Here’s an unconventional book that should be required reading in business school: Wild Company: The Untold Story of Banana Republic by Mel and Patricia Ziegler. It’s both a fun read and a wonderfully instructive tale of what happens when right-brain marketing genius meets traditional left-brain business thinking. Banana Republic founders Mel and Patricia Ziegler, a journalist […]
Humanity drives loyalty
“Are you safe? Are you in a warm place?” No, this is not your mother speaking. You’ve just been in an accident in your Zipcar, and this is how they answer the phone. Wonderfully human, isn’t it? Beats “May I have your Zipcar number, please?” by a mile. As Leslie Mottla, V.P. of Product and […]
Micro-wizardry helps preserve more than health
Being ten years old is hard enough, without having to deal with a life-threatening chronic illness. But if you’re ten and you’ve just found out you have juvenile diabetes, the news is bad on too many levels to count.
A disarming invention for growth
If you’re a homeowner, there’s a good chance you have one lurking in some dusty corner of your basement or garage. A caulking gun, with a partially-used tube of goo. Love it? Doubtful. But until fairly recently you had no other option if you needed to patch the caulking in your shower or elsewhere. As […]
Hooray for design!
If I ever start to feel a little discouraged about the possibility of companies embracing whole-brained thinking, it is always cheering to peek at what folk in the design world are doing. Good design is a right-left brain marriage, coupling a creative, intuitive and human-centered perspective with hard-nosed practicality and eagerness for measurable impact.