If I provided benefit X to at least one person…

You hear this very often from charities or charitable people: “If I could get one kid off the street then it was all worth it!”

As I sit in my non for profit consulting class at Rotman I can’t help but wonder if this is a good question to ask. The non for profit sector is full of people measuring the results of any investment with this marginal benefit. I’m not discounting the value of helping a small number of individuals but unless we start thinking about social benefit the same way that we think about any other type of investment, are we cheating ourselves and the people who count on this sector?

 

Don’t sell me technology, sell me goose bumps

I must admit. I’m new to marketing. I’m very old and getting older however at using products. Too often us in the technology area focus on features. Feature X and Y is faster and better than feature Z of our closest competitor. There’s no goose bumps in features. There’s goose bumps in this:

Give me a new way to express myself, get me home to my family quicker, inspire me to create something new or to experience something I never thought I was capable of and I’ll be your customer forever!

The future is friendly damn it!

As much as we love to hate our phone carriers up here in Canada (down here if you’re reading this from Alaska), TELUS has a very inspiring slogan: The Fure Is Friendly!

Scientists are telling us we are doomed; the economy is…well, you know (this is an R rated blog); and, at least over here in what used to be called The West, we are having less and less children. So how friendly is it really?

As part of my school work I was involved in one project over the summer and I’m involved in another one now in which we’re asked to look into the future and tell a few stories about food and banking respectively. The future is friendly! And you know why? Because I’m the one writing the story. The future comes with no obligations. And with lack of responsibility over whether it becomes true or not comes a lot of power. Power to imagine, fearlessness to tell the story. When you write the future, it can be as friendly as you want it to be!