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Extensive Research On How To Build Wealth From The Comfort Of Your Own Home.
Five ingredients of smart online commerce
Jan 5th
While it might be more fun to rant about broken online forms and systems, we can learn a lot from sites that aren’t broken as well.
Consider the Ibex store. Here are five things they do that make them successful online:
- They sell a product you can’t buy at the local store. This is easily overlooked and critically important. Because it’s unique, it’s worth seeking out and talking about. Just because you built a site doesn’t mean I care. At all. But if you build a product I love, I’ll help you.
- They understand that online pictures are free. Unlike a print catalog, extra pictures don’t cost much. Make them big. Let me see the nubbiness or the zipper or the way you make things.
- They use smart copy (but not too much).
- They are obsessed with permission. Once you sign up, you’ll get really good coupons and discounts by email. Not too often, but often enough that my guess is that they make most of their sales this way. 25% discount on a product just like a product you love–just before Valentine’s day? Sign me up.
- They aren’t afraid to post reviews. Even critical ones.
No site is perfect, of course, and I hesitate to tell you that this one is. I’m sure there are glitches and your mileage may vary. But the checkout is simple and the customer service, while not trying to be Zappos, is pretty good too.
Penguin Magic, I just realized, follows all five of these rules as well. While the site is very different in look and feel (and has a different audience), they’re using the same principles.
The amazing thing to me is that none of this is particularly difficult to do, yet it’s rare. The state of the art of online retailing is moving very very slowly.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Book Review: The Smart Swarm
Dec 30th
For being at the top of the food chain, humans aren’t terribly evolved. Give us a complex situation like, say, a credit meltdown with a zero accountability, and we drape a TARP and hope it will just go away. Individual humans just aren’t good at making hard decisions in complicated situations.
That said, a smart, carefully tuned group of us could be. Ants, which aren’t too smart as individuals, do it. Bees do it. Even educated humans do it, given the right circumstances.
A smart swarm is “a group of individuals who respond to one another and to their environment in ways that give them power, as a group, to cope with uncertainty, complexity and change,” according to the National Geographic senior editor Peter Miller, whose book The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making, and Getting Things Done dives into the dynamics of how large groups function in nature. Miller uses the relatively new science of understanding flocks, schools, and colonies to make his points about how smart swarms operate.
This “science of collaboration” is relevant to business, especially considering how much the Internet has boosted human collaboration. Ants in a colony assign just the right number of workers to each job every day—can you imagine the competitive advantages of having similar flexibility in your own company? Miller explains how businesses use the mechanics of the smart swarm to optimize manufacturing, routing trucks, networking phones, and more.
Content
Each of The Smart Swarm’s well-written chapters features an example from nature—insects, fish, birds—to illustrate principles, or defining features, of a smart swarm. Miller peppers in knowledge from a span of other fields, too, including economics, political science, government, computer science, mathematics, robotics, physics, and even The Lord of the Rings. Each chapter also includes a case study; subjects include Boeing, the Iraqi municipal government, and the CIA.
Between the introduction and conclusion, the book has five story- and example-rich chapters:
• Chapter 1 explores how ants optimize changing conditions, followed by a case study on how gas supplier American Air Liquide uses a computer system with an ant-based algorithm to save it an estimated $20 million per year.
• Chapter 2 demonstrates the necessity of diversity of knowledge and friendly competition in a smart swarm using honeybees, Best Buy, Boeing, and a small town in Vermont.
• Chapter 3 uses the electric grid, termites, national intelligence, and Hurricane Katrina to illustrate how smart, adaptable networks work.
• Chapter 4 uses flocks of sparrows, caribou and animation in Lord of the Rings to explore how individuals each play a subtle part in keeping their entire group on course.
• Chapter 5 explores what triggers peaceful swarms of locusts to go into mass destruction mode and create a plague; it applies examples to crowd disasters in Saudi Arabia and the Phillippines as well as market bubbles.
What do you get out of all this research, case studies, and examples? A handful of principles that define a smart swarm, including:
• Individuals aren’t smart, but the colony is. A smart swarm self-organizes “from the bottom up, as the result of interactions among many parts.”
