Toyota’s troubles stem from forgetting its principles

I was surprised to learn that Toyota still has not issued a worldwide recall of its troublesome Prius NHW30 model, even though one had gone out in New Zealand.    In layman’s terms, the brakes allegedly don’t work when you want them to. In more complex terms, the software has trouble distinguishing between different types […]

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When Facebook robs you of having a profile pic

I will have more from my Swedish and French tour soon, but I will say that I had a marvellous time in Malmö and Lund on my first day in Sweden (especially getting a feel for Lund’s environmental programmes), Kristianstad and Hassleholm on my second, and on my return to Stockholm. A big-up to Stefan […]

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Learned misbehaviours

Preparing for one of my Swedish speeches, I came across this, which I delivered in India in December 2008: If you ever get to read Michael Lewis’s writings about the US financial industry, you’ll learn that a lot of people within there do not know what they are doing or why they are doing it. […]

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Medinge announces seventh annual Brands with a Conscience awards

The Medinge Group has announced the 2010 Brands with a Conscience winners, and we’ll be presenting the awards at the end of the month in Paris. The release is below.    Can you believe we’ve done this for seven years now?    I was particularly stoked about the awards going to Selco and Muna Abu […]

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As the 2010s dawn, there’s a vacuum on the internet

Rick Klau’s action today in restoring Vincent’s Social Media Consortium blog got me putting things into perspective.    We know sites like Blogger and Vox are free, but what happens when they fail?    Vox, the Six Apart blogging service, had been where I had put my personal posts—as well as a bunch of private […]

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Eric Karjaluoto, speaking human

I’m thoroughly enjoying Eric Karjaluoto’s Speak Human, which could well be a marketing handbook for the 2010s. Current (the references are up to date as of October 2009), Eric looks at how small businesses can do better than the big firms for numerous reasons: (a) fewer layers of decision-making; (b) the ability to engage and […]

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A new book on nation branding

I still need to get a few book reviews up, and here’s a good one to begin 2010 on. Nation Branding: Concepts and Country Perspectives, edited by Nishit Kumar and Anil Varma and published by ICFAI Press, is a very complete book giving a snapshot of the discipline’s practice in the late 2000s. There are […]

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