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

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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

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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 –>]

Posted via email from Don­ald McMichael’s pos­ter­ous

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

Posted via email from Don­ald McMichael’s pos­ter­ous

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.

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