We've seen the music industry suffer at the business end of disruptive services like P2P file sharing and the shattering of a business model at the hands of Apple's superior media experience and ecosystem. And, Apple recently took the mobile phone experience and turned it on it's head, leaving the device manufacturers left scratching their heads and the carriers' panties in a wod. The travel industry suffers from transparency thanks to a little site called...Read on

I'm in the process of interviewing people for my upcoming Forrester report on corporate social responsibility. One of my interview participants pointed me to this great video by Annie Leonard called The Story Of Stuff. This 20 minute video illustrates the life cycle of the things we use every day. Annie, with a great illustrated animation hovering behind her, explains the stages of this process as extraction (obtaining the natural resources), production (using energy to...Read on

Many companies are delusional about their customer centricity. Many claim to be just that, but only a handful actually are. It takes a big shift in philosophy to be human-centric, and most firms have a hard time overcoming that. Here are just a few of the key characteristics it takes for a firm to be human-centric: Human-centricity starts at the top. If these initiatives are buried deep within the organization, they have little chance of...Read on

Thanks to our good friends Abby & Ivan for bringing us TipJoy! They are in alpha testing right now, but for those of you looking to 'tipify' (if that's not trademarked yet, I call dips) your Movable Type blog, here's what I've figured out so far. For those of you using the standard MT templates, here's what you need to do to add the TipJoy button to the bottom of each post, and make sure...Read on

Pete passed along another meme. I'm several days late, but I suppose it's better late than never. In the spirit of the activity, here are four lists of four things about me.Four jobs I've had in my life:I've done plenty of yard work in my day -- good money for a young kid.Mervyn's -- my first 'company' job between high school and college stocking clothes on the floor of the kid's department at this West...Read on

On Thursday I attended the MIT Enterprise Forum's Power, Drugs & Money Innovation Summit over at the Seaport World Trade Center. The event targeted New England entrepreneurs and focused on energy, medicine, and finance. The mid-morning panel session on the future of New England was pretty good. It consisted of a good mix of panelists including Doug Banks (Editor, Mass High Tech), Robert Buderi (Founder, CEO, Editor in Chief, Xconomy), Scott Kirsner (Innovation Economy columnist,...Read on

Fortunately, my visit to Espoo, Finland to visit Nokia allowed me a little time to explore Helsinki.  Wandering around the downtown area, I noticed a couple things. There are bars everywhere, and a lot of them look pretty swanky. Every casual furniture store (and they are plentiful) looks like Design Within Reach. Hair salons are the Starbucks of Helsinki--I couldn't believe how many there were. The architecture was interesting. Most of the old buildings have...Read on