A pigment in the skin, melanin, determines the skin color in all of us. Melanin itself, however, is red (pheomelanin), or dark-brown to nearly black (eumelanin). Skin color selection is more genetic at birth, but what intrigues me is that as we “evolve” we get selective, in a…
Books on history and sociology tell us that as civilization grew, we created rules. A group of “powerful” people introduced governments. Then a smaller group of “wealthy” people made corporations. And gradually, the dynamics changed from democracy to corpocracy. Today, when we talk of corpocracy, its…
Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge weekly newsletter had an interesting article, authored by marketing professor John Quelch about how you can take advantage of what he calls the “Scarcity Illusion Strategy” when you’re getting ready to introduce your new product or service. By using…
Imagine a global marketplace with: roughly 34 million potential customers just a click away, a user growth rate of 3% week over week, over 47,000 college, high-school, employee, and regional networks, no distribution costs involved, no investment required (except time-to-build), no marketing costs involved to jump-start, minimal time-to-delivery, no…
So I’ve been unwell for the past 3-4 days, and it feels like I’m under house arrest. There’s the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup (which btw is becoming more like baseball in terms of ambience) on TV, but besides that I’ve also been…
It’s no surprise that women like men who make them laugh, and men like women who think they are funny. Wait a minute. Isn’t that the same thing. Well, not exactly. See, most women aren’t as funny as most men, no pun intended, and…
What will you do with a million dollars? Take a world trip? Buy you dream car, or a condo by the beach? Maybe donate for a good cause, or change the world? A million dollars can have a billion reasons. Well, many years ago, during the dotcom wave, I was…
If you are trying to decide between two things, a good trick is to flip a coin. Assign one choice to heads and the other to tails. You’ll find yourself subtly “hoping” for one choice over the other. Decision made. Keep things simple!…