The powerful visual impact of data combined with visual rendering:
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Category: Innovation
The impact of globalization in Canada. Implications everywhere:
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Latest read: Switch
Dan and Chip Heath made a splash with their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (my 2007 review) and now the Heath brothers are up to it again.
Their follow up book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard is expected in early 2010.
If Switch is anything like Made to Stick, we’ll have our hands full of more great lessons about change.
To no surprise globalization is bringing the world closer together and thereby making commerce “smaller” and faster as global financial markets increase the efficiency of established information systems. Recent growth of internet penetration has changed dramatically. Today China has more internet users than America has citizens.
Consider this form IF you can image everyone you know connected, literally everyone in the USA — then you would see China has surpassed our population. With almost 75% of Americans connected implications are huge since China has only 20% of its population connected. I blogged about this impact with YouTube in March.
Original graphic
Tags: Internet Users, China, population, internet growth, internet, economy, trends
Just finished reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. I very much enjoyed his previous book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. (review here) The first time I read about this idea was an article he wrote in his 2008 Wired article. Have to admit I was skeptical. Free invites you to learn about new “radical sales techniques” that have actually been around for some time, but could not take off without the influence of the global internet economy.
And YES you can read his book for free online at Scribd and at Google Books. You can also download a full unabridged 6 hour audiobook for free — or purchase a 3 hour abridged copy. Get it?
Like me, if you have not been paying close attention to the Free Economy, there is much to learn from this book.
Anderson traces the history of “free” products (Gillette razor blades in 1895 and even Jello) and services and intelligently outlines how “free” is driving sales in our culture today. Even in our current economic recession.
He introduces the idea by recalling a famous announcement from Monty Python, who’s pirated movies were already on YouTube. They decided to establish their own YouTube channel, place higher quality clips online with links to their DVD products….and placed a hilarious insult letter to all their fans.
Even though they were placing movies online for free, fans purchased their DVDs at Amazon, driving them to the #2 sales rank with an increased sales volume of 23,000%. That’s no typo: a 23,000% sales jump! Clearly Free can work.
Anderson has done great research to help explain (he calls them “sidebars” in the book) to help you see where you have already run across “free” in your daily life including radical ideas including air travel, cars, silverware, textbooks and even a university education.