Business Archives - Interesting Ideas

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June 7, 2017 Bill Swislow

Lucy Sparrow: All Felt All The Time

Lucy Sparrow makes deeply felt art, literally. She creates facsimiles of real objects in felt, and does so on a massive scale. The current example, a fully stocked all-felt convenience store, opened June 5 in New York and will continue for four weeks. The individual items — available for sale, of course — are each a treat in themselves. When they fill the shelves and fixtures of a shop, the colors and cultural resonances are wonderful. Sparrow, who hails from Bath, England, clearly wants to delight her audience with good feelings, but she also has some social commentary in mind.

August 7, 2016 Bill Swislow

Living the Skeptical Life

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. — Bertrand Russell That uncertainty is an unyielding fact of existence is hardly controversial. It’s in the wisdom of the ages, after all — we’re here today, gone the next, who knows what tomorrow might bring – and it’s enshrined in a renowned scientific principle via Prof. Heisenberg.

May 29, 2015 Bill Swislow

Short Review: What Is Happening to News

Jack Fuller is a member of that unlucky generation of journalists who were in charge when the online flood started to swamp the newspaper industry. Contrary to some popular cliches, Fuller and many of his colleagues were well aware of the challenges posed by the Internet and tried very hard to turn them into opportunities. The Chicago Tribune, where Fuller was editor and then publisher, invested heavily in digital publishing and brought some great ideas to fruition, many quite successful. Unfortunately, the circumstances undermining the economics of the newspaper business were beyond control. In this book Fuller goes beyond the

October 4, 2013 Bill Swislow

The Snake in Google’s Garden

Could Google follow the sad history of other once-leading companies? It doesn’t take going out on a limb to believe that Google’s appearance of impregnability is only an appearance. Dominant companies can and do lose their position despite superior products, clear market leadership, vast resources and brilliant employees. Harvard Business School Prof. Clayton Christensen has made that case persuasively through his Innovator’s Dilemma series of books and talks.

September 27, 2013 Bill Swislow

Review: Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World – With a Single Step

Customers Included: How to Transform Products, Companies, and the World – With a Single Step by Mark Hurst My rating: 5 of 5 stars An essential read if you care about the customer experience. This book is both an argument for attending seriously to customer experience and a how-to guide. The two authors have been enormously influential advocates and bring years of experience helping senior executives understand the supreme value of really understanding their customers. The book is a quick and engaging read that will pay off well. View all my reviews

November 18, 2012 Bill Swislow

Review: The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers

The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers by James O’Shea My rating: 3 of 5 stars If you lived within the orbit of Tribune Co. or the L.A. Times within the last decade, this book will be interesting to you. It’s a quick read with a number of fine anecdotes. That means it’s mostly inside baseball, so if you’re looking for great insights into the fate of journalism in the (sadly likely) post-newspaper age, you’ll want to look elsewhere. O’Shea throws in a handful of mea culpas but little reflection on how the narrow

January 28, 2012 Bill Swislow

Review: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries My rating: 4 of 5 stars If the test of a good business book is how many ideas inspire you to take notes, this one passes quite nicely. I especially like the arguments for replacing a prioritization culture with a test culture. View all my reviews

October 6, 2011 Bill Swislow

My Life With Apple

The first computer I ever seriously used was an Apple II plus. It was also the first computer (other than the typesetters) acquired by the little weekly newspaper where I worked in Santa Barbara, CA. We agonized a bit between the Apple and the first-generation IBM PC. But a comparably equipped Apple was a bit cheaper and, for an alternative newspaper, more culturally appropriate than an IBM device. Plus, we could get VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, which was available only on the Apple. I spent ungodly amounts of time with that computer, first setting up some basic financial reports

February 25, 2009 Bill Swislow

My Weekly Credo

Not every offer to help is a passive-aggressive effort to assert control.

February 1, 2009 Bill Swislow

My Weekly Credo: Managing Up

It’s unfair that the burden is on employees to make ignorant bosses understand. But that burden is far greater if they don’t.