big-idea generator

January 27, 2008 at 12:25 pm (books, communication, marketing, vision and entrepreneurship)

This comes from Wired magazine and is totally funny! Check it out here.

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how to track well-being

January 22, 2008 at 9:06 pm (culture, india, psychology, sociology, the world)

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Here is a thoughtful piece from the Times of India today. By Jay Bhattacharjee, a business and industrial analyst, it comes on the eve of Sarkozy’s visit to India. I thought it made a couple of very valid points - those that corporate India could be truly mindful of at this juncture.
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French President Nicolas Sarkozy may have recently received a lot of media attention for reasons that are not exactly flattering. However, one policy initiative of his seems to have aroused a lot of interest. The Elysee Palace has invited two Nobel laureates, Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz, to advise the French government on a new methodology for calculating national income (NI) and gross domestic product (GDP) that would incorporate non-economic inputs like quality of life and other social indicators.
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This development is a reflection of the deep divide between continental European scholars and the Anglo-Saxon market economy proponents on what constitutes a nation’s well-being. In post-Thatcher Britain and post-Reagan America, the approach to the calculation of a country’s GDP and NI has been based on conventional economic indices. Even allowing for corrections to these figures on account of different price levels (purchasing power parity), the estimates of NI and GDP have not mirrored the approximate levels of national well-being.
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Economist Paul Krugman wrote an article in July 2005 on the relative performance of the French and American economies. He said that the big difference between the two “is in priorities, not performance”. He went on to emphasise that the issue was about “two highly productive societies that have made a different trade-off between work and family time”. He felt there is a lot to be said for the French choice.
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According to OECD data, French productivity, defined as GDP per hour worked, is manifestly higher than the US figure. While admitting that French GDP per capita is well below that of the US, Krugman attributes it to the additional time that French workers spend with their families. Without minimising the problem of higher unemployment in France, he notes that full-time French employees work shorter weeks and enjoy more paid vacations than their American counterparts.
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When we compare typical middle-class families in France and the US, it becomes evident that the French enjoy good schooling (at little cost) and an excellent healthcare system that are not available to American families. The Krugman analysis was taken a step further by an OECD study in 2006. It considered a number of alternative indicators of well-being or even “ill-being”, as it said tongue in cheek. It recognised that GDP, as currently calculated, has many shortcomings, since it does not take into account factors like leisure or the degradation of the environment, or income distribution.
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OECD analysts researched the impact of unconventional variables like these three, as well as other indices of wellbeing like social outcomes of policies and reported happiness. The authors admit that the new variables suffer from various drawbacks, including availability, measurement and crosscountry comparability problems. Nevertheless, they strongly recommend that conventional GDP calculation must be supplemented with other indicators, in order to give a more meaningful nuance to the concept of national welfare.
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Clearly, Sarkozy would like Sen and Stiglitz to carry this research further and possibly create a newer framework for measuring national well-being. During the run-up to his election last year, Sarkozy himself played the Anglo-Saxon card to denigrate his country’s record of creating and maintaining a high quality of life that the rest of the world admired. He was castigated by British commentators who pointed out that 2005 data portrayed the UK quite poorly when it came to critical social indices. While it had overtaken France in per capita GDP, it had approximately 17 per cent of its population living in poverty, compared to 7 per cent in France.
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Sarkozy now realises that he had picked the wrong ammunition during the election campaign. The French people would never buy the Anglo-Saxon model that his fund-raisers had been pushing for. His new advisers may help him to restore some balance in his policymaking.
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For his Indian hosts, will Sarkozy advocate a similar index?

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haunting…

January 20, 2008 at 12:02 am (entertainment, music, people)

This is a live version of Sia Furler from Zero 7 singing I Go To Sleep. I am deeply moved every time I hear it. And even though this recording isn’t at all great, I think you’ll see how beautiful the song is, and how inimitably she sings it. Here is a preview of the recorded version.

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mute point

January 19, 2008 at 5:59 pm (advertising, entertainment, persuasion, psychology, television)

Have you often wondered why the television set seems to blare much louder during the commercials between programming?

