Changes in Consumer Loyalty

In Walter Riker's excellent Curious Voyager:    Loyalty Now Includes Interest in What Companies Stand For.  Some good points and links.   I think part of the reason here is that consumers can figure out, via technology, what companies do stand for.  And they can do it while in a store.   Read his overview.

Rise of Enterprise Apps

I recently attended an enterprise business analytics meeting where a number of management people were openly seeking enterprise apps to power their newly delivered tablets and smart phones.  They had been sold on the new model of application delivery and needed software appropriate to their jobs.  How will this effect IT in the enterprise?  E-Commerce Times article on the subject.

Don't Limit What You Know

A friend sends along a link out of of the HBR Blog network.  Don't let What You Know Limit What you Can Imagine.    You have to have effective ways to look outside, learn more, objectively analyze it and get it to the right people.  It is, as one of the comments says, a reason for using consultancies.

" ... One of the most perplexing features of these troubled times is that so many capable people in so many fields look so lost and ineffective. Whether it's the stubborn inefficiencies of the health-care system, the ever-rising costs of the higher-education system, even the slow-motion collapse of the US postal system, leaders with unrivaled expertise and decades of experience can't seem to develop creative solutions to dire problems... "

Twilight of EMail

GigaOm has a good piece on the end of email, now about 40 years old.  Yes, it has become increasingly annoying.  But its annoyance is created in large part by its volume in the modern world.  I think it will continue to be adapted and we will see something very much like it for a long time.  Notable is their paragraph on the need for semantic web technology to make sense of unstructured data like text and general communications.  We will see more of that provided in coming years as part of what we now call EMail.

A Billion Prices

Once more I had cause to look at the Billion Prices project at MIT.   A way to calibrate prices generally and in real time by region?   Clever idea to syndicate this kind of data.  " ...The Billion Prices Project is an academic initiative that uses prices collected from hundreds of online retailers around the world on a daily basis to conduct economic research.  This page shows our most recent research leveraging high-frequency price data, as well as the US daily inflation index (updated monthly on this page).... "

Brain as Computer Model

 In the New Mexican: Chris Wood at the Santa Fe Institute suggests that in an application  of bio-mimicry we could use the brain as a model for new kinds of computation.  This has been tried before with neural nets.  Though the model was very inexact. That technology did produce some useful paradigms for some kinds of computing, but never claimed a general model.  I am currently exploring the model for another kind of application.

Innov8 for Health Competition

I see that the results of the Innov8 for health competition,  held yesterday at  the GE Aviation Learning Center, has posted the results in their blog.  I got to see only a small part of the interaction but the interaction looked very good.

SAP to buy SuccessFactors for $3.4 Billion

The price seems to be high, but the idea is right.  Enterprise company SAP is positioning itself for future work in Cloud applications.  “The premium is significant and it shows that SAP was struggling in its cloud strategy, especially in talent management,” Paul Hamerman, a Forrester analyst, said in an interview on Saturday. “The cloud has been a small part of SAP’s revenue stream, about 2 percent; the deal adds to the revenue base and shows SAP’s strong commitment to the software-as-a-service business model.”

Buyology is Forbes #71

I see that a company I have worked with,  Buyology Inc, is in Forbes as one of the 100 most promising companies.   It is at #71.  " ... Founded in 2008, this marketing consultancy digs into the unconscious motivations that ultimately drive consumer purchasing decisions. One of its research techniques—called latency response—limits a respondent's time to questions in order to gauge gut reactions to products. Time magazine declared co-founder and chairman Lindstrom one of the "World's 100 Most Influential People" in 2009.... "

Intelligent Solutions for Everyday Objects

A continuation of work by Microsoft on embedded intelligence for everyday objects ...

Gaming and the Science of Expertise

In the SciAM Blog: How a game is being used to study the science of the development of expertise.  Collaboration, multitasking and goal achievement.

More Market Apps

Yet another supermarket App, here at Giant Eagle.  Nothing very new.  The usual assortment of promotions, information, coupons and shopping list.  They are easy to develop and provide, and seem to becoming an expectation at least for some shoppers. They do become clutter on the screen.  App bloat?

FourSquare Check-ins

Some interesting statistics about Foursquare check ins at major retailers and fast food.  Interesting that so many people are still checking in, but the percentage of total customers is still very small.   After being intrigued by the potential loyalty aspects of the check-in, I have not used Foursquare for some time.  I find the reaction similar among some of my friends.

P&G and Teva Consumer Healthcare Partnership

I know I am late to this particular piece of information about Teva and P&G, but I am in the process of looking at it in more detail.  Also Teva's press release.

Coke Embraces QR Codes

Yet another example of a company using QR codes in packaging and using them for a specific campaign.  As more consumers learn to use them, this will evolve further.  The scan statistics are interesting:   " ... Aside from the cups, the QR codes will appear on posters. The code leads to a landing page on Facebook that allows users to throw snowballs at friends. A recent Taco Bell campaign generated 460,000 scans in three months, of which 7% of the traffic came from people without smartphones, he said. ... " 

Using Business Analytics to Run the Global Enterprise

P&G has always been a numbers and modeling company, though there have been some attempts in recent years to move it sharply into a design direction.  I think there are lots of opportunities to meld the two together.  Here in the McKinsey Quarterly, a good view of the current direction. 

" ... Robert McDonald is a CEO on a mission: to make Procter & Gamble the most technologically enabled business in the world. To get there, the 31-year company veteran and former US Army captain is overseeing the large-scale application of digital technology and advanced analytics across every aspect of P&G’s operations and activities—from the way the consumer goods giant creates molecules in its R&D labs to how it maintains relationships with retailers, manufactures products, builds brands, and interacts with customers. The prize: better innovation, higher productivity, lower costs, and the promise of faster growth.... "

A number of good examples are included to show how data is being gathered, digital simulations being created, and models utilized. Good reading, and to my understanding, accurate. This shows how Business analytics has been and will become a yet stronger means of running a large company.

Online Reading Trends

New trends in online reading.   I find myself staging my technical reading more.  On a tablet I do more moving back and forth in the text when doing technical reading.   I am also utilizing packages like Goodreader to add 'stickies'to the text. I have yet had any cause to do 'social' reading yet.

Emotion Reading Computer

Affective computing: New computer system can read your emotions, will probably be annoying about it (video).   A solution to at least conscious reaction to products and their contexts.

Predictive Health Screening

I have recently been looking at the analytics behind a  predictive health screening technology called Allostatic Load from a company called Allostatix.  Let me know if you have any input. " ...  Unlike existing HRA's, which rely on 25-year old technology and silo analysis of biomarkers, the Allostatix Risk Prediction System (ARPS™) predicts future health by using neural networks to transform longitudinal health data into accurate, actionable knowledge. ... "  

Wal-Mart Shopycat

A first of interest from newly formed Wal-Mart Labs, the Shopycat Facebook App, a means to help you choose holiday gifts.   Note the 'matching' algorithm aspect of this.   " ... WalmartLabs quietly pushed out an alpha of Shopycat last month and I gave it a whirl. It was underwhelming in part because there wasn’t a great diversity of suggested products. But Walmart Labs has made a lot of improvements in recent weeks. Instead of pointing to just Walmart products, it incorporates items from many  other retailers like Barnes & Noble, RedEnvelope and ThinkGeek. Shopycat also does a better job to find “giftable” items, products that make good presents, not just align with interests. That also means keeping items to around $10-50 dollars. If a user doesn’t have a lot of activity on Facebook, Shopycat defaults to suggesting gift cards.... "