Re-Connecting Broken Communities
How could new ideas take shape if people had the power to reshape their feeds with community building in mind?
Jennifer Labit
The Hoodie Test
I was raised in a family that didn’t have a ton of money. We made ends meet, but I was never the girl who had the expensive coats or the nice shoes. It took me years to understand that the girls in third grade who were in the popular cliques had clothes from the expensive […]
The Ease of the Sale
I am often asked how to measure how platforms are doing with their efforts. As I consider that question, I look at balance sheets first to see how the business is behaving. Are they investing? Are they changing other behaviors? Have they reached a point where they cannot be stopped? How “easy is their sale”?
Platform Strategy for Brands
When people attend classes I’ve taught about strategy or economics, the questions often focus around how brands should approach an innovation and platform strategy. Those questions recently came up again in a different format, so I took notes and decided to start putting some of the most frequently asked questions on my blog.
What happens when a baby has enough diapers?
Imagine what happens when a baby has enough diapers. A baby with a safe supply of cloth diapers is changed more often. Because she is changed more often, she has less diaper rash. Because she has less diaper rash, she might cry less. Because she cries less, her parents might be less anxious. Because her […]
Why Antitrust Law Matters
The removal of psychological constraints and physical constraints for retail and now imminent threats to grocery competitors has fundamentally changed the way business is done. This change has substantively altered economic forces in a way that should cause courts to evaluate and perhaps, once-again, evolve anti-trust law.
Memorable Kindness
Thoughts on memorable kindness.
It was twenty years ago. Jimmy and I weren’t married yet. We were looking for a church that we could call home together. We’d seen a commercial, and decided to find that church. One Friday night, forty-five minutes late, Jimmy and I walked in the door and this particular usher just happened to be the one standing there.
Experiential Blindness and Social Engagement
A few years ago, someone emailed me a question. We had an active project that we were getting ready to release publicly, but it wasn’t ready to be shared that day. I replied to the email. In my response, I told her that we were working on an answer to her question, but that I […]
The Girl’s Guide to Negotiating
Negotiation is discussion aimed at reaching an agreement. When you want to accomplish a certain goal, it is important to consider the whole situation carefully before making commitments. It’s a big game and, if you play your cards right, you can get to your goal. Most importantly, get to know the rest of the players […]
The Power of The Pixel
An article was published on Wired recently about Facebook’s failure to suppress fake news. The epically long, but must-read article is titled “Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook — And the World”. As I read, in particular, I noted the implications to corporate power, retail economics, and platform marketing in the content… “For the […]