I dug around a little and it appears that the peak levels of commercials are actually no louder than that of the shows they pepper. It’s just that the average level of sound in TV ads is greater and so the perceived loudness is higher too. But I digress. Regardless of whether or not they do get louder, they sure seem to get louder, and so we turn the sound off/down or change the channel.

Wouldn’t it make sense for advertisers to tone the sound down so that we aren’t knocked off our sofas? To keep us from constantly clutching at our remotes, one finger on the mute button, in dread of the commercial breaks? Perhaps on more than one count…

Communication researcher Carson Wagner has recently found that watching anti-drug commercials under conditions of low attention is actually more convincing than watching under conditions of high attention. One reason offered up as an explanation for this phenomenon is that when pro-drug viewers are watching with full-on attention, they have the resources required to find faults with the message. They refute it and, in so doing, are less persuaded by it.

That kind of ‘counter-argument’ of the ad’s message doesn’t happen when viewers are watching the commercials in their peripheral view. In the latter case, the associations between the concept ‘drug’ and the concept ‘bad’ are subtly reinforced, despite - and perhaps even especially because of - a lack of complete attention on part of the viewer.

The same could easily apply to selling brands. The ads would play at slightly lower volumes and yet reiterate the connection between the ‘brand’ concerned and the concept ‘good’. It would be a softer sell, sure, but a sell nonetheless. And at least it wouldn’t encourage viewers to turn the darn telly off or have them change the channel to escape those in-your-face “breaks.”

Also, commercials that are replayed incessantly might not become as off-putting as they do when they are too loud. Anyone who watched the India-Australia test match at Perth on TV this week could vividly recall the Airtel annoyance. It actually made my father swear he would never subscribe to Airtel – even though he considers its message quite good. The intrusiveness of the ad somehow got attached to the brand for him, and I suspect that he is not alone.

So, advertisers, hear hear! It would probably be wise to turn the volume of your ads DOWN.

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cheap cheep

January 19, 2008 at 10:34 am (india, innovation, people, the world, vision and entrepreneurship)

The Tata Nano is undoubtedly the world’s cheapest car, but consider the context in which it is embedded. The Chevy Aveo (~$11,000) is less than 1/4th of the US per capita income. Granted that India’s middle class is growing fast, but the Nano (~$2500) is priced at more than 3X India’s per capita income!

Now that says something.

And its a fact those that levy accusations at Ratan Tata – for furthur choking up India’s roads with bizarrely affordable cars – should consider. When you add to it the fact that European safety and emission standards are met by the Nano, then outright naysayers begin to look just a little silly.

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ra ra rall?

January 10, 2008 at 6:29 pm (india, people, politics, religion, the world)

Sunday’s cartoon responds to the generally respectful tone accorded Mike Huckabee, who does not believe in evolution and is therefore, by definition, a lunatic.

- Ted Rall

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if only we talked…

January 4, 2008 at 1:31 pm (advertising, branding, communication, creativity, marketing, the world)

Kudos to Airtel and the chaps at Rediffusion DY&R in India for the new direction in which they have taken the campaign.

It’s almost predictable, which is precisely why it is close to genius. Much like the Corona campaign: on-the-tip-of-your-tongue intuitive. The trick often lies in hitting on a concept so seamless that everyone – from consumer to creative to CEO – takes a look and wonders why they didn’t think of it first. Nice!

Airtel’s reliability index better be pretty good though, or users might have to take the brand with a pinch of salt! Good for beer, not so much for a mobile network – no matter how noble its advertising.

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popular

January 4, 2008 at 10:55 am (culture, entertainment, music, people)

Not at all new, but incredibly good pop, this is called In the Waiting Line by Zero 7. The album is Simple Things and this beautiful song is also on the Garden State soundtrack. If you are in the mood for particularly bad pop however, go here. Eh eh eh? :D Now before any Rihanna fans take that to be racially biased or something, here’s another song that I think falls in to the bracket of awesome pop fair and square…

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