• A smart swarm distributes group problem solving through individual interactions. Miller uses the beach as a way to illustrate this. If you go to beach, you find a space for your towel that’s a comfortable distance from everyone else; if you look at crowded beach from aerial view, it’s a mosaic of evenly-spaced towels. Also, if a couple of people stand up and stare into the water, then a couple more do it, pretty soon everyone will be staring into the water in a collective state of alarm.
• The more choices a smart swarm has, the better it performs. A smart swarm made up of individuals with a diverse skill set leads to more choices. Assuming the group is structured right and given an appropriate task—necessary for it to be a smart, not dumb, group–friendly competition of ideas will let the best strategy percolate upwards. The smart swarm will then execute that strategy.
• Smart swarms are self-healing: “In an ant colony or a beehive, many individuals can fail to perform their jobs and the system still functions just fine, because many other individuals, sensing something different in their surroundings, adjust their behavior accordingly,” writes Miller.
Thoughts
Thanks to increased global interdependence and lightning-speed communication, business and government are itching for a model to replace the old hierarchical one. The Smart Swarm points us in the right direction.
This wasn’t clear to me at first, because each chapter in the book is so rich with examples and diverse stories that I had could only ruminate the book’s deeper implications after stepping away from it for a while. It’s a challenge to pick through and grasp everything. I can’t help but think there must be a better way to make each of Miller’s principles more accessible on the first read, eg. listing the principles in bold before the beginning of each chapter.
That said, the Smart Swarm was effective in that it introduced me to a whole new vocabulary and idea set around collaboration. I started reading the book with a preconceived notion that individual experts are the smartest problem solvers; the Smart Swarm cured me of that.
It’s also very well written. Miller includes reams of quotes, references to books, research, and case studies to make his points. He clearly did his homework; his writing integrates everything smoothly.
The Smart Swarm provides relevant, quality information that everyone in the Information Age should know about. For that reason, I recommend it to everyone, with a caveat—it helps if you’re a close reader.
Disclosure: We received a free copy of The Smart Swarm.
View full post on Business Pundit
The Smart Swarm: A Fun and Engaging Way to Learn About Bugs and Business
Nov 7th
Every now and then, I receive calls from publishers asking me which books I would like to review for you. Some of them I turn down. But when I heard the title The Smart Swarm: How Understanding Flocks, Schools, and Colonies Can Make Us Better at Communicating, Decision Making and Getting Things Done, I quickly said yes and asked them to send me a copy.
I’m interested in this topic because the crowdsourcing trend has been playing itself out on the Internet as technology allows us to collaborate. I’m also wondering how the concept of crowdsourcing, collaboration and sharing affects concepts of intellectual property. We’re swiftly moving from an environment of rugged individualism to collaboration. And I’m curious to see how this book brings those concepts together.
Get ready to “bee” entertained
I could tell this was going to be a fun read because the chapters have “bug” names like Ants, Termites, Honeybees, Locusts, etc. But the content of each chapter is really a business problem and the lessons these “swarmy” community-based bugs can teach us on how to solve them.
The first story is of Southwest Airlines assessing how they board planes. Should they stay with the unassigned seating policy or not? Is it faster? Will it harm their brand if they switch? To find the answer, Southwest looked at how ants organize themselves.
Swarm reels you in by getting you interested in a familiar business problem, and then takes you into the world of scientists and researchers who study bug colonies and how they solve similar problems. Throughout the book Miller asks us to think about what we can learn from this research. Where does it make sense to abandon our command-and-control hierarchies for some of the strategies that our bug buddies have been using for millions of years?
Swarm combines business and science to get us thinking
I didn’t read anything about Peter Miller (not even the bio on the book jacket) before reading the book. I wanted to get a flavor for the book and for what was being offered before applying the filter of who the author is and what they are bringing to the party. I was also running a personal experiment. I wanted to see if I could guess whether the book was written by a journalist or by a subject matter expert. I guessed journalist and I was right.
