From the monthly archives:

June 2006

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

by Pete Abilla June 30, 2006

I read an interesting study the other day on Word-of-Mouth Marketing, or hyper One-to-One Marketing.  The Keller Fay Group, a Word-of-Mouth Marketing and Consultancy has published the study and can be found here.  According to their study, the brands that have the most “buzz” based on their sample are the following: Toyota Wal-Mart Honda Apple/iPod [...]

1 comment continue reading

The Wisdom of Crowds

by Pete Abilla June 29, 2006

The book "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki explains how the aggregation of information in groups can result in outcomes better than if the decision was made by any single person in the group. He argues that there are 3 types of Crowd Wisdom: Cognition: Market judgment, which he argues can be much faster, [...]

3 comments continue reading

Landscaping and Trees

by Pete Abilla June 28, 2006

We recently finished landscaping our yard — front, side, and back. We’re really happy with how things turned out. Before landscaping, we had HUGE wheat-looking weeds all over the place, which hid the basketball-sized rocks beneath. Now, we have grass, trees, curbing, and a nice cement pad to BBQ and entertain. I’ll explain the whole [...]

0 comments continue reading

Shutterfly IPO?

by Pete Abilla June 27, 2006

Rumor has it that Shutterfly may be headed for an liquidation liquidity event soon, either an IPO or an acquisition valued at ~$500MM. Shutterfly has been profitable for 3 years, with profit estimates of around $20MM. Shutterfly’s model is a fascinating one. Unlike 99% of their competitors, Shutterfly has its own manufacturing facility, where it [...]

0 comments continue reading

Online Ads are big; Eyeballs are Back Again

by Pete Abilla June 27, 2006

Remember when eyeballs were the de facto business model of the web?  Eyeballs are back.  Yesterday’s New York Times article entitled “As Online Ads Grow, Eyeballs Are Valuable Again on the Web” is good and discusses the dynamics of Eyeballs. Coincidentally, AdAge published their annual Largest National Advertisers report yesterday.  It’s an interesting read and [...]

0 comments continue reading

Acquisition Cost

by Pete Abilla June 27, 2006

During dinner last night, our phone rang and on the other line was a cigarette-smoking man. He wanted a few minutes of my time to explain that he works for Arbitron, a marketing research firm. He pitched his story that all I’d have to do is carry a diary with me and write down which [...]

2 comments continue reading

Unstructured Data: DB2 9

by Pete Abilla June 26, 2006

IBM released DB2 9 last week, previously codenamed “Viper.” It took the IBM team 5 years to develop, 750 engineers, and 68 patent filings. DB2 9 is radially different than the current database models available, which are primarily based on relational data, pioneered by Boyce-Codd (i.e., Boyce-Codd Normal Form, or BCNF). DB2 9 was built [...]

0 comments continue reading

The Pareto Principle

by Pete Abilla June 26, 2006
This entry is part 16 of 28 in the series Lean and Six Sigma

The Pareto Principle was named after an Italian economist who discovered that 80% of the wealth in Europe was concentrated in 20% of the population. This discovery is also known as the 80/20 rule or the Law of the Vital Few. The Pareto Principle is a phenomenon that finds application in many places, such as [...]

7 comments continue reading

Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time

by Pete Abilla June 26, 2006

Very few service providers, regardless of service, look at the customer’s experience — from the customer’s point of view. If they did, service providers would realize that customer’s wait around a lot and much of the customer’s time is wasted. Queue’s can be an effective way to organize. The key is in managing the queue [...]

9 comments continue reading

1 of 3123