• Archive for November, 2009

    A, B C, D, E and F flew away

    Wednesday, November 25th, 2009


    Design, in the end, is about creating better things for people.
    Along the way, it can generate better profits as well.
    Bruce Nussbaum, Editorial Page Editor, Business Week

    Internet Marketing

    Thursday, November 19th, 2009

    Today’s article will be dealing with a phenomenon we take for granted – the Internet – and marketing possibilities it provides. The inspiration were yesterday’s Wednesday Morning Meeting of Vizuarna and Ocampo’s Effective Internet Marketing tools post .

    Internet marketing emerged as a whole new business strategy and has developed its very own marketing tools, approaches and techniques. The most common are auto-responders, SEO software, link-building systems, content management programs and related software. Ocampo states that the simplest and the most unnoticed marketing tools are also the most effective. Therefore, he lists:
    1.    Domain name – a brief and memorable keyword-related one is the best. It will trigger the recall in visitors mind as well as improve your performance on search engines.
    2.    Keywords – the fundamental building blocks of the Internet that are considered to be the most essential element in any kind of internet marketing.
    3.    Articles – considered by many as the simplest and most effective organic SEO technique, article writing and submission has become one of the most often used SEO approaches.
    4.    Lists – the mailing list is fundamental in any internet marketing system. Keeping in touch with your present as well as past customers will give them the feeling that you care. A durable and strong relationship with your customers is crucial for your growth and expansion.
    5.    Blogs and RSS feeds – less formal tools to reach out to customers, prospects and leads. Blogs can also easily build content-driven sites and RSS helps blogs get the attention of search engine bots faster.

    And let me finish with the final thought of the author: “You don’t have to think outside of the box, or come up with something new. You just have to know what makes up the box.«

    Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Effective-Internet-Marketing-Tools&id=3274479

    Lea Lipovšek, business design assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy

    How will the company of the future look like?

    Thursday, November 12th, 2009

    Is it possible to convert your yob to become your calling? Would you go to your job if you would receive a SMS early in the morning that you have a 10 million euro’s on your bank account? Would you carry your company’s mission statement in written in your wallet ten years after you retired and read it several times a week? Probably not many of us would answer yes on those questions. And maybe that it because we still don’t see our yob as our calling.

    The next question I would like to have the answer, how the author of the article “A Different Kind of Company” knows how the ideal job will look like? Because he read thousands of the reports where participants of his course Creativity and Personal Mastery where explaining the ideal job in detail. With the same authority Mr. Rao is writing about what these participants find distasteful about their organizations – and these are supposed to be some of the largest and best-known firm in the world.

    Mission statement of the future
    Would have to provide something greater then the company itself. Purely for the use outside of the company I was thought to provide not a mission statement but a positioning statement and a reassurance statement.
    Positioning statement should have
    + the name of the firm;
    + should have the statement that this firm has the leading expertise in their core business;
    + and should be positioning either geographically either in parts of the market.
    Reassurance statement should say who do you help and how. You should describe to whom are you helping. And what are the benefits of your help, at lest two. Last, you should name three of your references.
    This is very appropriate way if you want to explain to someone outside of your company what do you do.

    For you internal use, which is even more important you should have set up the vision of the company. Usually it is said that vision should be set up both, in quantitative and qualitative manner. And the stakeholder  of your company should recognise themselves in that vision.

    We should also have in mind that it is very important if we walk the talk. Is our company really living the mission statement or is that just another public relations statement. Namely we should have in mind that the classical capitalistic idea – where each person acts solely in his or her self interest and market forces somehow magically this selfish activity into social good – is dying. And that claim was made in February 2008, way before the outburst of the economic crises.

    Employees in the organization of the future
    Should be treated with following attributes:
    + Trust   + Justice   + Transparency   + Learning   + Competence   + Fun   + Flexibility
    The organization of the future is not going to try to “motivate “ workers. Instead, it should go to great lengths to find out what is demotivating them and try to ged rid of whatever that is. The main goal or better to say the way is to try to accomplish those members of the organizations to resonate with earlier described mission statement. Good example could be case of the early success of the Starbucks owns much to the decisions of the Howard Schultz to offer health insurance also to part-time workers.

    Customers in the organization of the future
    To be continued…

    Source: Srikumar S. Rao: A Differnet Kind of Company. Leader to Leader Institute.