Armed with more data than ever, many companies know what key customers need. But how many know exactly when they need it? An analysis of 2,000 ridesharing commuters by Eva Ascarza and colleagues shows what’s possible for companies that can anticipate a customer’s routine.
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To say that it’s impossible to function before that first cup of coffee in the morning is borderline clichè, but are those beans really doing the work we think it is to perk us up? A study published June 28 in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience by a team based in Portugal found that the experience of consuming coffee may act a bit like the placebo when it comes to making coffee drinkers feel ready to tackle the day.
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Most people leave a lot on the table when negotiating. Find out how to get more of what you want by improving your communication strategy.
Negotiation is a constant in business. Every interaction — from writing a contract to setting a project deadline to covering for a team member who’s sick — requires give and take. The skills you need for negotiating, including communication, strategy, competition, cooperation, and empathy, are skills you use on a daily basis to reach successful resolutions. So why is it so hard for people to negotiate effectively?
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Do you have a creative muse you seek out for content inspiration?
As a PR professional who loves to write, I’ve always loved the word “muse.” It has a certain romantic vibe to it, and for someone who has always been a sucker for romantic gestures, movies and songs, this fits right into my repertoire of favorite words. It’s such a fabulous word and one I like to think about when brainstorming writing assignments.
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Any experienced entrepreneur will tell you: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Even so, a lot of entrepreneurs, inexperienced and experienced alike, will dive headfirst into building out an idea they fall in love with, before asking themselves the one question that I get from entrepreneurs the most often:
Uber, Pepperidge Farm and others have tapped musicians to recreate their hits with brand-referencing lyrics in a push to engage both millennials and Gen Z
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In his new book, the designer Manuel Lima challenges 9 myths that hold designers back from reaching their true potential.
Manuel Lima has worked across nearly every area of the design field. With degrees in industrial design and design and technology, he’s been a digital designer at tech startups and led UX teams at corporations like Microsoft and Google. Alongside these roles, in 2005, he founded VisualComplexity.com, an archive of more than 1,000 network visualizations that would become one of the most popular data visualization resources on the internet. This research led to the publication of three books on data visualization: Visual Complexity, The Book of Trees, and The Book of Circles. He’s also a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.
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I have always been fascinated by people who say things like, “I live life with no regrets. Because every choice I’ve made has gotten me to where I am today.”
Nostalgia is a comforting temptation for consumers and brands, explains Trajectory’s Tom Johnson, but there is greater opportunity to be found by looking ahead.
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