Disqus - Latest Comments for cristene

Re: 5 Jobs That Produce Great Bosses

cristene — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 10:57:31 -0000

I think the Customer Service part is important but should likely be expanded. Anyone who has waited tables knows the value of the exercise. During the course of a shift at the average chain restaurant, you have to manage countless things, simultaneously, all in different locations, delivering appropriately all while smiling. Because that's how you get paid. I made more waiting tables while in college than my first job out of it. When your food leaves the kitchen without a garnish, you know it. (And the same is true of product quality). When a drink is made wrong, you're the first line of defense. If the kitchen is slow, you know who has to explain? Everyone should be on the front lines...because it teaches you grace, humility and gratitude if you let it.

Re: I Paid $79 For Free Shipping, So I Oughta . . .

cristene — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:38:45 -0000

I recently did a pretty exhaustive review of Amazon for a client and I too expect a booming year for Amazon driven in part by Prime, in smaller part by devices (but even a small amount of devices provides a content win, especially coupled with their acquisition of good reads and bespoke content creation). Yet, the challenge that we define Amazon as a retailer in a fairly narrow sense. I harken back to Tony Hsieh's belief that Zappos - now an Amazon company (acquired via the Amazon comply or die approach) was a service company. I think Amazon is a services company, and that much broader definition casts all its pieces in a more more cogent definition. Additionally, Amazon presents another, and to me, more intriguing lesson. Apparently, there are a bunch of investors willing to forego the quarterly approach - the infamous quote Slate’s Matthew Yglesias: “Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers." People are willing to wait for something they believe in. In this, Amazon is among a handful of companies that still have that shiny new toy aura decades after opening.

Re: The diffusion of iPhones as a learning process

cristene — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 11:05:23 -0000

Horace - a fabulous analysis. Two things strike me - and it is at the heart of the difference between Samsung and Apple and what will come. Apple innovated around a single platform and device - which actually improves the ability of the market to learn. Conversations around one set of areas/issues/concerns/features that are relevant to all owners. Once a base level of learning in these same areas has been achieved, then there is an opportunity for the fast followers (of which Samsung is the most formidable) for them to enter a "proven" market. The conversation then turns to choice. And I think that is where Samsung has pivoted the game. Multiple choices and rapid increases in functionality allow them to remain continuously relevant. And their willingness to be a *good* partner (as defined by the carriers and retailers) allowed their rapid ascension. The challenge is, as always, the size of the pie. The US is a nicely defined pie. When we layer on a globally defined pie the water gets increasingly murky - because the investments of the two dominant players become accessible to new entrants and a redefined S-curve - consider Xiaomi. This starts a new S-curve. The question I have: where do you think the start of the new curve is?

Re: Every Company Should Build a Second Corporation

cristene — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:51:00 -0000

I almost find it hard to state how much I love this post. It is thoughtful and provoking. That statistic is not mind-boggling, it's simple reality. I call this approach the Oldco vs Newco dichotomy. Clay Shirky reminds us how hard it is to change any institution when its goal is the perpetuation of the problem it currently solves. Innovation of solutions that are embrace "future problems" (not the ones the current company solves) is not antithetical, but nor is it business as usual. So, I agree, creating "business as unusual" requires a set of minds dedicated to that task, with the different goals that come with it. I think the cultures of Oldco and Newco function differently, with some well articulated points of cross pollination and resource sharing. I am currently working on a marketing innovation study that helps define how the executives, leaders and staffers who must embrace changes to the market and the customers should be viewing the new world order. This post reminds me, reassures me, that we are not crazy to be thinking a culture of change - and the innovation that underpins it - are not out in the future. They are now. Thank you
http://www.covalentmarketin...

Re: How to Flourish Despite Economic Uncertainty

cristene — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:22:39 -0000

you have got to be kidding me, right? Where is the advice in this? tell me something that makes the few minutes I spent reading this worthwhile...there is nothing new, nothing exciting and nothing that marketers since the dawn of time have not known here. It is actually a waste of the limited sliver of cyberspace it took up. The comment from KAre Anderson was 10 times more meaty and valuable. Ugh - not the way to build readership, guys -c-