I finally had a chance to view Steve Ballmer of Microsoft's video of retail of the future from the NRF. It shows a woman managing her shopping list through her cell phone and using that to navigate through the aisles in an efficient way. It made me laugh because I

In a recent discussion about brands that dominate a market, I was struck by how many examples are emerging in Web 2.0 companies similar to the David vs. Goliath story. iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Google all dominate - yet there are emerging competitors that threaten to put a crack in the

I had fun last week at Ma.gnolia's 1st Birthday party, held at Citizen Space in San Francisco. There, I met Ma.gnolia founder Larry Halff who brought out some awesome bottles of wine from his personal collection for the occasion, thank-you Larry! We chatted a bit about Ma.gnolia and where it's

Its great to have access to the expensive tools that web marketers use to profile online audiences...but what if you don't have the big budget? I recently found this awesome FREE handy tool from Quantcast that profiles the audience of your website including: Traffic estimates (with ability to compare traffic

I'm very excited after seeing the BETA for Joost (AKA The Venice Project) because it promises to be one of the most innovative advances in watching video online...imagine watching full-screen, broadcast quality video on your pc! After seeing the BETA I was blown away by how intuitive and easy to

In the latest Harvard Business Review, Duncan Watts, professor of sociology at Columbia University, argues that Malcolm Gladwell's theory of "social epidemics", discussed in The Tipping Point sounds intuitively correct, but is wrong. Gladwell states that social influence stems from a two-step flow of communication; from the media to influentials

I recently attended a conference consisting of vendors who are selling to IT. A key part of the conference consisted of CIOs speaking to the audience about the issues that are most critical to them. The most interesting thing I heard was that CIOs are driven by business need, not

I recently met with a prospective client who is contemplating a vertical go to market strategy. One of the core questions we addressed was whether or not a vertical strategy was the right one. Many of our clients choose a vertical strategy, and in many cases "going vertical" makes sense

I was recently asked by one of our clients how to achieve statistical significance in their decision-making based on the research we are helping them with. Our client is looking for a high level of "confidence", because they are making strategic decisions with significant impact. In answering their question, I

We recently met with a client who shared their "channel opening" strategy with us. I'm hoping you can learn from their mistakes. They are currently successful at selling a complex, high-end solution directly and through a few strategic alliance partners. Their solution has been designed for high-end enterprise customers, with