Innovation Watch

Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. By Roger Dooley. John Wiley & Sons.

iw — Thu, 17 May 2012 12:42:45 +0000

According to leading neuroscientists, 95 percent of all thoughts, emotions, and learning occur before we are ever aware of it. Yet, most marketing efforts forgo the vast subconscious and instead target the rational, conscious mind. If you want to get ahead of your competition, it’s time to stop selling to just 5 percent of your customer’s brain! Through the wonders of modern neuroscience, tools now exist that can help explain the brain’s cognitive processes. When you understand how your customers’ brains work, you can appeal to the powerful subconscious — and get better results for less money. Brainfluence explains how to apply neuroscience and behavior research to better market to consumers by understanding their decision patterns. Neuromarketing studies the way the brain responds to various cognitive and sensory marketing stimuli. Analysts use this to measure a consumer’s preference, what a customer reacts to, and why consumers make certain decisions. With quick and easy takeaways, Brainfluence contains key strategies for targeting consumers through in-person sales, online and print ads, and other marketing mediums. … Read more

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High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service: Inspire Timeless Loyalty in the Demanding New World of Social Commerce. By Micah Solomon. AMACOM.

iw — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:17:14 +0000

Are you finding customers more and more fickle, less and less loyal, and ever ready to jump off the handle and on to Twitter? Are you starting to sense that the way you’ve always done customer service simply isn’t working anymore? You’re right to be alarmed. Terrified, even. Social media, self-service technologies, and smartphones have created a disorienting new landscape for businesses that were chugging along just fine as recently as last month. You now hold the solution to those concerns in your hands. High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service is the guide that teaches you to harness the power of technology to build emotional connections with your customers — and generate fierce loyalty as a result. You’ll learn how to bulletproof your business against the increasingly challenging world of customer interactions, both online and off. This book is the tool you need to regain your balance in a world where socially empowered customers pound companies with ever-escalating expectations and where complaints can quickly go viral, with devastating results. … Read more

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The Collaboration Imperative: Executive Strategies for Unlocking Your Organization’s True Potential. By Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese. Cisco Systems.

iw — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:32:45 +0000

Do you want to lead the kind of company that can quickly seize any opportunity and solve any problem? The Collaboration Imperative: Executive Strategies for Unlocking Your Organization’s True Potential offers valuable executive strategies to unleash the hidden assets trapped inside your company-from talent and experience to the right answer and the next big idea. Free these assets through increased collaboration and you build a world-class organization that can tackle market opportunities with lightning speed…. Read more

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Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity. By Josh Linkner. Jossey-Bass.

iw — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:38:49 +0000

In Disciplined Dreaming, business innovator and jazz musician Josh Linkner shows exactly how you can create profitable new ideas, empower employees to flex their creative muscles, and tap into the power of creativity to sustain a competitive advantage over the long haul. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of successful CEOs, entrepreneurs, and artists, Linkner distills exactly how creativity can be encouraged, as well as its impact on the bottom line. Disciplined Dreaming outlines a proven, easy-to-apply 5-step process — Ask, Prepare, Discover, Ignite, and Launch — that will help you and your team develop your creativity chops. Through illustrative stories, real-world examples, and fun yet practical exercises, Linkner shows leaders and team builders how to become immediately more effective in discovering new routes to profitable solutions. … Read more

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Tony Wagner: Creating Innovators (Think Global School)

iw — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:52:22 +0000

THINK Global School and Traidhos Three Generation Community for Learning host a lecture event with Tony Wagner, a renowned educator focused on transforming education for the 21st century. (52m 12s)

Paul Zak – The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity (Leonard Lopate)

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:47:27 +0000

MP3 Paul Zak tells us about oxytocin, a chemical messenger that accounts for why some people are generous, trustworthy, and faithful and others aren’t. His book The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity looks at decades of research on what oxytocin is and how it works. (31m 43s) … [Leonard Lopate]

Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet. By Charles Arthur. KoganPage.

