Plastics. The famous line from The Graduate in which Mr. McGuire counsels our young graduate, Benjamin Braddock, to wrap himself (pun very much intended) in plastic. Prescient counsel for a young man graduating in the 1960s, as the boom in plastics was about to hit. I wonder how many Mr. McGuires counseled how many young [...]
Be forewarned: this entire piece is a love letter to Sweden. If you're not feeling very pro-Swedish (no idea why anyone would be anything but immensely pro-Swedish) you should go grab a coffee now and visit hampsterdance.com But if you're still here, I'll at least assume that you have a passing interest into why I [...]
This is a long-overdue review of the iPad, in part because of what can only be described as a massive reluctance on my part to actually touch an iPad. I'm not a big fan of hype. I neither purvey nor consume hype, certainly not in the massive quantities that have surrounded the rounds of iPad [...]
Sunday afternoon. Hot. Sitting by a pool, listening to The Stones' "Exile on Main Street," and contemplating the term "exile." First, a digression: No matter what The Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time said, the greatest rock album in history is "Exile on Main Street." Nothing else is even close. Bank that. The [...]
The breaking point for me was the last venture capitalist reality show I watched. I could bear only a half-hour and I honestly don't remember the name of the show. What I do remember is an entrepreneur who had devoted two years of his life's work and sold 50% of a potentially million-dollar idea for [...]
Having just (literally “just,” as I’m writing this piece on a 13-hour flight out of Beijing) completed my 55th trip to China, I left with a stronger vision than ever that you need to get to China. Now. Yes - YOU. Why? It’s not just the Sichuan food (though that’s a compelling reason in itself, [...]
This image is one that I captured this afternoon while showing a colleague through a Wal-Mart on his first trip to Beijing. We had been discussing leadership on and off, in various forms, since we left Stockholm last night for China. Seeing this picture not only tied together many of the loose ideas over the [...]
There is little doubt that we have entered into the Questionless Age. It's a scary time, one where it is more acceptable to move forward without enough information than it is to ask the right questions. Perhaps part of the reason for this reluctance is the fact that the amount of information available to us [...]
"Art & Copy" is a superb documentary - one that I would strongly commend to anyone interested in exploring the core of brand identity. The essence of a brand, to me, comes through the process of creation and can't be separated from it. An integral part of that creation is the work of the people [...]
The idea of a written memoir has two prongs: 1. an account of one's personal life and experiences - an autobiography; 2. the published record of the proceedings of a group or organization. In thinking about memoir a fair amount over the past couple of days, it occurred to me that there are probably natural [...]
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