Guidance, Insight and Ideas in a Time of Accelerating Change
Don’t know how I missed this in January but my aunt Marlys just sent a bunch of us an email with a link to it inside. It’s an NBC Rock Center segment called iDoctor and it’s about the healthcare revolution being enabled because most of us are carrying around incredibly powerful computers called a “smartphone,” a device that can send data directly to our doctors.
If you’re interested, here are some links you’ll like to view:
Sears Social Media is completely worthless but, as I discovered, it probably doesn’t matter since Sears is so dysfunctional and mismanaged they’re about out of business anyway.
In February of 2011 I wrote this post after being hammered on by Sears after buying some appliances from them. Sears Social Media, a group in Austin, TX, had a “case manager” followup and I suspect did so only because I was CC’ing the current head of marketing for Sears Holdings, Dave Friedman (who is now gone).
My wife and I made the mistake of buying a garage door opener from Sears a few weeks ago. Having forgotten to make certain I did NOT receive marketing/customer service phone call followups (like last time) I received a call Sunday afternoon from a robocalling service in Chicago, wanting me to partake in an automated survey, and I was under a desk assembling it for my sister-in-law. Exasperated I hung up and, after I finished assembling the desk, sent a tweet to @SearsCares (the social media group) and @Sears (some other Twitter feed). A “case manager” named Brian indicated he needed my contact info so I DM’ed him my email address.
Never received an email followup from anyone.
Next day (Monday afternoon) while in a business meeting my mobile phone rings. It’s another robocall coming in for the survey I never took. “Seriously?”, I thought. So after the meeting I started tweeting to their social media group in the hope I could get someone to intervene and stop the damn calls. Now “Diane”, someone who said twice, “Sorry for the delay in speaking to a case manager.We appreciate your patience. Thanks, Dianne cc:@Sears“
I’ve heard nothing and it’s now been 20 hours since their last message stating that they’d help out.
So I went to Sears Holdings in an attempt to find out who runs Sears Social Media and discovered a few things:
Did I give up? Mostly. Especially since I had an “Aha!” and remembered that the phone number I’d given Sears after the LAST fiasco was my Google Voice number (which is set to ring my mobile) so I logged in and blocked the robocall number.
But isn’t that fixing the wrong problem Sears? Hopefully the next time I shop at Sears (um…that’ll be never) I’ll remember to give you a number I can block.
UPDATE: After nearly THREE DAYS of Sears social media “interactions” I received this email (I had sent two others to “smsupport@searshc.com” and also filled out a form on Sears website) and called ‘Gabriel A.” as requested. Turns out there is not much he can do — he certainly can’t affect Sears robocalling or other marketing — but he offered to “close the case” since I’d already blocked the phone number (and, of course, he gets scored or paid on how many “cases” he resolves):
Sears Social Media Customer Service <smsupport@searshc.com>
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 3:27 PM
Dear Mr. Steve Borsch,
My name is Gabriel A; I work for Sears Executive office we are an escalated complaint and resolution team. Please contact me at your earliest convenience so that we may discuss your issue in depth. Please contact me at your earliest convenience on my direct phone number that has been provided below along with my business hours. I look forward to speaking with you soon. We have also created a case number in which we reference when you call which is ____________.
Gabriel A.
Social Media Support – Case Manager
Sears Holdings Corporation
Phone: 888-266-4043 extension 92
Email: smsupport@searshc.com
Schedule: Monday – Friday 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM (CST)
Chip Kidd, an author, editor, and graphic designer, is best known for his book covers but this TED 2012 talk he gave on “Designing books is no laughing matter. OK, it is“ was very enjoyable for quite another reason. If you watch it, like I did, for how it informs what I do in so many other areas, it will undoubtedly give you much more than your investment of 17 minutes. For me it turned out to be another learning point on my journey toward understanding how to get to the essence of value and of success itself.
Thought others might like to view it too so am posting it (and, if nothing else, so you can watch him in his amazing fashion statement!):
Gaining insight is one of the most important things you can do when identifying trends, especially now that the trend is toward an accelerating, global economic shift toward Asia. It’s one of the reasons why we stay close to what is delivered by McKinsey & Company, a firm founded in 1926 that has grown into a global partnership serving two-thirds of the Fortune 1000.
Their think-tank arm, the McKinsey Global Institute, has just released a new report entitled, “Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class” and is definitely worth a read.
