Essence.com: Did You Know… African American Women & Personal Care

Essence.com has an interesting “Did You Know” article about African American women’s use of personal care products.

Summary of Barry Schwartz’s Google Presentation

NOTES FROM THE BARRY SCHWARTZ PRESENTATION

from The Paradox of Choice

Bad Effects of Too Many Choices:

1. Decision Paralysis
2. Increase of Bad Decisions (if they get over paralysis)
3. Satisfaction Decreases
   1. Regret and Anticipated Regret
   2. Opportunity Costs (you start to focus on opportunities that you didn’t choose)
   3. Escalations of Expectations (when there are more choices you start to expect excellence. Something that is very good isn’t good enough)
   4. Self-blame (“What went wrong? It must be my fault as there were plenty of options. I must have made the wrong choice”)

Good feelings satiate, bad feelings escalate

Choice Curve:

• No Choices: Always feel bad
• Some Choice: Positive feelings
• Excessive Choices: increasing regret. Reaches a point where Excessive is worse than no choice.

Notes:

Get agents to make decisions (who don’t have to live with feelings of regret over options)

Outsourcing Choice: Barry Schwartz on “The Paradox of Choice”

Outsourcing choice – Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Nice post about how reducing choices for customers makes things better. There is a link to a summary of Barry Schwartz’s book “The Paradox of Choice” and to a presentation he made at Google about this subject.

“Innovate or Die” Can Be a Lie

EXCERPTS FROM ARTICLE:

“‘innovate or die’ assumption has led companies to make costly mistakes. To begin with, it made many managers think that their companies had to generate inventions themselves. It gave them a ‘jackpot mentality’, a belief that everything would be made right with a handful of ‘homerun’ innovations – innovations that would change the very terms of competition in their industries. Worst of all, it has led a generation of managers to try to build the ability to innovate before taking care of more important things – such as making sure their processes are customer-focused, and that their organizations are listening to the more mundane everyday ideas of their front-line employees.”

“Morita [Sony] realized that his company’s focus on generating radical inventions actually diverted attention, time and resources away from what was truly important for its success – continuously improving and putting topnotch products on the market before the competition and at a reasonable cost.”

“Whatever its industry, in order to come up with inventions that will ultimately be profitable, it needs CyThera-like entrepreneurial dynamics and specialized market knowledge – a unique combination of research and business savvy, which can connect an initial research invention with customers’ needs and success factors and then turn it into a market opportunity.”

“Many companies are not innovative but are enduring and prosperous because they take care of what really is water to them – processes – and really is food – improvement mechanisms.”

“a good SMI (System of Managing Innovation) incorporates three things: (1) simple and rapid processing of ideas, (2) a means to involve middle managers, and (3) appropriate performance measures and recognition.”

Iqama Perfume’s “Suleiman”

perfume-iqama-suleiman,
originally uploaded by Damascity.

New line of perfume “Iqama” that I did the design for. Currently available at www.Zaids.com. View the entire list of perfumes.

Top 10 CEO Blogs

Although they are a rarity, here are the Crème de la Crème of CEO Blogs.

Paperclip For a House

Kyle MacDonald, the Smarter Barterer, traded a single paperclip for a house in 15 barter deals within one year.