Archive for the ‘Required Reading’ Category

I was thinking about why Bookstores got nuked by the Internet and yet Libraries live on. Perhaps it is because Libraries understand their purpose? A great read here on that purpose. Bookstores could have provided the same utility. Instead they piled books high and tried to sell them cheap. And the Internet won. 

Libraries groked their purpose and live on.

… libraries remain vital places, and many of them are more crowded than ever. Printed material, however, is not always the primary draw. “Increasingly, people can use that material anywhere that they want to, which means they come to the library for other needs,” says Jim Neal, the vice president for information services and university librarian at Columbia University. “They come to study. They come to work together. They come to use technology they can’t carry around. They come here to consult with experts, with librarians.

The pressure to accommodate “other needs” is especially strong at public libraries, which are increasingly taking on civic functions that far exceed the historical mission of serving books to readers. “Libraries are the new cathedrals of our society. They’re very important sanctuaries,” says the architect Bing Thom, whose new public library in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver, was designed as a space of communal engagement. “People are living in smaller and smaller spaces, so the library becomes the place you escape to for socialization, for solitude, to take a breath. It’s the last space in society that’s free. Even for the homeless. There is a sense of democracy; it is a common space we all share.

I was sitting on the plane coming back from Adelaide yesterday and this lovely elderly lady and her son sat down next to me. They were having a big chat about what was in the paper and she lamented how the font was too small to read anymore and how much she missed the news. He then opened the paper and read the news to her, all the way to Sydney.

It was one of those moments when you are reminded that the great people aren’t just those out winning medals, but also those overcoming everyday obstacles together and moving forward.

Aaker gets at the importance of framing. Worth a read…

Framing has an impact on the purchasing (and voting) decisions people make. Studies have shown that people consistently prefer 75% lean meat to 25% fat, that an organization making a handbag will be perceived as warmer but less competent if a dot org label is attached to it, that the consumption of wine with a North Dakota label will be less enjoyable than the same wine with a California label, and that a risky decision framed as a potential gain will be preferred over one framed as a potential loss (Tversky and Kanneman’s prospect theory, reported in their classic 1979 article).

… When building a brand, instead of arguing about the superiority of the brand, focus on framing the discussion so that competitors’ arguments are not even on the radar screen, because they don’t speak to the key element of the brand decision.

The team at RD2 have cooked-up a great new App for Gary Hamel’s Management information Exchange. If you don’t follow the Exchange, it is a must read for any leader. Here’s the link to the Android version. IOS is in the approval process.