Consultants are animals, but which?

Who is consultant?

Over on WhatAnimalAmI I took the quiz with a mindset of a typical consultant. My result: lion. Breeding ground for self-narcissists? Google spits out more than 10 firms named “lion consult.”

But there is more. Camel Consulting: “increase shareholder value;” Blue Elephant Consulting: “communication to change the world.” Etc.

LBS professor Vermeulen thinks consultants are “rats with wings… they spread diseases.”

Platypus Consulting has an explanation for its name: like the platypus, we convince by our presence.

Who needs a consultant?

Usually, companies seeking external consultants look for band-aid solutions, and consultants are tasked with CEO-level work.

Innovative beer virtually and in poems

What costs $0.99, has been bought about 1 million times, and generated about $2 million and counting in revenues? An iBeer. That’s right, a simulated iPhone beer.

“I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety,” wrote William Shakespeare in Henri V. Ironically, beer consumption in his country is in sharp decline, although worldwide it increases, with China and America in lead.

And innovation in beer production or delivery? Beer launching fridge, temperature-sensitive Coors beer, beer-milk, beer for dogs, scratch-n-strip beer featuring nice ladies, … exist.

And the top 10 beer poems features Poe, Rumi, Baudelaire and others.

great names and namethis

Great names degrade instead of elevating those who know not how to sustain them

quipped the great duc born on rue des Petits Champs.

A look at some of great names in history proves illuminating, etymologically. Attila – father, Genghis Khan – universal lord, Ptolemy – aggressive, Pompey – five. Majority of great names stem from (frequently used) nouns, adjectives or linguistic permutations. A name is portent of history/culture, playing an essential role in a person’s life.

Whether $99 constitute a great amount or no, for it NameThis successfully commercializes idea/importance of names by providing a quick/painless name suggestions during 48 hours.

page99test, Petrarch and sales by chapter

When I stumbled on page99test (a page up for 30 days/50 reads), words of Father of Humanism Petrarch resounded in my ears:

Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;

and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world's delight is a brief dream.

Next, I remembered how people crowded docks in NYC whenever a new chapter of Dickensian novels was arriving by boat. Recently, RH resurrected this practice by selling “Made to Stick” chapter-by-chapter.

Innovation and white boards in Obama administration

Spurred by Obama’s “Sputnik moment” (referring to economic competition with China), gov-sponsored Smithsonian Institute launched a new blog “Department of Innovation.”

The three interlocking gears on logo can’t move in any direction – good analogy of American government’s current situation.

And in the last session of “White House White Board,” where Obama cronies/academics lecture America’s movers-n-shakers on how government can run along its brightest, Austan Goolsbee, a Chicago academic with 0 experience in business heading Obama’s ERAB, played his usual comedy by preaching about economic importance of startups/entrepreneurs.

While at Yale, Goolsbee was in improv comedy troupes.

What plagiarism and innovation have in common

What do plagiarism and innovation have in common? Quite some.

Plagiarism is a copying of another’s IP without acknowledgment; innovation might be a copying of another’s IP, but with a poignant inspiration and tinge of creativity, not unlike a 9-year-old Estonian’s hacking into New York Times Op-Ed and “op-eding” embarrassing facts about Tom Friedman and the newspaper’s revenues.

A 17-year-old Nicholas took Google to task on its own ground and came out of it better off, earning himself the tag “next Mark Zuckerberg.” Innovation, plagiarism, or a bit of both?

Plagiarism, like innovation, can get creative in literature, at least.

Crowds from 0 to 100 and what they do

Heard of 0to100, the hottest ipad app that crowds flock to? It features gorgeously-shot faces in the interval 0-100. You can play fast forward or play backward, mix-n-matching few faces into one, thus reminding us that age is but a number – it’s the person that counts.

Crowds not only flock but source; “crowdsourcing,” introduced by Howe/Robinson in 2006, is a term widely used in many human endeavors. Besides numerous advantages/usages, it’s used for marketing research. Example: crowdtap, a tool filling the gap between traditional research and digital, helps gather insights, engage/influence customers.

Lastly, crowds loot, especially if socially excluded. Normal. Life.

GooglePleaseHireMe and future of self-marketing

Today’s the 8th day of Matt Epstein‘s epic quest to get himself hired by Google. He spent a month making the GooglePleaseHireMe, which closely imitates Google’s homepage. Matt positioned himself as an eccentric young aristocrat seated by a fireside, sipping scotch and musing about his well-groomed mustache. In addition to cooking-up his online USPs, he produced biz-cards and a life-size cardboard.

He launched a viral marketing campaign that took off so quickly that Google, Microsoft and Amazon were among 80+ companies contacting him for a job interview. He’s now in proceeds.

Other similar efforts include CanGoogleHireMe and HireMeAccenture.

Future of self-marketing?