Peter Miller is a senior editor at National Geographic. No wonder the science was so much fun in this book. Miller does a fantastic job of bringing bugs to life. He does this early on in the Ants chapter by referencing the movie Antz to give those of us who know nothing about actual bug behavior a reference point, then leading us from what we know to what we might not know.
Miller brings that same level of characterization, personalization and storytelling skill to the business problems addressed in the book. This is the main reason I enjoyed this book so much–and that I think you will, too.
Lessons from the swarm
From ants: “Instead of trying to keep fine-tuning a system so it will work better and better, maybe what we really ought to be looking for is a rigorous way of saying, OK, that’s good enough. Maybe a smart way to face the unpredictable.”
From bees: “Seek a diversity of knowledge. Encourage a friendly competition of ideas. Use an effective mechanism to narrow your choices.”
From termites: Indirect collaboration involves people making changes to a shared structure, which inspires others to improve it even further. Then the structure becomes part of the creative process. Think of brainstorming or open-source collaboration as an example.
Read Smart Swarm for fun and learning all at once
I’m all about learning how to do something. But every now and then, what I really crave is educational entertainment. Think of Smart Swarm as watching the Discovery Channel in your head. It’s digestible science paired with practical business problems you can relate to. Pick up Smart Swarm and what you’ll get out of this wonderful read is a satisfying mix of knowledge and creative ideas. Not only that, but you’ll also pick up some interesting tidbits for your next cocktail conversation.
The Smart Swarm: A Fun and Engaging Way to Learn About Bugs and Business
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
How Smart Is the Average Entrepreneur?
Oct 25th
In an earlier column, I discussed a paper written by the Chief Economist of the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Chad Moutray, which showed that students who received “mostly A’s” as their college grades were two percent less likely than other students to be self-employed.
A lot of readers commented that college grades don’t necessarily reflect how smart a person is, so we shouldn’t interpret this paper’s results to mean that entrepreneurs are less intelligent than those who work for others.
I completely agree.
But that still leaves open the question of whether entrepreneurs are more or less intelligent than those who work for others.
Of course, the average entrepreneur might be no smarter (or dumber) than anyone else. We might just have intelligent and not-so-intelligent entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.
While the intelligence of entrepreneurs is by no means a burning question in the academic community, a few researchers have looked at how intelligence affects the odds that a person will become an entrepreneur. Here’s what they’ve found:
• A paper published way back in 1989 by Gerrit de Wit and Frans van Winden of the University of Amsterdam showed that people whose IQ scores were higher when measured at age 12 were more likely to be self-employed when they were adults.
• A 2001 article Roope Uusitalo of the Government Institute for Economic Research in Finland reported that the score on mathematical ability section of the Finnish armed forces test (similar to an IQ test) was positively correlated with later self-employment (although the verbal score was negatively correlated).
• A more recent working paper by Simeon Djankov of the World Bank, Yingyi Qian of the University of California at Berkeley, Gérard Roland of the University of California at Berkeley, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya of the Center for Economic and Policy Research examined “400 entrepreneurs and 540 non-entrepreneurs of the same age, gender, education and location in 7 Brazilian cities” and found that the “entrepreneurs scored quite higher on cognitive scores…”
As you might expect, more intelligent entrepreneurs do better at running their own businesses than less intelligent ones. In a different article, published a year after the one mentioned above, de Wit and Winden found that the self-employed with higher IQs tended to earn more money than those with lower IQs. And the recent working paper by Djankov, Qian, Roland and Zhuravskaya found that “failed entrepreneurs are less smart” than successful ones.
So what do these studies tell us? Maybe they are little more than a statistical curiosity or maybe they hint at a pattern.
Subject to the caveat that we have only handful of studies and all of them are based on correlations, here’s the pattern suggested by the data: The average person who works for herself is more intelligent than the average person who works for others, but (as my earlier column pointed out) she doesn’t do as well in school.
How Smart Is the Average Entrepreneur?
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
The Real Smart Ira.