It starts out with this, “Cities have long been the world’s economic dynamos, but today the speed and scale of their expansion are unprecedented. Through a combination of consumption and investment in physical capital, growing cities could inject up to $30 trillion a year into the world economy by 2025. Understanding cities and their shifting demographics is critical to reaching urban consumers and to preparing for the challenges that will arise from increasing demand for natural resources (such as water and energy) and for capital to invest in new housing, office buildings, and port capacity.“
But it gets better as it discusses how this new report finds that, “…the 600 cities making the largest contribution to a higher global GDP—the City 600—will generate nearly 65 percent of world economic growth by 2025. However, the most dramatic story within the City 600 involves just over 440 cities in emerging economies; by 2025, the Emerging 440 will account for close to half of overall growth. One billion people will enter the global consuming class by 2025. They will have incomes high enough to classify them as significant consumers of goods and services, and around 600 million of them will live in the Emerging 440.“
Amazingly this report is free and they have made it available in variety of formats: an executive summary PDF; the full report as a PDF; a Kindle MOBI version of the full report; and an EPUB version for the Apple iPad, Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony Reader, and other devices. All available here.
Since 2005 I’ve been an avid Skype user and enjoy its use for phone calls, international calling, screensharing, and even for podcasting and interviews. The quality of its audio is fantastic and I love having my contacts available everywhere. I have the unlimited subscription plan for $3/month so I can call landline and mobile phones in the U.S. and Canada, and usually leave a few extra dollars in the account so I can easily call my wife when she is traveling abroad.
To illustrate how embedded Skype is in my work and personal life, I even purchased a phone number some years ago so I could easily route calls to Skype. I then subsequently bought a Skype cordless phone so my account could be always-on and always-connected. Of course, I use the Skype apps on my iPhone and iPad too.
The #1 drawback with Skype, however, is how unbelievably confusing it is to give them my money and it’s even tougher to recommend to someone else how they can get set up initially. Some other issues include:
It goes on and on. Now I have two sisters-in-law getting setup on Skype since one is traveling with an iPad and one is home. They needed to sit with me to figure out what to buy and why. I’d hoped that Microsoft buying Skype last year would have helped with making it easier to give Skype our money, but it’s worse. Just go to the Skype website and try to figure out what to buy and you’ll see what I mean.
Can the lessons learned from video games point the way to a new fail, fail, fail and learn model for K-12 education?
Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, parent or teacher, employer or employee, trainer or trainee, one thing is clear: traditional models of learning are being attacked from all corners as broken, virtually unchanged since the 1890s, and desperately in need of fundamental reform.
You’ve seen or heard the statistics about India’s top 10% of K-12 students being more in number than all the students in the U.S., and that the Asia Pacific region graduates more PhDs in one year than the U.S. does in 10.
Questions abound about how to fix it:
What’s the fix? This is a complex question and I’ve watched several talks, by experts in the field, and a new Minnesota startup (CogCubed) has compiled several videos on one page here that you should watch if interested. What’s pretty clear after watching them all (which I’ve done over the last few years) is that there are some great ideas out there but few ‘platforms’ upon which people can build fail, fail, fail, learn applications.
Let’s face it: without platforms (e.g., computers, the internet, desktop & now ebook publishing) and higher level tools and approaches, new innovations and industries struggle to emerge, even with great ideas and directions!
What was a big surprise this morning was discovering just such a platform company for new ways of enabling students to engage in learning that encourages play, manipulation, failing and ultimately learning. Sifteo is a “…venture-backed startup based in San Francisco, California. We make Sifteo cubes, an interactive game system designed for hands-on fun and Intelligent Play. We also make a growing number of unique and exclusive games for Sifteo cubes.“
Rather than me telling you more, go view those compiled videos above and then watch this very short introduction by David Merrill about Sifteo. If you don’t come away with interest, intrigue and the ability to visualize new emergent models of learning, I’ll be even more surprised:
To learn more, here is David Merrill’s talk at a recent TED conference or just go to their website.
Visualizing the future for me is so easy that I get very impatient waiting for it. Way back in 2005 I wrote a post called, Print 3D Objects on Demand which talked about a breakthrough in 3D printing technology that promised to turn computer aided design in to end-products in an instant.
Since then we have come a long way but I’m still impatiently waiting for mainstreaming, even though I’m about to jump in to MakerBot, “…a company founded in January 2009 by Bre Pettis, Adam Mayer, and Zach Smith producing an open source 3D printer to democratize manufacturing. You order it, build it, and you have a machine that can make you almost anything!“
But is mainstreaming close? Yep. The New York Times “Bits” column about “The Business of Technology” had a brief post on Sunday by Nick Bilton about 3D printing called, Disruptions: The 3D Printing Free for All which said, in part:
It won’t be long before people have a 3-D printer sitting at home alongside its old inkjet counterpart. These 3-D printers, some already costing less than a computer did in 1999, can print objects by spraying layers of plastic, metal or ceramics into shapes. People can download plans for an object, hit print, and a few minutes later have it in their hands.
Near the end Bilton writes:
A recent research paper published by the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., titled The Future of Open Fabrication, says 3-D printing will be manufacturing’s Big Bang as jobs in manufacturing, many overseas, and jobs shipping products around the globe are replaced by companies setting up 3-D fabrication labs in stores to print objects rather than ship them.
