Pearls of wisdom from Hugh MacLeod

Hugh's creative genius is on permanent display here.

Tip of the hat: Synovate apology

This is how Synovate is greeting their panelists today:

No bullshit, no excuses; they just accepted responsibility and apologized for their mistakes. That's all your panelists expect and it's what they deserve. Good on ya Synovate!

Getting your message out in the new media landscape

Clay Shirky claims we are living through the most significant media revolution in human history.

In the first 12 minutes Shirky covers the basics and some real world examples of the changes that are taking place. The last 5 minutes are absolutely essential for any marketer or market researcher who wants to exist in this new media landscape. "Convene but don't control" is the perfect mantra for [EDIT] building [/EDIT] online communities.

People make shoes, not money

...“people make shoes, not money”. Make something that is worth while and people will pay you for it. Figure out what shoes you’re good at making and then make them well. You will make money as a result.

Knowing in advance how you’re going to make money from snake oil may sound like you have a business model; what you have is snake oil. And that’s the problem you need to concentrate on first, the fact that you’re not creating anything of value...

What I am trying to do is to point out that sometimes we hold up innovation by concentrating on the wrong thing at the start. And sometimes it’s because of the anchors and frames of the way we do things.

That's from JP Rangaswami's "Thinking about innovation and business models" post. It's a parable about the economics of innovation, told through the story of JP's personal stake in the long anticipated invention of the polypill. You can read the rest of it here.

Our industry has become so concerned with making money that we've completely forgotten about the shoes. Let's get back to making great shoes, the money will follow.