There’s clearly a stampede going on to combine app stores, digital downloads, and cloud storage/back-up as ways to create competing and coopetive ecosystems. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft (which just invested in Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-Readers) all now have such similar business models and ecosystem strategies, it’s no longer surprising when one of them makes the next move. Their goal: create a comfy “place” for us to hang out and DO everything we need to do in order to live our digitally-connected lives, from downloading music and videos and books, to chatting with our friends, to keeping our important digital assets, email and files backed up, to strutting our stuff and selling our wares.

In his Forbes article, entitled Facebook's App Store Heats Up Convergence of Big 5,...

Monster.com was originally designed as a Help Wanted/Need a Job matching site. It’s one of the many such sites that have dramatically impacted the employment services industry. Monster was one of the first job-hunting sites and one of the most successful in both fulfilling its mission and in remaining at the top of the heap. One of the things that distinguished Monster.com from the outset was its unremitting focus on the end-customer—the person seeking a job. The original founder, Jeff Taylor, knew that if Monster didn’t cater to job-seekers, they wouldn’t have any qualified candidates to offer to their paying customers—companies’ HR departments and head hunters. Monster.com provides a classic case of designing an online business for multiple audiences/customer bases—some of whom are paying customers and some of whom use the site’s services for free. Catering to multiple audiences means that there lots of areas that are ripe for conflict: head hunters contact job seekers to offer...

When you invite customers to spend time with you to help co-design your next-gen products, services, or customer experience, you want them to be comfortable and at ease. Any event planner knows that creating an enjoyable meeting or memorable event requires a lot of attention to detail. What we’ve learned, in over 25 years of running these sessions, is that even GREAT event planners don’t know all the details you’ll need to be on top of to ensure a high-quality, smooth-running brainstorming session.

What Are the Subtle Differences that Make a Difference in a Well-Planned Customer Co-Design Event?

Clients often comment that there are so many logistics to think about, in addition to all the big picture, substantive stuff they need to handle (like making sure your top execs actually participate and that they leave their Smartphones in their pockets!). So they don’t want to pay attention to...

Google is under a lot of pressure since it unveiled its new “we’ll-collect-everything-we-have-about-your-use-of-all-our-apps” privacy policy on March 1st. On March 28, 2012, Google announced a new feature for Google Account holders, called “Google Account Activity. If you sign up for this feature, “each month we’ll send you a link to a password-protected report with insights into your signed-in use of Google services,” writes Google product manager, Andreas Tuerk, in his blog post: “Giving you more insight into your Google Account activity” announcing the new feature.

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