financial return?’

What do you think?

To review the remaining article visit my my main blog.

Today’s tip on negotiating comes from our good friends over at Scotwork NA.

Question:

What is the first thing that you need to do before you enter a negotiation… or meeting?

Answer: 

Prepare in advance. In negotiating this is how one makes the biggest impact on outcomes for the your team. Take the time to think through exactly what it is that you must have, would like to have, and a winning position for your counterpart. Here is how you go about it:

• Identifying objectives: identify issues, define intended outcomes and realistic expectations, and determine the limit to where you will move if you have flexibility.
• Creating a wish list: if you are flexible in any of your issues and you move closer to your limit, determine what you’ll ask for in return. If you come to conclusions quickly, determine what small thing you can ask for to enhance the deal.
• Determining concessions: see where you can be flexible and what you can give to get what you want.
• Researching information: analyze power balance and determine the degree to which the other party understands your priorities and you understand theirs.
• Preparing questions: determine what you don’t know and prepare questions you should ask ahead of time.
• Developing a strategy: be flexible so you can quickly adjust. Make it fairly simple so you avoid dazzling them with you know what.
• Assigning tasks ahead: identify leader, summarizer and observer to control the information flow and the shape of the negotiation.

About the insight contributor: Marty Finkle is the CEO of Scotwork (NA) Inc. Marty runs Scotwork’s North American business where he and his team of seasoned negotiators work with over 100 companies in over 20 industries focused on negotiations. 

“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to step away from the shore.”

Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide

photo via Donald McMichael 

While I never going into depth about the finds, I do encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. 

Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. So What’s Next?

In this blog post Bruce Nussbaum, on of the biggest advocators of Design Thinking via his Business Week columns, has determined that like many business frameworks Design Thinking has reached an influence plateau. Some of it is based on its large adoption factor but Bruce argues that a larger than fair amount of his decision was based on his observation that many leaders had “turning it into a linear, gated, by-the-book methodology that delivered, at best, incremental change”. What conventional framework has he moved on to… Creative Intelligence. So what is Creative Intelligence, or CQ? Read this article, it is worth your time and as an added bonus it includes a video (go to my main blog) featuring IDEO’s Tim Brown and Bruce Nussbaum.

Go to my blog to see the other 4 top articles/posts for the past week.

The March 31^st post – 60 Second MBA: Rescue Your Negotiations; 3 Commandments http://www.donaldmcmichael.com/60-second-mba-rescue-your-negotiations.htm – on negotiation drew a fair amount of interest. Why, because negotiation skills are important for everyone, no matter what they do for a living. It is something that most everyone uses often in life; skills to swing the deal in your favor come in handy. For this reason, I decided to put together a fail-safe list of negotiating insights that you can turn to in a pinch.

HBS (Harvard Business School) produces a ton of business research. It is a great destination for free articles on negotiation; http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/negotiations.html. Also, don’t forget to check out their sister department Harvard Law at http://pon.harvard.edu.

Sticking in academia Kellogg School of Business’ site ‘Inside Kellogg’ (http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/) also has a great stash of negotiation articles.

On the literary front flip through:  [go to DonaldMcMichael.com to view the full post...]

I invite you to join me as I continue my… well let’s call it a voyage of discovery. Publicly, it all started last week with a post entitled “It’s All About the Customer; 5 Myths to Bust to Get There”, the premise is that businesses have/are moving away from selling a product to selling a solution by focusing on customer relationships and retention. This is how I closed the post:

Mythbuster Needed

What’s we as business leaders need to embrace is new answers for old problems – leadership, innovation and growth – and new challenges. In order to do this here are five myths that we need to bust.

Myth 1: We can’t Afford to Fail… Often

Myth 2: Decisions should be based on data not intuition

Myth 3: Past ways need to be totally forgotten

Myth 4: Problem solving and critical thinking are the same

Myth 5: It’s all about the features

I’ll explore these myths more next week.

On Field Audible

We most certainly will dig into each of these myths, however, upon further reflection during the week I think it is well worth the effort to take the time to explore the back-story that’s driving this trend. After all, if we don’t develop a hypothesis around the engine of change (the core) how could we ever expect to formulate reasonable arguments against the myths?

The Post Recession Consumer

I’m not necessarily a fan of trickle-down- economics but ripple effects (repercussions) within the supplier-consumer eco system are all too real. At the core of the current business model renaissance is the impact the past recession (although to millions it is still all too current, so well just think of it as the recession and post recession wave) has had on the attitudes of consumers. In the U.S. we have seen savings rates jump from under 5% of take home pay to in some cases to +10%, territory, an area that has not been treaded upon since the early 1970’s. According a Strategy + Business article “The Power of the Post-Recession Consumer” by John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, it is a move to a lifestyle more focused on community, connection, quality, and creativity. These spending shifts have

<to read the full article go to my main blog at DonaldMcMichael.com>