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:35:58 +0000

It’s 1998 and the digital world takes shape. Into this maelstrom of change came three companies: Apple, Google and Microsoft. They were radically different companies and they would subsequently fight a series of pitched battles for control of different parts of the digital landscape: search, technology, mobile music, smartphones and the tablet market. Their weapons would be hardware, software, and advertising. At stake were their reputations — but equally, our future. Starting in the late 1990s and ending with the death of Steve Jobs, Digital Wars looks at each of these battles in turn. Accessible and comprehensive, it analyses the very different cultures of the three companies and assesses exactly who are the victors on each front. … Read more

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Leapfrogging: Harness the Power of Surprise for Business Breakthroughs. By Soren Kaplan. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 22:15:31 +0000

Leapfrogging is about changing the game – creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. How did Gatorade revitalize itself in the wake of Red Bull and Starbucks? How did OpenTable come to be? How did Four Seasons become the world’s leading luxury hotel brand? What makes one leader or company thrive while others languish in mediocrity? Soren Kaplan gives business leaders the tools to do exactly what they’re taught to avoid: embrace uncertainty and invite surprises. Gain new insights from Gatorade, Intuit, OpenTable, Philips, Four Seasons, Colgate-Palmolive, Kimberly-Clark, Etsy, Apple, Google, and many others. Learn how breakthroughs apply to any organization or business function. Obtain practical tools for game-changing innovation. Leapfrogging connects new research, unconventional strategies and practical tools for navigating the seemingly “messy” process of achieving business breakthroughs. … Read more

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Uprising: How to Build a Brand — And Change the World — by Sparking Cultural Movements. By Scott Goodson. McGraw-Hill.

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 17:19:25 +0000

Movement marketing is changing the world. It’s the new way forward for anyone trying to win customers’ loyalty, influence public opinion, and even change the world. In Uprising, Scott Goodson, founder and CEO of StrawberryFrog, the world’s first cultural movement agency, shows how your idea or organization can successfully ride this wave of cultural movements to authentically connect to the lives and passions of people everywhere. We are in the midst of a profound cultural transformation in which technology is making it easier than ever for anyone to share ideas, goals, and interests. Working with companies and brands ranging from SmartCar to Pampers to Jim Beam to India’s Mahindra Group, StrawberryFrog and Goodson have led a paradigm focal shift away from one-on-one selling to sharing. The examples and guidance in this book will prepare you to find, connect to, and even lead the next big movement. … Read more

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Canon Eyes Robot-Only Production for Cameras (Boston Globe)

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:17:52 +0000

Canon Inc. is moving toward fully automating digital camera production in an effort to cut costs — a key change being played out across Japan, a world leader in robotics. If successful, counting on machines can help preserve this nation’s technological power — not the stereotype of machines snatching assembly line jobs from workers, Jun Misumi — company spokesman, said. The move toward machine-only production will likely be completed in the next few years, perhaps as soon as 2015, said Misumi, although he declined to give specific dates. … … Read more

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Outsourcing is Widening the Urban-Rural Divide in India (Tech Republic)

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:14:46 +0000

Sankalp Waingankar – “I recently read an article on Tech Republic that showcased how women in India are being benefited by outsourcing and offshoring. While I completely agree with the views expressed by the writer, I think it is equally important to look at the other side of the coin. Outsourcing has also caused a lot of problems in the Indian economy. Let me clarify here that I am one of those who were highly benefited by the outsourcing and offshoring trend in the US. For the longest period of time, I had seen nothing but advantages for India in the outsourcing trend. My views, although, were challenged when I started visiting the interiors of India while doing a project for the Indian government. That was the first time that I had come face-to-face with the ‘Real India.’ ” … Read more

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Offshoring Jumps as Cash-Strapped Companies Step Up Outsourcing (Tech Republic)

iw — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:10:11 +0000

India’s largest IT suppliers grew four times faster than their international competitors in 2011, as companies in struggling European economies stepped up their IT offshoring. In 2011 revenues at the top five India-based IT service providers grew at 23.8 per cent, compared to 7.7 per cent growth in the global IT services market, according to a report by analyst house Gartner. The top five Indian suppliers made particularly strong in-roads in Europe, where their growth rate almost doubled to 25.9 per cent in 2011. … Read more

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