The “Google way” is supposed to be the way companies do business today. Their philosophy of making their prices as low as possible, even free, to get as many users as possible; of making their software both open-source and easily-integratable; of being invisible, instead of loud; of being focused on software instead of stuff; is the widespread best practice nearly all new-age organizations are looking to adopt today. All, but one: Apple. Not only does Apple reject the Gospel of Google, it relishes in its own mystique and ignores those who dare oppose it. The perfect illustration of the premise above? …Read more »
Tag Archives: Google
Lessons From Google: A New Way To Think About Branding
Say you have $100,000 to invest on “branding.” What’s the best place to spend it? You could buy a commercial on local television, although then again, nobody really watches commercials anymore thanks to DVR and Netflix. You could buy an ad on YouTube, which people will skip in five seconds, or a banner ad, which garners a click-through rate of 0.04 percent. You could try pay-per-click, but that is both expensive and becoming less effective. You could try podcast commercials, although everyone just hits the 30-second forward button when those come on. You could try a newspaper, which is fantastic if …Read more »
Why Allowing Telecommuting Is (And Isn’t) A Good Idea
In February of 2013, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer made headlines across the world – most of them negative – after she decreed that employees at the fledgling tech company could no longer work from home. Studies show people who work from home are more efficient, have less conflict with colleagues, are happier and they save the company money on overhead costs. So was Mayer’s move an “epic fail”? Not necessarily. There are a lot of compelling reasons to let employees work from home and it should definitely be offered to all employees, at least on a partial basis. But there …Read more »
The Genius of Google’s Invisibility
It’s been said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Google is not the devil – far from it, actually. But they’ve pretty much accomplished the same thing: although we use Google every day for nearly everything, it is almost as if it doesn’t exist. And that’s intentional. What? I’ve been reading the book What Would Google Do by Jeff Jarvis and some parts I’ve found particularly fascinating. For example, Jarvis said that when Google was first created, it didn’t care about making money. Instead, all it cared about was getting as many people …Read more »
Xerox: A Hiring Process Worth Copying
A few years ago, Xerox became interested in cutting down the turnover rate at its 48,500 call-center jobs. Specifically, the company invests $5,000 in training in each new call center employee, and wanted them to stick around long enough to make that investment worth it. So, Xerox spent six months assessing its own hires, and then coupled that with information about their background and personality types. And what Xerox found was that experience had no correlation to employee longevity, but instead creative types stayed longer at the company than inquisitive types. Naturally, Xerox began targeting employees that were more creative …Read more »