ChangeThis
The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.
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Blog / ChangeThis
Humanize It: Bring five-star sparkle to your customer interactions and watch your business flourish.
By Micah Solomon, Leonardo Inghilleri
"The best thing you can do for your business is not about new technology, brute force, or first-mover advantage. It's something simpler. And more dependable. Humanize each customer interaction, in order to turn your product or service into much more than a commodity. In your customer's mind, commodities are interchangeable and replaceable. (A dangerous state of affairs for your business. ) Humanized relationships are not. And here's some more good news: with the world moving at breakneck speed, your competitors are never going to catch up with your newfound knowledge about building lasting customer relationships. Why. Because they're busy. Busy spending their money fishing for new customers to replace the old. Busy trimming profit from their pricing so they can appease a less-than-loyal customer base. Most of all, because they'll never believe how much difference a loyal customer can make to a business. Especially in today's revolutionary, lightning-speed marketplace. Watch for these competitors in your rear view mirror.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Future is Here and It Is Bright: What Are We Waiting For?
By Gary Hirshberg
"We need more than simple awareness to break our generations-old, fossil-fuel-induced stupor. We have known what we should do, but we clearly have not done it. And the situation has deteriorated because of our lack of action. After more than three decades spent working in the environmental movement, I am convinced that economic self-interest—whether it is achieved by saving, earning, or a combination of the two—is the most powerful, if not the only, force capable of bringing about the future we need in time to make a difference...."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Marketing Mismatch: When New Won't Work With Old (Riffs on Meatball Sundae)
By Seth Godin
"People treat the New Marketing like a kid with a twenty-dollar bill at an ice cream parlor. They keep wanting to add more stuff—more candy bits and sprinkles and cream and cherries. The dream is simple: "If we can just add enough of [today's hot topping], everything will take care of itself." Most of the time, despite all the hype, organizations fail when they try to use this scattershot approach."
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Work is Broken: Here's How We Fix It
By Porchlight
Meetings, presentations, and e-mail are a part of many people's work day. Used effectively, each can help keep teams aligned, impart important information, and move projects forward. We now are bombarded with information from the web, blogs, wikis, intranets, search engines, and other digital sources in addition to paper. We're challenged to develop and maintain a system for collecting, processing, and acting on all of this information. And the classic techniques we've relied on in the past have either ceased to be effective or have simply broken. In this essay, originally written for The More Space Project, the late Marc Orchant shared some proven techniques for fixing what's been broken.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Elongating Tail of Brand Communication
By Mohammed Iqbal
With Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail" as a jumping off point, Iqbal, a Senior Planning Director with Ogilivy & Mather Advertising, presents why the single-minded brand proposition is an anachronism and will fall out of favor in the future. His paper also details 8 ways marketers and advertising agencies can harness the power of the Long Tail of brand communication.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Seduced By Success: How the Best Companies Survive the 9 Traps of Winning
By Robert J. Herbold
Kodak and Sony reached the pinnacle of success within their markets, but were unable to react to changes within those markets. Herbold, retired COO of Microsoft Corporation, examined 44 successful companies to discover 3 common mistakes made by previously successful companies. The mistakes generate 9 traps which can be avoided as companies like Proctor & Gamble and Apple did by anticipating unarticulated customer needs.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Six Core Values of Innovation
By Jeff De Cagna
Innovation is the critical capability for all organizations trying to succeed in today's marketplace. But the case for innovation cannot be made solely on the basis of the economic value it creates for customers. It is equally important for enterprises and their leaders to embrace the 6 underlying core values of innovation as an integral element for a more vibrant future. This manifesto explores these values and explains how leaders can infuse them into their organizations in various ways.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Drawings that Will Change Your Life
By Ralph Perrine
Ralph Perrine believes drawing to be indispensable to good planning and good collaboration—the top two critical skills for success in life. Here, he shares twelve drawings to help bring focus and clarity to teams and any personal planning.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Innovation: More than a New Year's Resolution
By Nate Burgos
Disasters create change. They particularly defined 2005, from the Asian Tsunami to Hurricane Katrina, provoking a drive for innovation, whose essential value is betterment. This manifesto aims to frame some essential truths that contribute to the quality of not only things, but also people and places. Disasters displace, but what is never displaced is the need to make life better. This need, whatever the scale and wherever the setting, is shared by all of us who possess the power to innovate.
Categories: changethis
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Blog / ChangeThis
The Hard Reality of Semiglobalization...And How to Profit From It
By Pankaj Ghemawat
Pankaj Ghemawat disagrees that the world is flat, instead asserts that "the complex world of semiglobalization offers a far richer palette of business opportunities than a simple "borderless" world of uniformity and ubiquity." Here, he offers an antidote by addressing what still matters: distance and difference.
Categories: changethis