Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 107

The Problem With Curiosity

Curiosity isn't just for cats or cartoon monkeys. In fact, it may be one of the most powerful marketing forces that exists in the world today (and one I even wrote a guide for using several years ago). Thanks to a combination of our natural human urges and what constitutes a "breaking story" in today's media environment - curiosity has been taking on a whole new significance lately.

Today, for example, the two LEADING media stories that people can't stop sharing, tweeting and talking about bo...

"Somebody I Used To Know" & The Co-Created Future Of Musical Storytelling

The moment in 1981 when MTV officially launched its music channel by airing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star" was a big moment in the history of music. While it may not have been the first moment when videos were merged with music, it was certainly one of the most powerful. All of a sudden you could not only experience a song and how it made you feel, you could also SEE an interpretation of what the songwriter actually meant.

At first this shift worried many music fans. After all, if...

10 Signs You May Have An Unhealthy Relationship With Social Media

There is a reason the word "pervasive" is often used right alongside social media. For many of us, the social channels we use to connect with others for personal or professional reasons are a big part of every day. But how much is too much? How do we know that we might be taking our enthusiasm for social media too far? Here's my slightly exaggerated (but mostly true) list of ten signs that you might just have an unhealthy relationship with social media in your life:

You receive an audible al...

How To Save San Francisco With Puppies

In entrepreneurship courses around the world one of the first things that they teach you is to find a problem that your business can solve. We all have problems, so there should be plenty of inspiration. And no doubt, there are many successful businesses that start with this simple question in mind. But how often do they ask if the problems they are solving are big enough?

This weekend I read an article about a fascinating experiment in San Francisco to get panhandlers off the street. The cit...

How To Interview Anyone: 5 Lessons From Amazing Interviewers

One of the most popular forms of content creation today is interviews ... but great interviews take a lot more than just coming up with a list of questions. The sad fact is, not everyone who creates interviews to post online is actually good at doing them. So you might wonder, what do the people who ARE really good at it already know?

Over the last month I've done over 30 interviews as part of launching Likeonomics (that's more than one a day). Across that time, I've done everything from answ...

The Importance of Being Fearless

Most of us have a love affair with the big idea. We memorialize and romanticize it. We attend workshops or read books to learn how to come up with it. And the celebrate the achievements of anyone who has had one. Yet for all of our focus on this big idea, perhaps there is something even more fundamental that powers real world changing ideas.

The Case Foundation thinks so, and many of their peer foundations do as well. Foundations are one group that don't generally get recognized enough for th...

7 Useful Tips For How To Create A Really Great Corporate Event

Someone recently asked me to guess how many events I had spoken at in the last 3 years. I honestly can't remember ... and I'm not saying that to try and impress you. The fact is, in the last three years, I have participated in easily more than a hundred corporate events of all types. Some are internal seminars, while others are larger scale annual events or conferences. I've been invited to speak at everything from workshops for the military to networking events for young professionals. The t...

Timing - The Most Creative Lunch In History

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of my new book Likeonomics all about Timing, the 2nd principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

In 1855, a Scottish clergyman named James Gall had an idea that should have changed every map ever created, but didn’t. It was four years before Charles Darwin would publish his Origin of Species, and Gall was presenting his world-changing idea at a Glasgow meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The world he lived in had long...

Simplicity: Plain Language & The Red Button That Reinvented Your Memories

NOTE:This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of mynew book Likeonomicsall about Simplicity, the 4th principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

Annetta Cheek is a 25-year veteran of the federal government who now runs a nonprofit called the Center for Plain Language. There has never been a more important time for the Center to exist. ‘‘When you’re supposed to be a democracy, and people don’t even understand what government is doing, that’s a problem,’’ Cheek says. This is not just an American p...

Unselfishness: The World's Most Ethical Company & Why Collaboration Works

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of my new book Likeonomics all about Unselfishness, the 3rd principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

The biggest clue that Jim Sinegal is not your ordinary CEO came in an article in The Seattle Times a few months before his retirement. The headline read: ‘‘Jim Sinegal takes pay cut in last year as Costco CEO.’’

If that seems like an extraordinary thing for a CEO to do, it’s not all that makes Sinegal and the members-only warehouse retailer Costco...