Samasource gives jobs, not aid to end global poverty

Samasource might be my favorite new non-profit. Why? Because they bring together the scrapiness of a startup with the social effects of a non-profit. Like charity:water they operate under the model that their “return” is about bringing an American commodity to the global poor. So what is Samasource? It’s pure and (not) so simple social entrepreneurship, using [...]

If I was… the American Express Zync card marketer

I recently learned that American Express aka AmEx is launching a new card called the Zync card aimed at 20-30 year olds. This piqued my interest so I figured this would be a good time to explore why would I use American Express, who uses it and the major benefits. For comparison I’m currently using [...]

Book Review: TellMeWhy

A few weeks back my friend John recommended I read the story of karlssonwilker inc., called tellmewhy: The First 24 Months of a New York Design Company. The book is both absurd and interesting at the same time. Essentially it is the dueling stream of consciousness from the two founders and only employee’s of the [...]

The Walls have Ears

Image via Wikipedia I came across this blog post recently where a waiter was fired for twittering while on the job. This wasn’t a case where they were fired just for twittering, it’s because who the tweets were about which is a whole new kind of fail whale. Let’s cut to the chase, if you [...]

The tension of creating vs maximizing

I’m about half-way through “The Design of Business” by Roger Martin which explores how knowledge advances from one stage to another-from mystery (something we can’t explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it [...]

In the beginning…

I love reading. As one of lifes little ironies, I work for book company and I STILL got books for Christmas gifts! One of those gifts was The Forbes Book of Business Quotations: 14,173 Thoughts on the Business of Life. I’m pretty excited about it, so I thought I’d share the following quote with you [...]