Wonderful article about Theodore Levitt from HBR 2006

From Marketing Myopia (1960)

“Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management….

The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented….”

About the book

“In the novel’s somewhat dystopian world, human personalities can be stored digitally and downloaded into new bodies, called sleeves. Most people have cortical stacks in their spinal columns that store their memories. If their body dies, their stack can be stored indefinitely. Catholics have arranged that they will not be resleeved as they believe that the soul goes to Heaven when they die, and so would not pass on to the new sleeve. This makes Catholics targets for murder, since killers know their victim will not be resleeved to testify. A UN resolution to alter this legal position forms one strand of the novel’s plot, to allow the authorities to temporarily sleeve a deceased Catholic woman to testify in a murder trial.”

A tremendous book on Will Power. Life Changing!

From Amazon:

“Based on Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal’s wildly popular course “The Science of Willpower,” The Willpower Instinct is the first book to explain the new science of self-control and how it can be harnessed to improve our health, happiness, and productivity.”

Informed by the latest research and combining cutting-edge insights from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine, The Willpower Instinct explains exactly what willpower is, how it works, and why it matters. For example, readers will learn:

1. Willpower is a mind-body response, not a virtue. It is a biological function that can be improved through mindfulness, exercise, nutrition, and sleep.
2. Willpower is not an unlimited resource. Too much self-control can actually be bad for your health.
3. Temptation and stress hijack the brain’s systems of self-control, but the brain can be trained for greater willpower
4. Guilt and shame over your setbacks lead to giving in again, but self-forgiveness and self-compassion boost self-control.
5. Giving up control is sometimes the only way to gain self-control.
6. Willpower failures are contagious–you can catch the desire to overspend or overeat from your friends­­–but you can also catch self-control from the right role models.

“Taking place in a futuristic Middle-Eastern setting, the series reverses some of the usual expectations of a future world order by painting the West in decline while Muslim countries seem to prosper. The book’s other main themes are the effects of drug use and alternate personality technologies, as well as the personal interactions and increasing isolation of a flawed protagonist.” from Wikipedia.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. So far it’s a popcorn & candy book that’s very entertaining.

About the book – “The year is 2044 and the world is in near-ruins. The Great Recession has taken its toll on the world’s economy, and resources are scarce. The Internet and gaming culture have evolved into a creation known as OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), a massively multiplayer online simulation game created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow of Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), formerly known as Gregarious Games. Halliday, with no heirs or other living family, dies suddenly and leaves a video will to those in OASIS and a book that was dubbed Anorak’s Almanac, a journal written by Halliday himself containing all his thoughts. The video says that whoever can collect three keys (Copper, Jade, and Crystal) that are hidden throughout the universe of OASIS and pass through the matching gates will receive his fortune and controlling stake in GSS. This becomes known as the Hunt and people immediately begin the search for Halliday’s Easter Egg. Those searching for the Egg are referred to as “gunters,” a portmanteau of “egg hunters.” Gunters devote an enormous amount of time to studying 1980s pop culture, the decade Halliday grew up in and was perpetually obsessed with, in the hope it will assist them with locating and solving the puzzles involved with the egg.” from Wikipedia

Just returning from BJ Fogg’s Behavior Design Bootcamp in Healdsburg, CA. I finished the bootcamp with a head full of knowledge, an elevated  passion towards behavior design and a great network of passionate people.

Ask me directly for the visual notes if you attended the May 2013 Bootcamp

From the introduction:

“Mobile The Next Media Powerhouse”

“When the first call was placed on a handheld mobile phone in 1973, the
prototype device used was capable of less than 30 minutes of battery life
and took 10 hours to re-charge. Fast-forward some 40 years later and
mobile device ownership has reached critical mass around the world.
Today, these devices serve as the primary communications and media
vehicles for many and play an increasingly important role in the daily
lives of consumers in both developed and high-growth economies.

To better understand today’s mobile world, we’ve selected data from the
following countries – Australia, Brazil, China, India, Italy, South Korea,
Russia, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States – for an indepth
look at mobile consumers and how they use their devices around
the globe.”

What Wikipedia has to say about the book:

Reamde is a technothriller novel by Neal Stephenson, published in 2011. The story, set in the present day, centers on the plight of a hostage and the ensuing efforts of family and new acquaintances, many of them associated with a fictional MMORPG, to rescue her as her various captors drag her about the globe. Topics covered range from online activities including gold farming and social networking to the criminal methods of the Russian mafia and Islamic terrorists.

It’s a great book, with a compelling vision of the future. Specifically Matter Compilers, Wet data streams, organization of people by culture and believes (beyond geography and religion) and of course class warfare.

About:

The future is small. The future is nano . . .And who could be smaller or more insignificant than poor Little Nell – an orphan girl alone and adrift in a world of Confucian Law, Neo-Victorian values and warring nano-technology?Well, not quite alone. Because Nell has a friend, of sorts. A guide, a teacher, an armed and unarmed combat instructor, a book and a computer: the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer is all these and much much more. It is illicit, magical, dangerous.And it isn’t Nell’s. It was stolen. And now some very powerful people want to get their hands on this highly desirable object. Nell is about to discover that the world can feel very small indeed . . .