Category: business
-
A “Felt Need” Is What Makes Us Buy
A “felt need” is what differentiates a vitamin from an aspirin: when we crave something (relief from pain), a product that satisfies that desire becomes a must-have rather than a nice-to-have. Realising this and re-framing a product in terms of this craving is an important step in ensuring a product’s success, say Dan and Chip…
-
The Inefficiencies of Local Bookstores
We should not hold Amazon in contempt for pressuring local independent bookstores to the brink of closure and instead should embrace the company for taking advantage of inefficiencies, furthering a reading culture, and–believe it or not–helping us ‘buy local’ more effectively. In response to Richard Russo‘s recent New York Times article berating a recent not-so-well-considered Amazon promotion, Farhad…
-
Why Software Development Estimation is Hard: Sea Lions, and Coastal Paths
Among the many valid responses to the Quora question of why software development task estimations are often off by a factor of 2â3, Michael Wolfe, CEO of Pipewise, describes exactly why this is without once mentioning ‘software’ or ‘project’. Instead, Wolfe eloquently provides undoubtedly the best analogy I’ve ever heard for explaining the difficulty in…
-
Record Label Demands on Music Streaming Services
New and potentially disruptive music streaming services are having a hard time breaking into the market, with many analysts blaming their business models and others blaming the contractual demands from labels for the troubles encountered. There are also complaints about the royalties paid to artists and poor revenues of existing services. Michael Robertson–founder of MP3Tunes and…
-
The Demand for Product Obsolescence
Years ago (and still, for certain products) consumers decried the idea of planned product obsolescence in industrial design: the intentional engineering of products to have a limited useful life, such as with products produced with sealed-in batteries or fridges that will only function for seven years. In recent years, however, the need for planned obsolescence…
-
Persuasive Infomercial Sales Techniques
I don’t take infomercials very seriously, mainly due to how hilarious and absurd they are. However I’ve now been won over and can see their potential for certain productâmarket combinations. How did this miraculous change come about? Through a surprisingly enjoyable interview between Andrew Warner and the master of the infomercial, Tim Hawthorne. From his…
-
First Offers and Aggressive Offers: Optimal Negotiating Tactics
When negotiating ensure that you make the first offer and make sure it’s an aggressive one: this is almost always the optimal negotiation strategy. That’s the conclusion from a study looking at negotiation tactics and the anchoring effect (from the same researchers that discovered the optimal starting prices for negotiations and auctions). One of the…
-
Marketing Lessons for Startups
When Ilya Lichtenstein offered free marketing advice to startups (as a way of thanking the Hacker News community) he received over 150 requests and set to work. Certain patterns started to emerge in his advice, and so he decided to produced a three-post ‘startup marketing lessons learnt’ series (parts two and three). There’s some fantastic…
-
How not to screw up your career
Starting a career is daunting. Office politics, poor management and unchallenging work are issues that many of us will have to navigate in our jobs. Ryan Holiday‘s advice to young careerists is cynical and pragmatic. The point isnât just to prove that youâre capable, but also that youâre sane. In fact, if you had to…
-
The Drinkers’ Bonus: Alcohol Intake and Increased Earnings
Drinking alcohol — and the increased social capital that it leads to — may not just be responsible for a possible increase in life span; it may increase your earnings, too. In an analysis of both the General Social Survey and the published literature, researchers for the Reason Foundation show that alcohol drinkers earn, on…