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Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Rise of the Networked Economy: Or, why Williamson and Ostrom Won the 2009 Nobel in Economics

I believe that the reason Oliver Williamson, whose work builds on the seminal work of Ronald Coase on transaction costs and Elinor Ostrom, who worries about the private coordination of the sharing of common resources, is a wonderful recognition that in our increasingly networked.

Simplicity is Really Complicated with Paul D’Alessandro (Also posted at HBR)

Intuit just bought Mint.com for $170,000,000.  Mint is a simple, web and phone based tool with a great design interface that helps people manage their finances in an integrated way across all their credit cards and asset accounts — helping individuals get on top.

Will Knowledge Work Ever Escape the Grip of Frederick Taylor?

I think the most underrated thinker of the 20th century may be Frederick Taylor.  Ironically, Taylor’s influence  on people’s day to day existence is  wider than the existentialism of Sarte.  Taylor’s basic notion of bringing science to bear in the workplace is the basis.

Google’s FastFlip: Good for us! Good for media?

Google’s new fastflip technology which has launched with three dozen publishers — including Slate, Cosmopolitan and the New York Times — implements an idea that has been around for a long time: visual search.  I think their implementation is slick, and their mobile application.

The “New” Control Revolution: Or why the current analytics trend is not a fad…

One of my favorite business books of all times is The Control Revolution by James Beniger.  It has been some time since I read it, but as I remember the argument, he notes that every time there is a new method to track, move.

Be Sheepish!: The mammalian manifesto for brand reinvention

April 24th’s New York Times featured a front page (below the fold) picture (and story) of hotels.nl’s advertising on the side of sheep, bedecked with advertising blankets rented to hotels.nl for the price of one euro, per day, per sheep. It is heralded by.

You Get What You Don’t Pay For: The key to knowledge management

My friend Dan Ariely, a Professor at MIT’s Media Lab and Sloan School , and his colleague James Heyman wrote a wonderful little paper called Effort for Payment: A tale of two markets.  In this short piece they brilliantly show people operate with at.

Dematuring of Marketing & the TMT Cluster

Many years ago Peter Drucker pointed out, with the clarity that few management writers achieve, that corporations exist to create customers and serve them.  Marketing is the art of creating customers.  (It is true that assessing great management writers is like judging a strength.

Science and Ideology (Not scientology!)

A few weeks ago  I was presenting an approach to management that was at its core a “scientific” approach; not in the narrow Frederick Taylor sense of time and motion studies, but in the more knowledge-worker-friendly notions taking information about the business, and the.

iTunes: I hate it when I’m wrong

Well, I have to admit it.  I was wrong, so wrong.  As the father of five, and someone married to the same Eileen Marie Harvey for 25 and 1/2 years, you would think I would be used to being wrong.  And yes, I don’t get.