No question we’re a ways off from buying a 3D printer for our home to make finished goods, “Honey! Will you come here and look at these designs online so we can start printing our plates for Thanksgiving?” More likely 3D printing is going to first enable organizations to rapidly prototype new designs and shorten the cycle times for taking a great idea or innovation to manufacturing. Later on we’ll undoubtedly head over to a “Kinkos for 3D Printing” to have stuff made on industrial-strength printers, like those made by my hometown dominant player in the space, Stratasys.
But who knows? Maybe breakthroughs in nano-materials will enable us to buy a 3D printer at Best Buy and crank out all sorts of finished goods right at home. Finally I’ll be able to just ‘print’ my ideas vs. taking weeks to get a production-ready prototype.
To learn more:
By now many of you have probably seen, and chuckled about, this delightful video that went viral of a senior couple goofin’ around with their webcam. These two are trying to figure out how to use it (and having fun in the process) but the humor obscures the reality: Using a computer, using Skype, and making certain Skype’s audio/video inputs are set correctly is befuddling to most senior citizens!
Let me tell you a story that may mirror many of your own to illustrate why we need a brain-dead-simple Skype phone that is as cheap, super-simple to operate, and as powerful as a landline phone.
It’s a few years ago and I’m in my home office on a Saturday, facing the street and my neighbors house across it. I bear witness to my elderly neighbors — he a fairly tech-savvy retired Fortune 100 executive and she a loving mother and grandmother — saying a very emotional farewell to their son, daughter-in-law, and two toddler grandsons.
The son is an executive at a different Fortune 100 company and the family was headed to Europe for two years to open a new line of business. My elderly neighbors would have only one visit during that time and I immediately thought, “Oh geez…those two boys will grow up so fast and forget them” so I had to do something.
I sent my neighbor and email clearly laying out all of the power of Skype, that it was free, that if he and his son each had a webcam that they could see one another and talk often. The biggest reason to do it was to maintain (and continue to build) grandpa and grandma’s relationship with those two little boys.
Not hearing anything for two weeks, I feared that I’d stepped WAY out of bounds as a neighbor. But what happened next surprised even me. [Read more...]
Pine cones near a pond by Red Rock Lake in Eden Prairie, MN
Snagged this photo with my new iPhone 4S (and its 8 megapixel camera) on my morning walk with my dog. The light was nice at that hour and I stopped to snap a photo of these pine cones…but I came away with A LOT more than just a picture!
After I took the photo I closely examined this spruce and the bunches of pine cones all over it. I was suddenly struck with the thought about how fascinating it is that pine cones like this on another form of pine, the Bishop, which require fire to drop and open up…thus spilling their seeds so a new generation can grow. I immediately thought, “What a metaphor for what we all are going through right now in the U.S. and globally.“
The global economy has “burned” and, like so many of you who stay up on current events, know that many people around the world have seen their lives “scorched” with jobs lost, homes foreclosed upon, benefits reduced, and governments toppled. But ALL THE TRENDS point toward new growth and I fundamentally believe that, as the world continues to accelerate toward an internet-connected future, we will see unprecedented innovation and an increase in value created.
How? Where are all of these trends pointing to a future like that one? Like any other innovation or invention, one cannot look backwards (like many conservatives and MBAs do) or look side-to-side to see what other countries or companies are doing and then do what they’re doing only slightly better (e.g., trying to knock-off iPod with Zune; deliver ho-hum tablets to compete with iPad). The key is to strategically anticipate the future and look ahead to make the best, educated and calculated guesses you can and then go make the future happen.
In our core business (The Trend Curveâ„¢) we track trends globally for the home furnishings industry. Since so many other factors influence what happens within the home, we analyze industries like fashion, technology, manufacturing and what is happening with color, since color equals emotion and, surprisingly, echoes the mood of consumers. Color is becoming more vibrant, brighter, and dare I say, “optimistic?”
In some general trend areas as well as all of the foundational home-related industries we track, optimism abounds:
A bonobo at the San Diego Zoo "fishing" for termites with his stick "tool"
Though other mammals have them, humans and our opposable thumbs have made using tools a key part of our evolutionary acceleration as a species. The higher level the tool, the more of us that can use it. Unfortunately in today’s accelerating technology world, I feel more like that chimp above than a higher level human since the tools are so incredibly immature.
Take the explosion in desktop publishing in the mid-1980′s. A Macintosh, Laserwriter printer, and software like Aldus Pagemaker made the previously manual and film prepress process in to one accessible to millions of us. In fact, my wife and I started our business 25 years ago because these technologies were available to us.
That’s why I’m somewhat taken aback at the acceleration in tablet and ereader acceptance, but realize there are a woefully inadequate number of tools available. I probably should say affordably available and accessible to normal humans vs. skilled programmers or publishers with deep pockets. If you have enough dough or people, you can afford to have your iPad magazines created, served and delivered by companies like Adobe with their Digital Publishing Suite. [Read more...]
Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I’d seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never ‘discovered’ by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view all of my podcast posts.
Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor.