Letters Remain

Month: February 2010

  • Selling Premium Goods

    In a short profile of ‘luxury sales consultant’ Jean-Marie Brücker, we discover a few psychological techniques he teaches to his clients on how to sell high-end luxury goods: Describe an item in terms of its ‘value’ rather than it’s ‘price’ or ‘cost’. Sell a story (‘romance’ and ’emotions’) rather than ‘products’. The macaroon technique: sandwiching the…

  • The Anti-Vaccine Movement and the Rejection of Science

    Already covered to death, it’s been on my bookmarks list since I read the following from Wired editor Mark Horowitz on it’s day of publication: Best/worst day. Story I am proudest of assigning and editing at Wired goes live today. […] But I also lose job. Bummer! That story is a fantastically well written and researched article…

  • Fostering Innovative Thinking

    By interviewing and surveying 3,500 visionary entrepreneurs over a six-year period, a pair of professors believe they have identified the five habits and skills common to ‘creative executives’ that distinguish them from the rest: Associating: the skill of connecting seemingly unrelated questions, problems and ideas. Questioning, especially “questions that challenge the status quo and open…

  • Systems for Innovation and Microsoft

    Microsoft is a hugely innovative company, but the culture that has developed there has stunted or even thwarted its innovations, suggests former Microsoft Vice President Dick Brass. The ingredients of this culture are numerous, but it has flourished largely because of the company’s structure preventing the development of “a true system for innovation”. Not everything…

  • The ‘Solution Looking for a Problem’ Syndrome

    In characteristically colourful style, Dave McClure admonishes the entrepreneurial community for pitching their products solution-first. This isn’t how you should pitch and it isn’t how you should position your product, suggests McClure. Problem-first pitching is how one should engage an audience and is how to create a product that has a use. Pitch the PROBLEM…

  • The Entrepreneur’s Ignored Demographic

    Andrew Warner of Mixergy recently interviewed Alex Algard: the entrepreneur who founded the $57m a year (revenue) business WhitePages. One exchange in the interview I particularly enjoyed is when Warner ponders WhitePages’ target demographic. Realising that he, his colleagues and his friends don’t use the site, don’t talk about the site or even hear about the…

  • Typography, Pronunciation and Cognitive Fluency

    How easy something is to read and understand significantly affects how we perceive it in terms of its risk, beauty, difficulty, credibility and truthfulness. Factors that influence this cognitive fluency include typography (typeface choice, contrast, etc.), ease of pronunciation, familiarity and how much the words rhyme. The cover story of this month’s The Psychologist is…

  • Financial and Public Incentives to Perform: What Works

    Large bonuses and salaries are in place to attract prime talent and as an incentive to improve performance, goes conventional wisdom and the bankers’ rhetoric. However recent research by Dan Ariely (author of Predictably Irrational) and colleagues suggests that while large pay will attract the best talent, large performance-based bonuses may hinder superior performance. Interestingly big…

  • Optimism as Incentive

    Much has been written on the (ir)rationality of purchasing lottery tickets (Eliezer Yudkowsky’s viewpoint is particularly fine), but little has been said on applications of these biases that could improve the finances of all of those who buy a ticket. Now behavioural economists are attempting to boost the historically poor household savings rate by using our…

  • De Beers and the Diamond Market

    I’ve previously mentioned, in passing, how the concept of the diamond wedding ring was manufactured. I’ve now been reminded of this upon rediscovering Edward Jay Epstein‘s comprehensive 1982 article in The Atlantic charting the story of how De Beers created the entire market for diamonds through supply/demand manipulation and PR. De Beers proved to be the most…