Oct 18th
An eBook(R) For Sale, The Real Smart Ira – Guide To Buying Real Estate with your Ira. Affiliates Earn 50%.
The Real Smart Ira.
Getting smart about the hierarchy of smart
Oct 12th
Don’t talk to all your employees, all your users or all your prospects the same way, because they’re not the same.
The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition posits that there are five stages people go through:
1. Novice
–wants to be given a manual, told what to do, with no decisions possible
2. Advanced beginner
–needs a bit of freedom, but is unable to quickly describe a hierarchy of which parts are more important than others
3. Competent
–wants the ability to make plans, create routines and choose among activities
4. Proficient
–the more freedom you offer, the more you expect, the more you’ll get
5. Expert
–writes the manual, doesn’t follow it.
If you treat an expert like a novice, you’ll fail.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Smart Subscriber
Sep 18th
I have been passionately involved the Internet Marketing scene since I was 20 years old. That’s 12 years for those of you who don’t know me.  ) |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Switchflops: A Smart, Successful Fashion Startup
Sep 8th
If you’re an entrepreneur, the Great Recession isn’t the time to stick your head in the sand. Take Switchflops‘ Lindsay Phillips, who turned her interchangeable flip-flop strap idea into a $30 million fashion company between 2007-today. AOL Small Business’ Jeff Williams has a fantastic story on Switchflops’:
Now 25, Phillips came up with the idea for SwitchFlops at 16, as part of a high school art project. Today, her company — Lindsay Phillips — employs 35 full-time staffers and is projected to bring in $30 million in revenue this year.
The idea is simple — SwitchFlops are sandals with interchangeable straps. So instead of buying several pairs of sandals, customers can instead own one sandal with multiple straps. In the wake of the Great Recession, a 3-in-1 shoe (or, heck, 50-in-1) is tailor-made for shoppers on a budget.
The basic sandal itself costs $35, and additional straps are $12. Officially launched in 2007, SwitchFlops are now sold in more than 4,000 stores around the world, and Phillips’ line has evolved into other footwear like ballet flats, wedges and espadrilles. The company also makes shopping bags, scarves and sandals for children. Lindsay Phillips, the company, is currently building an overseas office.
When she launched the company two years ago, Phillips brought in an experienced 50-year-old CEO, writes Williams, a move that helped her company grow and prosper.
Why are Switchflops such a hit among fashion-conscious women? I think the business model hits on a Gen-Y mentality of being fashionable while avoiding waste (being green). Why have 12 different pairs of flip-flops when you can keep the same pair and change out the straps instead?
Switchflops, by virtue of its design, also produces instant brand loyalty. You’ve already paid $35 for the sole. The only place you can get different straps is at the Switchflops store, so, assuming you like the sole, you stick with the model. It’s Apple-esque, in a way.
I love seeing an innovative, practical product from a small company make it, the way Switchflops is. It’s encouraging and inspiring.
View full post on Business Pundit
Old Bridge Business Sees the Power of Smart Website Design & Internet Marketing Services
Jul 30th
| From enhanced lead generation to assisting its inside… benefits from its investment in a site redesign and internet marketing services program. |
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View full post on Home Wealth Project Riot!
Are Smartphones Getting Too Smart?
Jul 16th
I have an iPhone. Not the super cool new iPhone, but the recently sullied 3Gs that was once the literal Apple of my eye.
The thing is amazing. It does mail, movies, music, pinball, and a hundred other things that I have apps for that someday I’ll also have a need for.
So one day while I was typing out a quick email (and looking cool) the phone automatically fixed a spelling mistake for me. And when I needed directions to a store I’d been to some time ago, it remembered the address and filled it in. Then it hit me; my phone knows me really really well. Maybe too well.
If I were paranoid I might be worried that, knowing me as well as it does, my phone might someday become sentient and rise up against me, coordinating some sort of coup involving the vacuum, the toaster oven, and my electric toothbrush, quietly replacing me when no one’s looking.
If I were paranoid. . .
Are Smartphones Getting Too Smart?
View full post on Small Business Trends
