Recently I re-read Geoffrey Moore’s classic “Crossing the Chasm”, a great technology marketing book that came out in the 90s. It’s about marketing and selling disruptive technology products to mainstream customers. Although some of the case studies naturally date the book, it remains just as instructive now in 2009 as it did over a decade ago.

There are a few key sections worth highlighting (excerpts below): identifying the chasm, moving from early market to mainstream, niche segmenting, and creating a whole product. Food for thought…

What is the Chasm?…

“We have enough high-tech marketing history now to see where our model has gone wrong and how to fix it.… more

Recycling: Each year, Americans throw out enough soda pop cans bottles to reach to the moon and back—twenty times.

Kissing: The science of kissing is called philematology.

Nutrition: A person will usually swallow around 250 times during dinner.

Dolphins: Just a tablespoon of water in a dolphin’s lung could drown it.

Volcanoes: Japan has 10% of the world’s active volcanoes.

One should learn something – at least one thing – new every day. That being the goal, this site of Random Facts, will overload your daily diet.

(Thanks Rose)… more

It’s clear reading The Audacity of Hope that Barack Obama isn’t just a good speaker but he’s also a very good writer, exceptionally talented at conveying thoughts and ideas articulately, intelligently, and with flow. It’s a book that so obviously framed his whole presidential campaign, which as we all know now has thankfully turned the page on the redacted scribbles of the Bush-Cheney years. It’s a book about his background, experience, approach, beliefs, and aspirations.

Besides the obligatory pre-campaign introduction that most political personality books share, there are a couple things that really stand out about Obama in The Audacity of Hope.… more

Twitter has forced me to confront head-on something I so fervently rail against: close-mindedness. It’s personal this time though. It was my own close-mindedness.

You see, I finally relented and joined Twitter last week – something I stubbornly refused to do for a few reasons, namely: I’m too busy, it’s too shallow/banal/narcissistic, and what’s the point really. Basically for the same short-sighted reasons that many railed against blogging waaaay back in the early naughts, I struggled to see the value of

Twitter (and its various apps) deliver a few valuable things. Firstly, it’s effectively a faster search engine than Google.… more

100 (Non-Design) Blogs that Every Web Designer Should Read, according to Kelly at Wed Design Schools Guide.… more

“You will not get that on United Airlines. I guarantee it.”… more

The remixers manifesto:
1. Culture always builds on the past.
2. The past always tries to control the future.
3. Our Future is becoming less free.
4. To build free societies, you must limit control of the past.

This manifesto forms the thesis of the excellent new documentary called Rip! Rip! is about the battles raging between copyright and copyleft; between the creators, publishers, protectors, and remixers of culture. Following the mash-up musician Girl Talk, the film is itself a provocative mash-up of numerous copyrighted songs and images. And, true to form, it is partially available online with an explicit invitation to remix the whole damn thing (see Open Source Cinema).… more

There is of course no shortage of sky-is-falling media commentary on the economy these days. Most of it, however, due to the sheer scope of the global economic crisis, only focuses in on particular angles – mortgage foreclosures, Wall Street excess, bail-out this and bail-out that – and not on the larger net of circumstances. It is a big complex challenge and analyzing it in a big picture sense is ultimately the only way we can properly understand it. To that end, here is a pretty good article by Norwegian management consultant Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar that studies the global economic outlook both as a whole and with the long view in mind.… more

Back in the autumn of 2006 I offered some guy named Andy my two cents on blogging and then gave him a nudge and introduced him to readers here.

A couple of years and hundreds of insightful/witty/bizarre posts later he’s got a big fancy business book and is on his way to becoming a best-selling author. Pow!

The guy is Andy Nulman, former president of Just for Laughs, current boss at Airborne Mobile, snazzy dressy, random shouter, and devout user of the Comic Sans font in emails. And the book, just out, and with forewords by comedians John Cleese and Craig Ferguson, is Pow!… more

Last month when in Vegas for CES I took the opportunity to catch a couple of Cirque du Soleil’s permanent shows, Love and O. One disappointed and one amazed.

As a Beatles fan I’d been dying to see Love ever since its launch. I heard good reviews from friends and quite enjoyed the soundtrack – blended mixes of the classic tunes re-produced by Sir George Martin and his son Giles. Staged at an impressive venue within The Mirage, it was clear that Love was designed to overwhelm. Beatles + Vegas + Cirque… everything about it is big. And, from watching a making-of documentary about it, there were clearly some big egos and big expectations involved as well.… more