Brad Stone's The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon is a fascinating, kind of authorised, insight into the man behind today's biggest online retail brand. Reading it has taught me a few things: ***** from a one-time Amazon interviewee I never, ever want to work for Amazon (and from my fleeting experience with their … Continue reading Book review: The Everything Store
Category: Themes
I wrote recently about how I had been relieved to find out that I'm not alone in understanding the meaning of "omnichannel" when it comes to either customer engagement or marketing. What has been becoming increasingly clear to me, though, is that most of the discussions about how companies should deal with multiple channels of … Continue reading Polychannel
The world of customer engagement is a funny, almost bi-polar place. On the one hand it should be totally people-centric, as it's the place where companies converse with their customers. Except it's in many cases completely industrial - a world of de-skilled white collar work where the production line, six-sigma approaches of manufacturing have been deployed … Continue reading Customer engagement bypass
My second language experiences were somewhat trying, to say the least. At age 11, at the start of secondary school, I started to learn French. Instruction was incredibly grammar-based and either I wasn't pay attention, or I had gone through primary education at a time when English grammar wasn't being taught. I had not the … Continue reading Languages and empathy
After my recent ramblings about the lack of diversity of thought within the tech industry, co-incidentally my former Microsoft colleague Ben Nunney is just in the process of launching a new campaigning body called ethicalco.de. The, particularly internetty, world of tech is a bit of a dichotomous mess. On the one hand you have Edward … Continue reading Diversity in tech
On Tuesday this week I was able to take part in a really engaging and insightful event organised by The Directors' Club. The DC is a group of people involved in customer-centric businesses and the Service Innovation Lab focused on how technology is changing the way customers are engaging with organisations. First off, the format … Continue reading Customer engagement
I've had conversations with a couple of people recently about my experiences of using a Chromebook, and whether they should get one. The biggest barrier in both cases has been interesting. It's not been about its "better when connected" nature. Nor the inability to use Microsoft Office in full form. Or concerns about giving one's … Continue reading How Apple can save Windows…
The BBC2 Series Dragons' Den is a guilty pleasure. Ostensibly educational, it's actually finely honed entertainment for those of us who would rather not admit to liking reality TV. It's not "reality" - it's a pure fiction, and so it would be terribly unfair to hold it up to any sort of real world benchmark … Continue reading Dragons’ Den versus Reality
OK - brace yourself. Bit of a long post coming up here... "Innovation". Many people talking about it. Not that many people understand it (I include myself there). Hard to do. Easy to talk about and so let's add to the kerfuffle... Let's start with the etymology: So, innovation - doing new things, or doing … Continue reading Five modes of innovation
Over a decade ago I was introduced to a book that had a major influence over my subsequent career. Strategic Planning for Information Systems by John Ward and Joe Peppard constructed a model of IT management driven by business outcome rather than technology. It's also one of the most impregnable books I've never finished. Ian's new book … Continue reading Book Review: Disrupt IT by Ian Cox
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